3D Printing: The Stories We Didn’t Cover This Week — July 25, 2015

IMTS

Share this Article

This week’s uncovered news is more about hardware, services, and accessories for 3D printing than 3D printed items. But we begin with one great project, a 3D printed bicycle safety induction light that can be powered as you pedal! Next, we have news that ROBO 3D has joined with ABC Data Distribution for East European expansion, and the Netherlands’ Print3D Matter store wants to open a new location, turning to crowdfunding to raise the cash. Also, XYZprinting’s Nobel 1.0 stereolithography printer is now available for order in the US. In 3D printing student news, Milan Masters students at Milan Polytechnic showcased a 3D printed Buggati model car, and the next UIST 2015 conference in Charlotte, North Carolina is seeking students from high school to the doctoral level to compete in a 3D printed animatronics contest. Last but not least is the pesky task of removing that print from its bed, right? Well, for PC and PC-ABS prints this just got a little easier with Airwolf 3D’s new Wolfbite MEGA adhesive.

3D Printed Bicycle Safety Light

ree1For anyone who cycles at night, you know how important it is to have both lights that help you see and lights that help others identify your bicycle. This 3D printed safety induction light Instructables project, designed by Tomaž Šibanc, is unique because it’s a mountable light for your wheel spokes that never needs batteries, it turns off when you stop moving, and it’s 3D printed. How does that work? The energy from pedaling powers the LED, simple enough. Once you’ve printed, assembled, and placed it on your bike wheel it’s there, working for you. When you pedal your bike, you can rest assured the spoke induction light in your wheel/s is working (even in daytime). What a practical use of 3D printing, and a great concept to add a battery-free product to your bicycle lighting needs! The STL files are available for download on Thingiverse or pre-printed for purchase.

ROBO 3D in Eastern Europe

ree2In 2013, ROBO 3D ran a $650,000 Kickstarter campaign that was a huge success: the new company was able to get its low-cost printers to everyone who backed them. Now ROBO 3D is expanding to Europe. The company now has an office in London, and it has signed a distribution deal with one of Europe’s largest IT distributors: ABC Data. This deal expands ROBO 3D’s market reach to East European countries like Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia–and Germany is included here as well. ABC Data will focus on distributing the R1 3D printer, which has a working area of 25 x 22 x 20.3 cm and is housed with white plastic. The user-friendly R1 has auto-calibration, a heated bed, and it can print with almost every filament on the market. (It is also currently being updated and modernized.) These qualities make ROBO 3D’s R1 printer a very good choice for home- and school-based 3D printing projects, and now more people will be able to access this 3D printer because of the expanded distribution from ABC Data across Eastern Europe.

Netherlands’ Print3D Matter Crowdfunds for Second Location

print3d matterAmsterdam’s first 3D printing and maker store is Print3D Matter, established in 2014, which is very popular for purchasing 3D printing wares–like printers, filaments, and accessories–and receiving 3D printing focused services for design, prototyping and repair needs. Billed as “Amsterdam’s only dedicated 3D Design and Manufacturing Store,” Print3D Matter has served some high profile clients like Coca Cola, IKEA, and JP Morgan, leaving its founder, Mark Austen, to conclude that expanding to another store is a good idea for more business. Currently, the nine 3D printers the store has are running 24 hours a day! So Austen is crowdfunding as a loan via investormatch to raise the money to open another store. The goal is to raise €90,000, and it seems that this won’t be a problem considering the demand is clearly there for 3D printing services.

The Nobel 1.0 SL Laser 3D Printer has Arrived from XYZprinting

ree5There’s good news for fans of photopolymer 3D printing: XYZprinting has made its Nobel 1.0 SL Laser 3D printer available for purchase in the US for the low cost of $1,499. Available for purchase on both Amazon and the XYZprinting websites, this printer is one of the most affordable of its kind on the market. The Nobel 1.0 is an FDA certified stereolithography machine that can cure UV-sensitive resin at very fine layers. The Nobel 1.0 is capable of incredibly fine resolution, at a 25 micron layer thickness. It also has a build volume of 5” x 5” x 7.9”, and an auto-refill feature, for non-proprietary resins. The combination of cost and quality might have XYZprinting’s Nobel 1.0 setting the new gold standard in stereolithography printing. Now, 3D printing devotees in the US can see for themselves by ordering one and trying it out!

Milan Polytechnic Students Showcase 3D Printed Bugatti Concept Car

ree6More and more students internationally are being exposed to 3D printing and innovating incredible design concepts. This is exactly the case for Masters students at Milan Polytechnic, who recently had an opportunity to showcase their designs for the Transportation and Automobile Design department as part of the Masters Showcase 2015. One design that stuck out was the 3D printed scale model of a luxury Buggati car, which was 3D printed in one piece using Skorpion Engineering’s SLA Skorpion (which can print objects as large as Materialise’s Mammoth can) using a transparent resin resistant to high temperatures. The process not only displayed the technology used to print the car model, it also displayed the design talents of the Masters program students. It looks as if the future is bright for 3D design and printing in Italy, as more students gain exposure to and experience with 3D printing.

UIST 2015 Student Contest Focuses on 3D Printable Animatronics

ree7In other 3D printing student news, the ACM Symposium of User Interface and Software Technology (UIST) 2015, held annually in Charlotte, North Carolina, is a conference that concentrates specifically on new hardware and software technology for user interfaces. Each year, the conference also features a student (from high school to doctoral level) contest, where innovative designs can be showcased and rewarded. This year, the UIST student contest will focus on 3D printed animatronics, with the top prize being $6,000. Hardware kits are provided to students, who are encouraged to create innovative robotic storytelling interfaces that blur the lines between art and science and can be used for educational purposes. Both hardware and software categories will be recognized in the contest, with two winners selected from each category, as well as in a people’s choice category. Students will have an opportunity to demonstrate their creations during a demo reception, and a jury will select the winners–to be announced at the conference banquet. If 3D printed animatronics is your thing, this just might be the contest for you! You can sign up for the contest until August 7 here on the contest webpage.

Wolfbite MEGA Adhesive from Airwolf 3D

ree8The new Wolfbite MEGA adhesive from Costa Mesa, California-based Airwolf 3D is a chemical solution for your ceramic or glass printbed that can be administered to help avoid the tricky process of removing your prints without warping them. Intended for both amateur and professional 3D printing projects,  this solution can be used with functional, high-strength parts. It can be very difficult to remove Polycarbonate and PC-ABS prints from their beds because these filaments are so resistant to shrinkage and heat. However, Airwolf 3D thinks it has the solution for this particular problem, as it has created an adhesive that bonds polycarbonate to glass and ceramic surfaces. Made from generally safe compounds, and designed using the latest in green chemistry, MEGA technology, and polymer science, Wolfbite MEGA adhesive might be the cure to all headaches incurred while removing PC and PC-ABS prints! Interested? You can watch a video interview with the Wolfbite MEGA co-creator here.

That’s this week’s rundown! Let us know if any of these stories struck a chord with you in this week’s Stories We Missed forum thread at 3DPB.com.

stories we missed july 25

 

Share this Article


Recent News

Will There Be a Desktop Manufacturing Revolution outside of 3D Printing?

Know Your Würth: CEO AJ Strandquist on How Würth Additive Can Change 3D Printing



Categories

3D Design

3D Printed Art

3D Printed Food

3D Printed Guns


You May Also Like

Featured

Pressing Refresh: What CEO Brad Kreger and Velo3D Have Learned About Running a 3D Printing Company

To whatever extent a business is successful thanks to specialization, businesses will nonetheless always be holistic entities. A company isn’t a bunch of compartments that all happen to share the...

Würth Additive Launches Digital Inventory Services Platform Driven by 3D Printing

Last week, at the Additive Manufacturing Users’ Group (AMUG) Conference in Chicago (March 10-14), Würth Additive Group (WAG) launched its new inventory management platform, Digital Inventory Services (DIS). WAG is...

Featured

Hypersonic Heats Up: CEO Joe Laurienti on the Success of Ursa Major’s 3D Printed Engine

“It’s only been about 24 hours now, so I’m still digesting it,” Joe Laurienti said. But even via Zoom, it was easy to notice that the CEO was satisfied. The...

Featured

3D Printing’s Next Generation of Leadership: A Conversation with Additive Minds’ Dr. Gregory Hayes

It’s easy to forget sometimes that social media isn’t reality. So, at the end of 2023, when a burst of doom and gloom started to spread across the Western world’s...