3D Figurines

3D Custom Figurine

TEMU, source of endless amusement, has done it again. You send them a picture of someone and they will 3D print a figurine based on that photo for like $15. The figure is about six inches tall.

Make-A-Clock

Clock

Adaptive Curmudgeon posts a fine story about 3D printing a clock.

3D Printing Steel

3D Printed Replacement Part Keeps Critical Waterway Open | The Cool Parts Show
AM Media | The Cool Parts Show

I put up a post about 3D Printing of Metal back when they were first getting started with this ten years ago.  They used a different technique, using a laser to melt powdered metal. There are a number of other posts about 3D printing here. I'm surprised Lincoln Electric is involved in this, but I guess I shouldn't be.

Mr. Wink's Mechanical Hand

Adam Savage Shocked by This Practical Effects Prop From Hellboy!
Adam Savage's Tested

YouTube blurb:

Special effects and animatronics designer Mark Setrakian stuns Adam with the original practical effects prop for Mr. Wink's mechanical hand from Hellboy II: The Golden Army! Not only does this massive prop actually function with geared finger joins and a retracting chain, Mark and the team at Spectral Motion fabricated it almost twenty years ago with a combination of hand sculpting and early 3D printing. And it still works!

 And here's the fight scene where this prop got used:

Hellboy vs Mr. Wink - Troll Market Battle - Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008) Movie Clip HD
Best Clips

3D Print Farm

Three hundred 3D printers in one room: A quick look to our printing farm
Prusa 3D

A YouTube Short got me started. From the Prusa webpage:

If there ever is a robot uprising, it will start on our print farm. The new farm has 300 printers. The planned capacity is to have 500 printers in summer 2018. The printer composition is a mix of Original Prusa I3 MK3 printers and MK2S with the addition of magnetic bed with removable steel sheet plates. Using them saves a ton of time during the print removal for the 15 workers working here. The farm operates 24/7.

All of the printed parts are made from PETG except for the fan-nozzle shroud, which is made from ABS to withstand higher temperatures. We use 2 kg spools to decrease the frequency of filament spool changes. Each printer can print a whole set of plastic parts for MK3 in 27 hours. Furthermore, the farm consumes about 3 tons of filament every month. With the maximum farm capacity, it will consume one ton of filament each week. Crazy!

When you take a look at our huge 3D printing farm you might ask yourself, “Wouldn’t it be better to just use injection molding?” Well, in some cases, it might. Even though a single mold can cost tens of thousands of dollars, it could be more effective. However, using 3D printing gives us one huge advantage – thanks to 24/7 heavy load we can keep innovating and upgrading our printers as we have to resolve every found issue. And in that case, injection molding is no longer a better solution. A 3D printer can also create much more complex parts than injection molding. And our workflow is also way simpler. As soon as we come up with a part improvement, we just test it, upload new gcode to the print farm and within hours we start shipping improved printers to our customers. Basically, we are leveraging one of the biggest advantages of 3D printing to the maximum.

Note that the video is six years old. They now have 600 printers busy printing parts for even more Prusa 3D printers.

 

Anti-Bike

World's First SCREW-BIKE
James Burton

This is kind of amazing. Amazing that it works, amazing that someone would expend the effort to build this thing. All that 3-D printing must have taken thousands of hours. And all that effort went into building a machine whose sole purpose is to demonstrate that it could be done. Got to give him credit that he was able to make it all work.

3D Printed Sundial

3D Printed Sundial
Shirahaha

3D Metal Printing

Radical Defense M249FVS: Laser Sintering Meets Lewis Gun
Forgotten Weapons

Ian McCollum gives us a real world example of 3D Metal Printing as opposed to people making toys and geegaws just to show off what their 3D printer can do:

One of the problems with using suppressors on machine guns is that suppressors or generally much more susceptible to heat buildup than the guns themselves. In 2019, US SOCOM put out a request for a suppressor that could handle a 600 round belt dump on an M240 machine gun. Radical Defense responded by developing a suppressor specifically designed for use with automatic fir, both in its materials and its mechanical design.

Mechanically, they took the concept of the Lewis Gun’s forced-air cooling and integrated it into their suppressor. The outside of the baffle stack is surrounded by a series of hollow channels running the length of the can. Muzzle blast from firing pulls cool outside air through these channels from back to front, cooling the unit. Interestingly, once the can hits about 450 degrees F, the temperature differential between inside and outside will actually generate this forced-air effect without any firing – dramatically increasing the can’s rate of cool-down. In testing, they found that a 600-round burst will heat the can (a 7.62mm version on an M240, specifically) up to 1565F, but 10 minutes later it will have dropped to 484F. After an additional 20 minutes, the can was down to ambient temperature.

From a materials standpoint, a very heat-resistant alloy was chosen. It is more than 50% nickel, with a significant portion of cobalt. This allows the can to withstand those extremely high temperatures generated by sustained fire. Manufacturing is done via laser sintering, allowing all the complex geometry of the suppressor baffles and cooling channels to be formed without the insanely complex machining fixtures and/or welding that would be required by traditional manufacturing processes. This is a very cool example of 3D printing technology being used to produce geometries that would be unfeasible just a few years ago.

The original design was in 7.62mm, for the M240. What I have in this video is the 5.56mm version, just the same thing scaled down for the M249. A version for the 12.7mm M2 is also in the works. The downsides to its capabilities are significant cost and weight (this 5.56mm version weighs 2lb 7oz). However, Radical is already developing a significantly lightened second generation of both sizes.

Thanks to Radical Defense for the loan of this example for filming! I saw them at SHOT Show and was really taken by the combination of century-old design concepts and totally cutting-edge manufacturing processes.

SOCOM is Special Operations Command

SHOT Show is the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show

Here's a primer on how this 3D Metal Printing works:

Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) Technology
Solid Concepts
3D Printing is slow, it will take hours and perhaps even days to print large part. On the other hand, all you need is the big 3D printer. No machine tools, no welding, cutting or forging required. The alloy they are using can withstand very high temperatures. 1500 degrees Fahrenheit is seriously hot. And it's expensive. On the other hand, I'm not sure you could even build this device using any other technique.

Update December 2024 replaced missing video.

3D Print Your Own Car

JellyBean3D personal transport vehicle

Okay, so it barely meets the minimum requirements for a car. Still looks like it could be useful in a village. Makezine has the story.

JellyBean3D car, sliced and diced

When I first looked at it I figured you would need a very large 3D printer to make the pieces, but no, the designer, Gonzalo P. Chomon, cut the large pieces into smaller ones that could be printed on your average home 3D printer. Then the car is assembled by "fusing together lots of small parts using dichloromethane". Wait, what? Dichloro- what? That sounds just a little ominous.

Dichloromethane is an organic solvent and it is ominous if you live in California where every chemical in the world is known to cause cancer. On the other hand, Google tells us:

The main uses of dichloromethane, a halogenated organic solvent, are as a solvent in paint removers, degreasing fluids, aerosol propellants and hair lacquers. It is also used in shoe manufacturing.

and apparently as 'glue' for sticking plastic parts together. Probably want to do that in a well ventilated area, like outside. The stuff will eat your brain.

It takes about 500 hours to print all the pieces, and since you are not always going to be Johnny-on-the-spot when it comes time to collect the finished part and start the next one, it could easily take twice that, which basically means it could easily take you six weeks to print everything. Well, you don't have anything else to do since you are confined to your cell, so get cracking.

German Engineering Insanity

3D Printed Pistons Are Changing the Game
Donut Media

I don't like Porsche cars. I don't know why. Most of the world seems to love them. Near as I can tell it's the snob appeal, though why it only seems to apply to Porsche I can't tell you. Whatever, the engineers are obviously very good.

3-D printing has been around for a while and has been getting better and better. This might be the first (or second) time I've come across 3-D printed metal parts that were actually used in a high stress application.

Right now this is a cute trick to make fancy parts for fancy cars, but is it ever going to be a real thing with mass applications? A while back I would have said no, but then I found out about Invisalign braces.

3D Printing Metal Parts

Turbo Manifold 3D Printed from Inconel Powder
PapadakisRacing

This video packs a whole bunch of sophisticated high technology into this short story. Parts of the video sound like an ad for SolidWorks. That's okay, you're going to need some kind of CAD software if you want to attempt any kind of 3D printing. SolidWorks is one of the more sophisticated packages. Carries a pretty sophisticated price tag as well. There's also the FARO digitizer that I ran into last month. Then there's the 3D printer. The last time I ran into a 3D printer that printed metal, they were using a different technique. This method looks like it should work better, but you have to wait until it's done to see if it really delivered what you want. Minor screwups can result in a useless print, and since the printing process is slow, this can mean delays in getting what you want.

I kind of imagined that 3D printing would be useful for resurrecting old machines that you could no longer get parts for, but as this video shows, it takes a lot of very expensive equipment to make these parts. You could no doubt hire people who have these expensive machines to make a water pump for your antique Goober-Snorter, but it's still going to cost you a pretty penny. Building new stuff that couldn't have been built before is a more likely application.

Walking Arm Trebuchet

3-D Printed Miniature Walking Arm Trebuchet
Came across an article about making a Walking Arm Trebuchet. It had lots of pictures but no video of how it worked, so I went looking for one. This one shows how it works pretty clearly.

Weapon of the Year

Bernie Solo and his Zombie Apocalypse Weapon Prop

Paging through Feedly and this image pops up. What the heck is that thing? It looks cool. And dangerous. Follow the link and I find this video:


ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE WEAPON CHALLENGE PROP // HOME DEFENSE // CORDLESS TOOL // HARBOR FREIGHT POWERED !
So it's not a real weapon, at least not any more than zombies are. Yes, it is horribly dangerous. You wouldn't want to leave it where, well, anybody could get a hold of it. The thing is liable to kill anyone who touches it.

The techniques he uses to make it are the interesting part. He has created this machine out of an amalgamation of tools and fittings commonly available at your local retail store  and a bunch of custom made parts that are created using digital technology. The metal parts are all cut out of sheet steel by a laser cutter house, and all the plastic parts are made using 3D-printing.

I do wonder how much time this project consumed.

Travel

3-D Printed Object with supports

Marc made a thing using a 3-D printer. It looked kind of like a cross between a glass cathedral and a radio transmitting tower. It was roughly triangular, about 4" x 4" x 6". Most of it was composed of whisker thin struts about a centimeter long. I'm looking at this thing and I'm wonder what kind of drugs he was taking that enabled him to design such a complex and elaborate structure, whereupon he points out that all of the spindly stuff is just an artifact of the printing process that will be trimmed off. The part he was intent on was a roughly rectangular piece about a quarter of an inch thick. It was set at an angle because that was the only way it would fit within the printer's working area.

This morning someone on Quora asked if you make an electric motor using a 3-D printer. As far as I know you can't, at least not yet. We have printers that print plastic and we have printers that print metal, but none that will do both. Also printing plastic can achieve much better results than printing metal. I surface of the part Marc printed was perfectly smooth to the touch and it was printed on an angle. If it was printed flat I could see that any printer could make a smooth surface, but for it to be this smooth at an angle, the resolution must be pretty dang high, better than one-thousandth of an inch. The resolution of one metal printer I've heard of is probably somewhere on the order of a tenth of an inch.

All of which reminds me of a science fiction story I read a long time ago about Joe's Garage where they repaired spaceships. It was a going concern. Customers brought in their broken rockets and space tugs and Joe's gang would fit new rocket motors or replace the fuel tanks or clean the air filters, and everything went as smoothly as any kind of repair operation ever does. Until some aliens showed up with a broken spaceship they wanted fixed. This would not normally be a problem, aliens showed up with their weird alien ships ever once in a while and Joe's gang would hammer out some kind of fix.

This ship however was a different kettle of fish. The started looking at it and quickly realized that it a couple of orders of magnitude more sophisticated than anything they are worked on before. In fact, the ship wasn't built in the conventional sense, the whole thing was printed on the molecular level. Any repairs they did would have to done using the same technique, but nobody at Joe's, and nobody they knew, knew how to do this. So they chloroformed the aliens and scanned their brains to find out how to do this. Once they had the information they built their own molecular printer and fixed the ship. The aliens weren't too happy about being chloroformed and having their brains scanned, but they were happy that their ship was fixed.

So now I'm thinking about space travel and how if you have a ship suitable for long distance travel, you really don't want to be bringing down to the ground. That just complicates the situation. It's better to use a craft specifically designed for the purpose to get off a planet and up into orbit, or from orbit to the ground. But what we really want is a space elevator. Haven't heard much lately, but I expect that eventually some whiz kid will come up a material that is strong enough to take the load.

The problem with having a tether out in space is that it is going to subject to strikes by micrometeorites, which means the tether is liable to break. I can see two ways of dealing with this problem. One is to run repair crew up and down the tether on a regular basis, patching all the holes made by micrometeorites, and the other would be to replace the tether on a regular basis. It kind of depends on the available technology.  Patching something on the molecular level would be a bit of a trick, kind of like what Joe's crew did with the alien spaceship. Replacing the tether on a regular basis might be a better solution, especially if you could recycle the old tether for use as material for the new.

Art & Technology

The Archetypes Burst In -- Cosmo Wenman at REAL2016
Cosmo gives us a little history and insight into how museums handle sculpture, and then he tell's us about his forays into 3-D scanning and printing of famous sculptures. A great number of people have been very busy.
Art is kind of weird. Most people enjoy it, a few people make a living at it, and some rich folks make headlines when they pay some fantastic price for a piece. I never understood the desire to have an original. If all you are doing is looking at it, and you can't tell the difference between your copy and the original, who cares? Obviously, some people do. I dunno, maybe if I had a billion dollars I would care about such things too.

Via Mr. Healy, Weird America and The Fredini's Cabinet of Curiosities.

Robot Playing with Dirt

PYLOS /// Large scale 3D Printing by IAAC

3D Printing

3D printing is coming along. They are now printing parts out of metal. They use powdered metal in your choice of flavors, and zap it with a laser which melts it. Essentially they are making parts by laying down a continuous bead of molten metal. Some characters in Australia claim to be making parts for jet engines using this technique. I have my doubts. Some parts, possibly, for prototypes perhaps, but real production parts for high stress locations, I don't see it. Not this week anyway.
    The part being made in the picture above was six feet tall when it was finished. It's about half way done here. It took 2 weeks to make. It would be a real trick to make it using conventional techniques. It's possible that some parts built this way could be stronger than ones that were conventionally made.
     The surface finish is coarse. I'm not sure what you could do about that, unless the layers you were putting down were really thin, like a ten-thousandth of an inch. That could make your robot really tired because it would have to make a 100 times as many passes. And then you've got all your thermal constraints and metal crystallography. Ought to keep the whiz kids busy for the next few years at least.

P.S. None of the videos I found were worth a sh**. I would think that with something as cool as this someone could make a really cool video, but all the ones I saw were just crap, with narrators blathering on about saving money. I'm thinking no one has really grasped what can be done with these machines.

Self Replicating Machines

Being able to reproduce is one of the hallmarks of life. It's something machines, to date, have been unable to perform unassisted. There are some people trying to build a 3-D printing machine that will make all the parts necessary to construct another, identical machine. This is a step in that direction, but it's not the whole thing. You still need to be supply the raw materials, provide the machine with energy and assemble the pieces.



I read several of Ian M. Banks "Culture" Science-Fiction novels this year, and in these stories society has pretty much sorted that whole thing out. So, if you can have any thing you want, meaning your society has developed machines that can make anything you want, all you need is a source of energy and a source of raw materials, and a little patience. I mean if you want a spaceship the size of a planet, and you don't already have a system in place to construct such a thing, it is going to take time to gather the materials, time to process the materials into useable bits, and time to assemble the bits.

Presumably an advanced civilization would have access to as much energy as they require, and if they need more, they can just tell their machines to make more energy producing machines. As for raw materials, you would need a fleet of scouts surveying the universe for useful bits of material, and a fleet of mining machines and transports to acquire it and move it to where it is wanted.

If, however, you got several people who wanted really massive things, like spaceships the size of planets, it could put a strain on the ability of the machines to produce the desired result in a timely fashion. In other words, even in a world of endless bounty, greed could drive people into conflict.

Greed, though, is just an excuse. People thrive on conflict. As much as we claim to crave peace, nothing lights a fire under a person more than someone trying to put one over on them.

I found the video while I was wandering around on the net this morning. I started at Dustbury, but I don't really remember all the steps that led to this.