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Design for Disruption: Design for Maintenance in Space https://ift.tt/3iel6tm We’ve learned that it may be interesting to think of 3D printing in terms of design for maintenance. By optimizing maintenance, lengthening maintenance intervals, and making maintenance faster or more effective, we can save money. This kind of a design consideration could impact the overall costs of many products. Together with thinking about other similar concepts, such as “design for installation“, we could make things that would be more efficient overall. In 3D printing, this would enable us to sell a part, such as a 3D printed window modifier, that may be more expensive but designed to save money in the long run. The business case for design-for-maintenance is especially strong in space, undersea, at sea, for the military, and in other high-value and critical applications. In this post, we’ll go through some scenarios to see how 3D printing and design-for-maintenance could make sense. The most obvious case for saving money with high maintenance costs is in space. There, it could cost thousands to send up a single kilo, nearly every part is critical, people’s lives are directly at stake if failure happens, and everything is made in low production runs. In this case, we can see that, if we would 3D print a housing that is not a $1,000- but instead a $3,000-part, we could quickly recoup the costs. An hour of crew time on the ISS is commercially sold for $130,000, while it was previously $17,500. In total, the International Space Station (ISS) costs between $3 to $4 billion a year. So, substituting a housing wherein four bolts are replaced in 40 minutes with one that can be replaced in 10 minutes can very quickly become advantageous. For repairs outside of the station, the cost is astronomical. In this case, a six-hour space walk was needed to install a new solar panel. During the EVA, “one panel was not aligning on the bracket when unfolded“, and this caused delays. Given the planning and risks involved, any 3D printed design for maintenance upgrades here could make a lot of sense. Customized 3D printed tool organizers and toolbelts for that one single mission would even seem like a good idea. If the cost per hour or in human life is considerable, designing for faster maintenance is a no-brainer. In the military, we’re seeing a growth of interest in 3D printing specifically for austere environments. Having printers overseas could mean that quick fixes can be propagated rapidly and parts can be received in days not in weeks. Given the high cost per kilo of getting things to forward-deployed soldiers, 3D printing really makes sense in these applications. Here, too, any maintenance burden would fall to combat troops and may see them become more exposed. Reducing maintenance time via 3D printed solutions, even if this means 3D printing an item that allows something to function beyond its maintenance interval, can be very advantageous. This is especially true for maintenance that is a direct cause of a previously unknown theatre. Famously, the mighty Apache gunship was grounded often in the Gulf War because the fine desert sand penetrated air filters. Not only could this problem be fixed now with 3D printing, you could subsequently roll out a similar anti-dust solution to many more air intake solutions. Undersea oil wells may produce 100,000 or 250,000 barrels of oil a day. Maintenance on them is cost-prohibitive, but essential. Undersea remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) or divers who sometimes live weeks in compression chambers are needed to do maintenance. Every hour of those divers’ or robots’ time is very valuable indeed. Here, redesigning something so that it can work a little faster or be checked a bit quicker could save a lot of time. Commercial diving like this is also one of the world’s most dangerous professions, so anything that would make maintenance faster or safer would be very valuable financially and in human life. This includes: tool adaptors that would make it easier to take out and use a tool, special torque attachments that enable an exotic tool to be torqued, and unique tool belts for one job, and customized kits of replacement parts that float and allow access to components in their specified order. For things like undersea cable maintenance, we could easily use very highly customized tools to enable better and cheaper maintenance. Here, we could also think about upgrading old bolts with ones that are lighter, better, or faster, for example. Other expensive professions where housings, assemblies, parts, and ports can be optimized through 3D printing could include firemen, line workers for electricity, doctors and nurses, pilots, and much much more. In all of these instances, the case for optimizing a part through 3D printing may quickly be made if it saves time for an expensive person in an expensive situation. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com September 28, 2021 at 07:18AM
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Studio Gruhl https://ift.tt/3EWvWhn “I was at a point where I was just sitting in meetings instead of being a designer or art director and I really questioned if this is what I want to do in the future,” says Malte Gruhl, reflecting on the moment he hit on the idea of setting out on his own. At that point, he was head of design at Sid Lee in New York. “It felt like being on such a linear path, in five years you can have this title, in ten you will do that, it felt like looking into the future and it definitely wasn’t the one I wanted to have,” he explains. By then, he’d certainly gone all guns blazing on agency life. Having grown up in North Germany, he then moved to Berlin and later on lived in New York and London and also spent some time in LA. He lived in New York in 2010 and again in 2017, and describes a “love affair” with the city. “I love the speed and the hustle, the talent you are surrounded with, it is truly a place where you can reach new levels as a creative but I can see how people get burned out over there,” says Gruhl. In London, he worked as a design director at R/GA with clients like Beats and Nike, as well as working as a freelance consultant for design studios, agencies and directly with clients. “Working directly with clients was especially insightful. In bigger agencies there are so many layers of people between you and the client, it’s quickly like playing telephone,” he says. “On the other side, if you sit in the same room as your client you learn what drives them and you hear about their business or product challenges. It makes it way easier to find the right strategy and visual direction for them.” Gruhl originally studied digital media, “which was something like media art, so more like digital installations, interfaces for futuristic devices, that kinda stuff,” he says. As part of his uni course, he took a semester abroad in New Zealand, which is where he got into “more classic graphic design,” and his own studio’s output today is testament to his interest in both that side of the design world and the more conceptual approach he’d learned from his art background. As a kid in the 90s, his first inkling of a passion for visual culture was in his love of graffiti. “It was everything to me when I was younger,” he says. “It was so interesting to see how friends and other crews developed and seeing styles from different cultures in magazines. “Back then I didn’t really know typography or colour theory, we just kinda had to figure it out by ourselves. A book about color theory would have saved me a lot of time though.” Later on, he began to draw inspiration from the likes of Storm Thorgerson and Neville Brody, as well as Günther Kieser’s jazz posters and his “physical approach to graphic design.” Such influences and many more merge in Studio Gruhl’s approach to graphic design and identity creation, which are described as being built on cross-disciplinary thinking and aiming to “always challenge the status quo.” One of the best bits for Gruhl about now running his own studio is collaborating with other creatives. “It’s always exciting to see it grow and the possibilities of what it can become are endless,” he says. “Every project or new hire can have an influence and open new doors and I think that’s very thrilling and keeps it fluid.” For us, one of the standout projects is the work for House of Reptile, a record label based in Peckham, south London. Gruhl had worked with the label founder in the past, before House of Reptile came into being. “He and I both come from different countries but grew up with electronic music so talking with him about concepts, or emotions in the music was very aligned and it created a lot of trust,” says Gruhl. The first EP they worked on together was based on an artwork created by hand-setting 13,500 beads. “We were looking for a way to mirror his experience of creating a label, reflecting this tedious process of creating something step by step from nothing,” he adds. It’s a perfect example of the conceptual standpoint from which Studio Gruhl projects begin. Another is a series of labels for a vineyard, which were based around the idea of making people feel a connection to nature and the site’s heritage. In the end, the vineyard’s actual soil was used on the bottle labels, a result which began as the designers questioning the possibilities of the label’s form. For Gruhl, the design process “always has to start with the ‘why’,” he says, “it helps you think deeper and find solutions which are not obvious but in the end it’s truly creating meaning if you can solve it. “One of the most beautiful things about design is how you can always learn something new. You are never done, there is always something you don’t know. This interest in new things really drives our work.” Printing via People of Print https://ift.tt/2DhgcW7 September 28, 2021 at 04:55AM USPS recognizes industry leaders with Next Generation Campaign Awards https://ift.tt/3COysV9 WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service recognized industry leaders and stakeholders during the National Postal Forum 2021 Virtual Event held this week. Printing via USPS News https://ift.tt/2hH9aDC September 27, 2021 at 09:56AM
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BASF Opens New 3D Printing Center in Detroit https://ift.tt/3zGdQwd The world’s largest chemical company, BASF, is growing rapidly within the 3D printing industry through its Forward AM brand. After cutting the ribbon on an Additive Manufacturing Technical Center in Shanghai, China in August 2021, the conglomerate has already established Additive Manufacturing (AM) Applications Technology Center (ATC) in Detroit, Michigan in cooperation with Michigan State University (MSU). While the Shanghai facility will services customers in the Asia-Pacific region, the new ATC in Detroit will act as the company’s North American hub. With such services as predictive modeling, the center will combine Forward AM’s range of 3D printing materials with MSU’s technical expertise to support 3D printing related developments in the region. The ATC is stocked with over 20 3D printers, including selective laser sintering, photopolymer 3D printing, fused filament fabrication systems. Located in the industrial Corktown district of the city, the center is not far from “top” Detroit businesses and multiple BASF customers. “With this step we are significantly strengthening our offerings in North America. By collaborating with Michigan State University, we create a unique combination of science and industry expertise – ideal conditions to drive innovation in Additive Manufacturing together with our customers,” says François Minec, Managing Director BASF 3D Printing Solutions.
In addition to opening the new facility, BASF has made an investment in the SuRF space, meant to aid in the chemical giant’s AM strategy and desire to develop “more sustainable industrial solutions”. Together with MSU, the company aims to blend education and industry to further contribute to the industrialization of 3D printing in the Americas. BASF is not the only company to launch these technology centers, which are not only prevalent within 3D printing but in industry as a whole. Educational institutions often rely on corporate partners to fund research and development labs meant to aid industrial partners, often in the regional vicinity. For a more novel technology, like AM, this will certainly facilitate wider adoption as customers learn more about it and how to integrate it into their existing operations. Two centers in two months, however, is just another signal of BASF’s rapid growth in the 3D printing space. Fossil fuel companies have been looking to convert their businesses away from energy and toward materials as the global economy makes its slow shift to renewable energy. As a chemical giant, BASF is a demonstrator of the direction things are headed, as it invests in advanced manufacturing that is heavily reliant on plastics. In addition to these two centers, BASF now owns one 3D printing service, Sculpteo, has partnered with another, Shapeways, and invested in yet another, Materialise. It has also spun out a firm dedicated to 3D printing spare parts, which has long been considered a prime market for 3D printing disruption and now has the largest chemical conglomerate putting weight into it. Surely we’ll see more 3D printing centers opened by BASF in the near future, but I’m sure there’s much more than that planned. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com September 27, 2021 at 09:06AM 3D Printed Touch Sensors Yield Feeling Future for Cybernetics https://ift.tt/39JWAMd Around the middle of the twentieth century, America’s electronic communications infrastructure started to centralize around two newly-forming sciences — cybernetics and information theory — that are still fundamental to everything we now find commonplace in our daily lives. ‘Cybernetics’ is a term typically most closely associated with MIT professor Norbert Wiener (1894-1964), “one of the first to theorize that intelligent behavior is the result of feedback mechanisms”. Now, the latest MIT project to follow in Wiener’s footsteps may have its greatest long-term implications for a field that was also amongst the first to captivate the minds of the earliest cyberneticians (including Wiener): human prostheses. Combining 3D printing with metamaterials — plastic and/or metal composites that are modified to “possess properties that don’t naturally occur…[enabling] them to have high specificity for a particular function” — a team of researchers at MIT has developed a software program called MetaSense, designed to use additive manufacturing specifically for the production of devices that employ embedded electrodes in their functioning. In this case, the metamaterials are made from a grid of repeating cells designed within MetaSense. These flexible cells are then 3D printed with conductive and non-conductive filament, with the former material acting as the electrode. Then, when compressed, the cells can act as capacitive sensors for a number of applications.
So far, this technique has only been applied to objects like joysticks and door handles. But it’s the team’s hyperfocus on the concept of feedback that really gets one’s imagination going in the direction of this technology’s potential for redefining the industry of prosthetics. “Feedback” is a seemingly simple concept with disproportionately complex significance to basically everything in our surroundings at all times: essentially, feedback means using information about the effect something has on its environment to modify future output. For instance, when your car starts shifting to the left and you unconsciously move the steering wheel back to the right, that’s feedback. Feedback is pivotal to the team’s project in multiple ways. For one thing, the team is ingeniously using conductive shear cells, “flexible cells that have two opposing walls made from conductive filament and two walls made from nonconductive filament”, in objects like joysticks, to test not only the destructive impact made by the user’s sheer force, but also taking rotation of movement and acceleration into account. Even more interesting, however, is the relevance of feedback to the production process: the feedback loop between the nonconductive and conductive parts being manufactured. The team envisions that eventually, MetaSense software would be used to synchronize, in a single production process of objects using embedded electrodes, the use of separate 3D printers or separate nozzles for nonconductive and conductive components. The more information that can be gathered as to how these two very different production processes impact on one another — which combinations work and which don’t — the more you can actually envision the fully-integrated manufacture of embedded electrode 3D printed objects. And I would imagine big investors are envisioning the same thing! If 3D printed prosthetics are showing results when it comes to animals, we can assume the landscape will only continue to evolve regarding humans in years to come. A research team a couple of years ago at Virginia Tech showed that 3D printing has enormous promise for creating much more personalized prosthetics, and even installed electrodes into the products after printing. Always seemingly at the forefront of groundbreaking developments in 3D printing, the U.S. military’s interest in using AM for prosthetics has for years been one of its biggest dogs in the fight. Pairing this with the connection to MIT, an institution that historically has not been unfriendly to military research dollars, we can safely assume that venture capitalists both indirectly and directly related to the Pentagon are thinking more and more all the time about how embedded electrodes can be integrated into 3D printed prosthetics. The most optimistic angle to all this involves how it could impact the end-user: “Regardless of the possible improvement in performance, the subjective experience of embodiment tends to increase when feedback is added,” notes a 2020 study. In other words, the more the technology improves, the more the quality-of-life may also improve for people who need prosthetics. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com September 27, 2021 at 08:36AM
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Design for Disruption: 3D Printing Design for Maintenance https://ift.tt/3ASld5q In the first part of this series, we looked at the example of a building facade, that may be comparatively expensive to 3D print, and placed it in the context of installation cost. We concluded that, if we optimize the design to reduce the installation cost, we could make a 3D printed facade much more price-competitive in the end. On the whole, I have the feeling that there are design methodologies out there that are not considered enough. If they were, they could really aid us in disrupting traditional industry more thoroughly. We have a technology that is generally more expensive but much more plastic and versatile. By designing for our strengths, we can really be more competitive against mass manufacturing verticals. In this series, I’ll look at some design approaches that are not acted upon often enough in my opinion but could yet do much for us. Let’s consider as an example a hopper, also called tilted window, dual-action window, or tilt-and-turn window. First popularized in Europe these windows are made of a deceptively simple extruded aluminum or polymer design. However, a surprisingly complex mechanism ensures that, by changing your handle direction, you can open the window entirely to one side or just tilt it forward to open the top to let some air in. This means that a burglar can’t enter your house, but you can crack the window open to ventilate. At the same time, you can open it normally, should you need to. This has two huge advantages over a window that would only be able to tilt: one, you could escape through it if you needed to evacuate your house in case of a fire, and, two, you can easily clean it. Through the magic of tilt-and-turn, you can turn the window inward and open it into your house. This means that you can very easily clean the inside and, more importantly, also safely clean the outside of your window from inside your house. This advantage is something that many older windows lack because they may only open outward. Not all tilt-and-turn windows open inward, but by opening sideways, they’re easier to clean than those that slide or don’t open fully. I love these windows because they are nice to use and also a great example of Design for Maintenance. Here, we have an innovation that obscures complexity to give a homeowner an advantage of quicker and safer maintenance. These windows found wide-scale adoption because of the tilting feature and increased insulation in terms of reduced noise and reduced heat loss in the home. They will not immediately be cheaper, but in the long run will become less expensive. With 3D printing, some mechanisms and design elements for these windows are being prototyped. We are seeing some small series use 3D printing in final products, as well. Our total part weight will never be a large proportion of something made of inexpensive aluminum profiles and glass. We can’t really deliver value in this application yet, outside of testing. But what if we want to install such a new window in a very old house with uneven walls and issues related to the general levelness of things? Then, we will have a problem fitting our straight, extruded aluminum profiles into highly variable holes for windows that old houses have. Unless, of course, we can deploy 3D printing to make unique end caps for these profiles so they can change the angles of the window sides. We can also 3D print frames that make it so that the windows can be flush with the cavity. So, now we can take a 3D printed form and solve problems for end customers. By making a standard product more plastic, we can get it to fit the needs of customers better. We could then also have a real design-for-installation optimization by making the windows faster to install, as well. This could be particularly useful for custom or non-standard window sizes, where 3D printing could play further roles in customizing the frames and installations. In the case of the window, will we really accrue a design-for-maintenance benefit? Probably not. But, what if, for example, we looked at how these windows were washed. And we could see that, during washing, water splashed down on the windowsill and accumulated there. It would leave stains and may harm the paint in time. We could design a custom splash guard under the window to ameliorate this. Or we could make a runoff guide that would channel rain and other water off the window in an optimal way for each and every window. We could even 3D print custom squeegee rails, handles, and bars. Why would we do this? If, for the lifetime of the building, an individual comes and washes it for 20 hours every week for 50 years, this cost will add up. Normally, we’d never take that individual into account really, but imagine we did. We could offer a custom squeegee rail size that would cover the entire window in one swoop. Or we could make the squeegee exactly the right proportions so that the washer can clean it in two, smooth movements, saving them considerable time. This really would add up across the 52,000 hours of total window washing time. We could customize the grip to make them feel less tired or make the bar exactly the right size to speed up their work. We could add bumps to the bosuns chair to help speed up the lowering of the platform or add little markers on every window so that the worker can easily tell where to stop their platform at what height. We could add in a small grip on each window sill so they could steady themselves and be quicker to start and work harder. We could add a little whistle to the window so that wind rushing by would make a noise that deters birds from sitting and pooping there. We could add in small parts that give off a lot of UV light to deter birds from flying into the windows. With 3D printing’s improvisational nature we can bring a lot of efficiency and improvements to maintenance situations in even the most common applications. Even when not taking inflation into account, we’re looking at $60 an hour, of over $3 million to wash the windows of the entire building. So, there is real scope for us to do something phenomenal with the very mundane. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com September 27, 2021 at 08:06AM
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SME Additive Manufacturing Community Awards at RAPID + TCT 2021 https://ift.tt/3D4Iguv At the recent RAPID + TCT 2021 event, in between interviewing companies, walking the show floor, and watching the keynote presentations, I also had the opportunity to attend the SME Additive Manufacturing Community Awards, presented by the SME Technical Community. The presentation encompassed the Digital Manufacturing Challenge Awards, the Aubin AM Case Study Award award, and the AM Industry Achievement Award, and were presented by Stacey DelVecchio, F.SWE, the President of StaceyD Consulting, and Kevin Ayers, AM Consultant with 3D Metal Konsulting. First up were the awards for the Digital Manufacturing Challenge, which calls on student designers to use their imaginations to come up with an innovative design that “exploits the geometric capabilities of direct digital manufacturing (DDM) to the fullest.” First, because RAPID was cancelled last year due to the pandemic, the 2020 challenge winners from Western Washington University were recognized for their project, “Economic Production of Helical Savonius Vertical Turbines for Natural Disaster Relief.” This year’s Digital Manufacturing Challenge was described as a call to inspire the next generation of AM professionals and engineers to use the many and varied digital manufacturing tools out there, including 3D printing and subtractive processes, to create things that can help strengthen the infrastructure in the face of disruptive events, such as COVID-19. Students were asked to consider how they can use the tools of DDM to improve security and sustainability, while also preserving health and well-being.
Teams were asked to demonstrate new and creative ways that digital manufacturing can add value in coming up with point-of-care solutions that feature rapid deployment of an end-to-end system, rather than just a single component. Entries were judged based on a number of criteria, including cost-benefit/value analysis of why AM was or was not used, utilization of DDM processes and materials, marketing and logistics/distribution, social, environmental, health, safety, and regulatory compliance, and more. First, the 2021 Honorable Mention team from UC San Diego was announced, with their project “Vacuum Flasks Designed for Cold Supply Chains with Additive Manufacturing.” Then, the 2021 Runner Up team, from Washington State University: Vancouver, was announced, with their project “Hybrid Face Mask / Face Shield Design.” We definitely saw a lot of 3D printed face masks and shields in 2020, thanks to the pandemic. The winner of the 2021 Digital Manufacturing Challenge was the team from the University of Waterloo, with their “Rapid Deployment of Patient-Specific Prosthesis Assemblies in Emergency Medicine” project. Moving on, the Aubin AM Case Study Award, which has been newly rebranded and updated, recognizes innovative use cases in AM adoption, be it unique technology adoption showcases in broad application areas, new technological advancements in AM materials and processes, or unique approaches to using AM for problem-solving. Submissions had to include a graphical abstract—one single image that represents the applicant’s innovation/showcase/solution—as well as a technical brief, the purpose of which is to is explain the details of the innovation or case study they’re submitting. The brief had to include a list of contributors, why the solution was disruptive and needed, how it compares to the existing state of the art case, an assessment demonstrating the quality of the solution, and personal reflections on the impact and relevance of the submission.
There were three finalist teams that came very close to winning the award, and the first had participants from the University of Toronto’s Radiation Oncology, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and Molli Surgical Inc., who created 3D printed custom applicators for treating skin cancer patients with brachytherapy. The second team, which developed a new way of 3D printing dynamic bead geometries using site-specific process parameter modifications through closed loop control, was mostly from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, along with participants from GKN Aerospace, Texas A&M University, and the University of Tennessee – Knoxville. The third team, a trio from the United States Naval Academy, designed and evaluated a 3D printed plastic scintillation detector. The winner of the 2021 Aubin AM Case Study Award was a team that worked on “Rapid Large Scale Additive Manufacturing of Full-scale RS-25 Engine Nozzle Liner.” Participants were from DM3D Technology, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA Ames Research Center, and the National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence at Auburn University. DM3D Technology’s president, Bhaskar Dutta, and Farhad Ghadamli, the company’s Lead Additive Manufacturing Engineer, came on the stage to talk about the team’s 3D printed nozzle liner. As Dutta explained, the team used a multi-nozzle system to print the nozzle liner, and doubled the throughput of the process thanks to two nozzle heads. JBK-75 stainless steel was used to fabricate the piece, which Dutta said is “really tough to print” but great for aerospace applications. The engine nozzle liner was printed bell-down for less distortion, and the Hexagon StereoScan neo optical 3D scanner was used to take structured light scans, and then the data was overlaid on the CAD file. The final product took between 10 and 11 weeks to print, and weighs in at 4,000 lbs, with a height of 111″.
Finally, it was time to present the 2021 AM Industry Achievement Award, which was established in 2008 by SME’s Additive Manufacturing Community to recognize a company, team, or individual for “outstanding accomplishments” that have significantly impacted the AM industry, or any industry through the use of AM.
As with the Digital Manufacturing Challenge, the 2020 winners were recognized first: Jonathan M. Morris, MD, Mayo Clinic; Anthony Atala, MD, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine; and Peter Liacouras, PhD, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Dr. Morris and Dr. Liacouras came onstage to be honored, but Dr. Atala was unfortunately not there. Then it was time to announce this year’s winner, an industry veteran who has been working in additive manufacturing since 1989. David K. Leigh, PhD, joined 3D Systems as its Chief Technology Officer for Additive Manufacturing just this summer; he was most recently the CTO at EOS, and has also held executive positions at Vulcan Labs, Stratasys, 3DSIM, Advanced Laser Materials, and other companies as well.
Dr. Leigh holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, a Master of Science in Engineering, and a Doctorate in Materials Science and Engineering, all from the University of Texas at Austin, which is a major AM research university.
Dr. Leigh shared some important lessons he’s picked up in his career from various colleagues. He said that in order to make a difference, you need to:
I was able to sit down with Dr. Leigh the next day to discuss 3D Systems, why he chose it, and learn a little more about the company’s acquisition of Oqton, so stay tuned for that, and more of my coverage from the RAPID + TCT 2021 show floor. 3DPrint.com congratulates all who were recognized at this year’s SME Additive Manufacturing Community Awards! Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com September 27, 2021 at 07:36AM
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Lattice 3D Printing Software Now Driven by $1M in Pre-Seed Funding https://ift.tt/3m2XYiH General Lattice, a Chicago-based startup that develops software for designing optimal lattice structures that can be fabricated via 3D printing, has secured $1 million in pre-seed capital led by AP Ventures, the strategic investment arm of engineering service provider All Points Logistics and a backer of pioneering technologies that aim to solve global challenges. The startup plans to use the new capital to bolster several initiatives related to exploring and integrating advanced lattice geometries. Notably, the funding will allow General Lattice to invest resources into a recently secured research and development contract with the U.S. Army’s Development Command Soldier Center (DEVCOM-SC) to make lattices for the military division’s combat helmet. Additionally, a portion of the new capital will be dedicated to expanding the startup’s commercial and governmental customer base in the United States and developing parametric design tools to simplify lattice generation processes. According to General Lattice CEO Nick Florek, the support of All Points Logistics will “allow us to create an environment for passionate innovators in the computational design and digital manufacturing industry.” Florek also highlighted that the company’s twenty years of experience in deploying optimized practices to government projects and commercial companies would be important for General Lattice in the future. All Points Logistics is a leading engineering, software development, and technology firm that provides high-value services and solutions to various government contract vehicles, including NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and other government customers and commercial companies. Headquartered in Merritt Island, Florida, All Points has successfully supported several Lockheed Martin space projects since 2013 and even received awards for outstanding work on the Artemis program and small business support on NASA’s Orion program. In addition, it has been engaged in several high-profile space projects, like the Human Landing System proposal during the fall of 2020, NASA space probe Lucy, and NASA asteroid-study and sample-return mission OSIRIS-REx. General Lattice stated that the funds raised come at an ideal time when the startup is planning on scaling to meet strong demand from a “burgeoning AM industry.” Furthermore, having identified lattice architectures as an indispensable element for success in additive applications, it views this early-stage capital as an opportunity to demonstrate the unique capabilities of lattice structures further and facilitate the widespread adoption of AM technology. Founded in 2018, General Lattice began by helping clients design, prototype, and manufacture successful additive manufacturing (AM) applications. The startup developed unique design methodologies and workflows by working through each part of the product development process. Today, the company has developed a reputation for leveraging the flexibility of 3D printing, enabling customers to create personalized product offerings by offering workflow automation tools and custom software development services that take out the human labor in complex design scenarios. A few months after starting the company, co-founders Nick Florek, Alex Rhoades, and Marek Moffett established a partnership with 3D printing unicorn Carbon, becoming part of the firm’s 70-plus startup partnership ecosystem. In Fall 2020, General Lattice introduced a next-generation AM design toolkit, the GL Studio, and became immersed in several exciting projects with leading businesses. For example, with 3D printer manufacturer Boston Micro Fabrication (BMF), the duo used BMF’s innovative 3D micro-fabrication equipment based on Projection Micro Stereolithography (PµSL) technology to create lattice structures and refocus the manufacturing to microscale parts, opening up new possibilities and applications. General Lattices also recently built a plug-in GL Software for McNeel‘s Rhino 3D CAD modeling software explicitly designed for AM and providing users intuitive latticing tools that make innovating with AM easy while delivering superior control and accuracy. Additionally, through its recently secured contract with DEVCOM-SC, General Lattice plans to work with All Points Logistics and 3D print service GoProto to make lattices for the military division’s combat helmet. The firm has already chosen 3D printers, materials, and desired performance characteristics to produce the helmet’s suspension system and impact absorption. General Lattice will test 3D printed lattices to determine the accuracy of the firm’s predictive modeling software, allowing DEVCOM-SC to use the firm’s predictive toolset to explore lattice padding profiles for various uses. General Lattice had already explored helmet designs and head protection through prototypes to demonstrate its ability to create tunable headwear protection by enabling actual performance benefits and one-to-one customization. It took a similar approach on a concept shoe developed virtually with Belgium service bureau Ziggzagg, software development startup ELSE Tech (ATOMLab Milan), and customized shoe fashion manufacturer OneFID GmbH. On a separate project, showcased at last week’s RAPID + TCT 2021 show in Chicago, General Lattice worked with GoProto to demonstrate how AM users can reduce cost and lead time for production rubber parts by creating 3d printed TPA elastomer components for a radio-controlled (RC) car printed on HP machines and then vapor smoothed on GoProto’s AMT PostPro 3D. Saving costs and making better products is the objective for General Lattice and what it’s working toward with its software; the $1 million pre-seed funding will undoubtedly help the company expand and engage in new partnerships with strategic players in the AM industry. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com September 27, 2021 at 07:06AM
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BuildBee: All-in-One 3D Printing Software https://ift.tt/3ofNXkT When desktop 3D printing began, slicer software was simple enough that it was more or less limited to a single task: cutting your 3D model into layers and converting that information into a toolpath that could be read by a 3D printer. Now, the technology has progressed to such a degree that there are many varieties of this previously simple tool, with users able to choose one that has all of the necessary features for their applications. Take BuildBee, for instance. As a cloud-based slicer, it instantly offers an advantage over purely desktop options in that users can access saved files anywhere in the world at any time. You can use the Windows/Mac desktop app or a CloudDock (Raspberry Pi) to connect your printer, and use either a browser or the mobile app from the Google Play Store to use the platform securely from anywhere. The ability to use BuildBee in the cloud and on a desktop demonstrates the overall flexible nature of the software. Aimed at all user levels, from hobbyists to businesses, the slicer has a variety of features that cater to both newer users and the more advanced. So, while it’s possible to choose an object from a library and simply prepare a model for 3D printing on your phone, you can also perform model analysis to determine printability and conduct auto-repair before running a job. Features range from the more basic, such as resizing and rotating a model, to more advanced combining and splitting (particularly useful for 3D printing large objects in segments), as well as auto-arranging on the build plate. Users can even upload SVGs or image files to create 3D printed lithophanes. A built-in height calibration wizard prints test lines to get a sense for Z-offset calibration. And while newer users can begin with a library of 3D models to print, as well as tutorials to guide them, experts can upload custom gCode to print using experimental settings. While slicers such as Cura will have material profiles for specific printers, BuildBee is the first that I’ve seen that has developed in-house presets for specific model types. This includes miniatures and mechanical parts, among others. In turn, the usability is greatly increased for both novices and experts, with the latter group able to start with a preset and modify where necessary. BuildBee offers a variety of pricing plans, depending on the user type. A Free Starter plan allows for one printer and one user to store up to 20 models in their account. For $6US monthly, with a free 30-day trial, the Pro plan expands to five printers and 100 models for one user, as well as a personal queue and advanced model features. The slicer supports a wide range of systems, such as Prusa, Creality, MakerBot, etc. Models can be designed in Tinkercad, Fusion360, or MakeCode and saved directly to one’s BuildBee account. All of this can be demoed easily by visiting the BuildBee website, where an embedded version of the software is hosted. There, you can see just how easy the tool is to use and how absolutely clean the interface is. This is no easy feat, given the cloud connection. Where one might expect a great deal of choppiness, you can find a very smooth user experience. Honestly, BuildBee in the cloud runs more seamlessly than my desktop Microsoft Word, an interesting fact given that the slicer can be used to prep complex 3D files while my word processing software is meant only to type letters on an empty page. Though BuildBee is comparatively new in the world of slicers, but it packs a punch in terms of usability and feature richness. The team behind it has been in the industry for some time, having established 3D printer distributor Me3D in Australia previously, and it shows in the professionalism of the platform. The startup already has over 25,000 users globally and plans to continue developing new features, with the software evolving alongside customer needs. Seeing what BuildBee has created so far, I’m excited to learn what comes next from the company. For more information visit BuildBee.com. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com September 27, 2021 at 06:42AM
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Inki https://ift.tt/3ALu0G9 We can’t really think of many records that can accurately be described as “an album, book and feminist critique” – and which also take the form of an augemented-reality app. We also can’t think of too many musicians that are truly competent in creating all those aspects while also doing their own graphic design, and taking care of that element with such a flair for typography and wonky minimalism. Enter Inki, the multidisciplinary Icelandic artist who’s proven to be the ultimate 21st century Renaissance woman. Known to her parents and the postman as Ingibjörg Friðriksdóttir, Inki’s work is all somehow connected to music, but varies from installations to self-playable instruments, acoustic and electronic compositions, and multimedia scores for film, podcasts, radio, and more. Her album, Quite The Situation, was released in May this year as that aforementioned combiation of LP, book and “feminist historical critique”, elements that were all brought togerther by an AR app called Artivive and a Spotify-connected NFC chip (NFC stands for near-field communication, and allows phones, tablets, laptops, and other devices to share data with other NFC-equipped devices within a range of four inches). “I feel each medium and the technology aspects of this piece add a new perspective. I’m so tuned into being a composer that I think that practice has a lot of effect on how I go about creating,” says Inki. “Composing is all about events on a timeline, so even the book work that usually would be seen as static object, has transformed into something that lives, breathes and interacts with whoever picks it up.” Further proving her deftness across multiple media, Inki also realised the album project as an installation for Reykjavik Arts Festival in mid-June. This piece saw the book become a piece of music, which went on to become “a wordless conversation” in which sound, text, video and other visuals merged to form an experience that aimed to be both humorous and thought-provoking. Across all its various formats, Quite The Situation examines history and uncovers its inherent misogynies. Its name is taken from the historical term ‘The Situation’, which described the US and UK occupation of Reykjavík during World War Two. Taking this point in time as a starting point, Quite The Situation expands into an examination of the female experience today, focused around the central question “How will we see the current conversation about female sexuality 80 years from now?” The book, like the album, uses a striking red cover with debossed type and an aesthetic that hints at both historical significance in its wide-spaced lettering and cloth-like materials but also a very contemporary urgency with its minimalism and embedded tech. The book connects to the Artivive app to bring it to life: when the phone is held over its first page, the album starts playing to accompany the introductory interview with Madame Vígdís Finnbogadóttir, the world’s first democratically elected female president. As viewers go further through the book, the sentences flow across its pages thanks to the accompanying AR capacity. Archival material appears as the album moves through its nine instrumental tracks. This presents an interesting dichotomy for those invested in the physical, designed products that accompany music releases as much as they are in the sounds: the format of the book means it can’t be ‘read’ from start to finish, but becomes linear when augmented digitally. The book’s design uses typography as illustrations and graphic devices, with letterforms often appearing as vast forms that arc over double page spreads, as well as in more conventional text chunks. A rather formal, yet contemporary-looking serif font is set in black against white pages, making for a striking look with the red covers. The text material displayed in the book and by the Artivive app (in both English and Icelandic) is comprised of sentences from newspaper articles and public letters written by Icelanders between 1940 – 1945 during World War Two about Icelandic women‘s relationship with US/UK soldiers. During this time 30,000 US and British soldiers were stationed on the Nordic island to act as a northerly outpost against invasion by the Nazis, almost doubling the local population of Reykjavík to 68,000. There was much gossip, to put it mildly – more accurately, judgement and moral outrage – about the relationships that naturally emerged between locals and the English and American soldiers that were stationed there. The names of the album tracks are all taken from sentences from these articles. “This book is not a book. This book is a musical composition,” says Inki. “It is designed like a composer writes music. The piece is quiet at first but as more voices start to play it becomes louder. It plays a familiar tune that has sounded through centuries and questions our current conversation about female sexuality.” She adds, “It‘s a conversation about the present, using the language of the past.” Printing via People of Print https://ift.tt/2DhgcW7 September 27, 2021 at 04:27AM |
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