3D PRINTED BUILDINGS

                    Design and construction of buildings with 3D printers.(part I)

In the beginning, designing of the buildings was based on empirical knowledge about the materials, designing and construction processes. After the industrial revolution, there was a big change in the way the world thinks about the quality of the materials and the way we design buildings based on proven techniques and standards. For example concrete should be produced based on policies and instructions of numerous organizations from each country. But one more revolution is just around the corner. Based on digital technologies, we are now starting to experiment with what we call additive manufacturing. This technique allows us to merge craft and industry. In Italy, robotics engineer Enrico Dini has been experimenting with a large scale 3D printer. In collaboration with architectural firms he is trying to construct small structures from scratch. The 3D printer is located in a warehouse near Pisa, Italy. The materials that he uses are sand and magesium oxide and by mixing them with chlorine it produced a chemical reaction of synthetic sand stone. So by adding layers of this product he creates the main structure of the building. First, Dini produced the whole structure at once but he realized it was better to create separate parts and then assemble them together. But with the existing technology the resistance of the materials is limited. So Dini came up with a solution. He used two 3D printers working side by side inside a temporary structure. After creating the hollow parts then filled them with reinforced concrete in order to augment their ability to resist different kind of loads.

Right now we are just in the beginning of this fascination application of 3D printers. But stay tuned as we explore new techniques of designing and constructing buildings.

Hey everybody!

If you are still a little confused with what 3D printing is, here is a very helpful video with a simple explanation.

Are you tired of buying jewlery??

Try designing your own rings and then 3Dprint it!

3D Printers for Visually Impaired Children

After explaining how a 3D printer works, we are going to show you a very nice application of this new technology.

This was presented at  The Special Needs Education School for the Visually Impaired in Japan.  Yahoo got together with the creative agency Hakuhodo Kettle Tokyo to create a new machine that helps blind kinds search for objects on the internet. 

As you will be able to see on the video, the kids will tell the machine what they want to see and the machine will 3D print it for them so they can feel it with their hands and create a picture of whatever they asked for in their heads.

Initiatives like this one make 3D printing  technology have a lot of potential in the medium-long run. 

                     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQx6YeoKVwU

                        

How 3D Printers Work

3D printing was known as stereolithography, a process invented in 1986 by Chuck Hull of 3D Systems. Variations of this process are still used. It begins, like all 3D printing, with software that takes a series of digital slices through a computer model of an object. The shape of each slice is used selectively to harden a layer of light-sensitive liquid, usually with ultraviolet light, to form the required shape. After each layer has been made, the build tray lowers by a fraction, another layer of liquid is added and the process is repeated until the object is complete.
Many other approaches have since been developed. Laser-sintering involves zapping layers of powdered plastic or metal with a laser to harden the powder in some places, but not others. Other machines use an electron beam in a similar way. An alternative process melts a metallic powder as it is deposited. This can be used to repair worn parts, such as turbine blades. Some machines operate a bit like 2D inkjet printers, jetting light-sensitive liquid materials to form layers and then hardening them. Some machines can print a dozen different materials in a single pass of the print head. 
One of the most popular techniques is fussed deposition modeling (FDM), which is akin to a computer-controlled glue gun (pictured below). A heated nozzle extrudes a filament of thermoplastic, which sets as it cools. Multiple heads can extrude different colors  FDM is the mechanism used in many of the small 3D printers used by hobbyists, some of which now cost less than $ 1,000. More capable 3D printers cost tens of thousands of dollars, ad big industrials systems, like the laser-sintering machines capable of printing aerospace parts in titanium, cost as much as $1M.

Introduction

Welcome to the next generation of printing! 

We know many of you may have heard about 3-D printing but do not fully understand its limitless capabilities. In this blog we will try to give you a brief background and keep you updated on any news related with 3-D printing technologies.

So what is 3-D Printing?

The evolution of 3-D printers is currently growing rapidly. The basic idea is that you can print out anything that you can create on your computer. Essentially you can bring 3-D objects to life. As of now 3-D printing is very costly and the main materials used at the moment are different types of polymers, plastics and alloys.