3D Desktop Printer

This is the first affordable and working, 3D desktop printer we have seen so far.  There have been a lot of start-ups and established companies trying to be the first massed produced printer, wanting to make them as popular as our everyday laser and inkjet printers.  M3D have just finished their Kickstarter campaign in style, they were asking for backers (normal people like you and us) to sponsor $50,000 to go towards the development of their machine, they ended up with over $3.4 million.  The printer will cost $349 plus P&P and every spool of plastic will costs $13.  If 3D printers follows the same trend as the inkjets, as they becomes more popular, the prices will come down.  For orders placed now @TheMicro3D say, the printer will be delivered February 2015.  2 Videos and pictures in the article will show some of the things you can do with this printer + all the specifications.  If you had one, right now, what would be the first thing you print on it?  Let us know in the comment section below the article.  To get the best effect, once in the article you can enlarge the image by pressing it (not the first one).

Lego 3D Printer

You might think, yet another 3D Printer, but this is made out of Lego and bits and pieces he scavenged from other electronics he had lying about. Cash Strapped 20 year old engineering student Matthew Kreuger didn't have between $800-$2500 to buy a 3D Printer so he built his own. This is not yet the finish product, as there is more programming and testing that needs doing.

These are the articles we love to report about here at Design Stack. Not only does it show that there are many different ways of producing the same thing, but that technology doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive to work.
If you want to construct a similar machine, you can go to his site where he gives you a list of the components together with the drawings you will need to assemble it.

New Architecture with the Mobile 3D Printing Home $10,000

A house built in 24hrs, see the video and the breakdown of the costs in the post.

CLIP the 3D Printer inspired by T2

CEO & Co-Founder of Carbon3D and CLIP, a new 3D printing machine, Joseph DeSimone and his colleagues constructed.  The printer was first inspired by the film Terminator 2 and specifically the T-1000 that could regenerate into any form, from a puddle of melted material.  This technology has substantial improvements on the typical 3D printing tech out there, 1st, it is 25 to 100 times faster (DeSimone is confident it could reach 1000 times faster as the printer is refined).  2nd smooth no more ridges on the finished sculpture, like on the ones that we see now.  This system uses a combination of three main components UV light, Oxygen and Resin (more in the video below).  We have included 3 videos on examples of what can be built at this stage, the fourth one is a ten minute speech where DeSimone explains the beautiful elegance in which his machine works.

3D Printing Pen

This Pen can be seen as a very versatile 3D Printer, it all depends on the proficiency and the imaginations of the user.  You can use it to draw simple prototypes in 3D, imagine doodling in 3D, blending drawing with sculpting.  Instead of gesticulating with your hands, to try and explain something you can just draw it.  The LIX Printing Pen is expected to be launched by its co-founder Anton Suvorov, on Kickstarter very soon.  The price is anticipated to be $139.95, It is powered by a USB connection and can used with different types of plastic with different colour ranges.  The plastic strings are loaded from the back of the Pen with a 1minute charging time (to reach the right temperature).  Have a look at the Article for video and more information and specifications.  Would you buy it?  What would you use it for?  Let us know in the comment section below.  To get the best effect, once in the article you can enlarge the image by pressing it (not the first one).

3D Printing Homes

Home 3D Printing is something that looks like a futuristic dream at the moment.  One of the most compelling arguments is the mechanization of mass produced products that we use every day, from home appliances, cars, clothing etc.  so why are we still constructing Houses by hand?  The Contour Crafting machine will work on the same principles of C&C machines used by joinery  companies or the 3D printers used inventors, engineers, architects etc. for prototypes, components and finished parts.  This project is the brainchild of Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis who is looking at one of the applications of this technology, to be possibly used, to construct a base on the moon.  Khoshnevis is confident that his machine will be able to construct a standard 25,000 square feet house (2,323 m²) with a bespoke design in 20 Hrs.  If this were true it could really do something to address the need for housing around the world.  More information and video in the article.  Please let us know what you think of this system in the comments section at the end of the article.

Model Box 3D

Printing is now beginning to go 3D but it isn't still for the masses, it is quite expensive to have products made and more expensive to buy the actual printer. Model Box 3D provides a way of producing  simulated 3D image from a series of 2D transparent sheets.  This system can be of use to a variety of people, from art students to sculptors for low budget prototyping.  Laura Krause and Eric Sagotsky are currently trying to raise the money they will need for production, from Kickstarter.  When it raised you will be able buy the kit which includes the Acrylic Box, 28 inkjet or laser printable transparencies and the software to turn your designs into a series of flat layers to print.  Some images will come with the kit and you will have access to a repository online for more.  We have loaded 3 videos that explain the origin and practical uses of this 3D display case.

3D Mini-Me Printer

It is considered to be the 1st of its kind.  You go in to have your photograph taken and instead of a 2D photo print out you get 3D miniatures of yourself (see above).  Have your own mini-me. They can come in 3 different sizes 10cm 15cm and 20cm.  Omote3d are the company behind it.

3D Printer Star Trek

Do you want a 3D Star Trek officer Mini Me? The following are the choices you get to make:  Gender of your character, Pose, accessories and Human or Vulcan. Job description and Uniform colour.  Rank, Body Type. You then upload 2 pictures and any comment you want to put on the base of your Mini Me. Watch video for more details.  The company providing this service is Cubify.

Upcycling an Entire Plane

Kevin McCloud  a British Designer, Writer and Television Presenter, best known in the UK for his Architectural program Grand Design.  In "Kevin's Supersized Salvage", McCloud teams up with 3 designers that specialise in upcycling (Taking waste material and giving it a different purpose like making a plane's wing drive shaft into an egg cup holder), to see if they can utilise all the parts of an Airbus A320 airplane and make them into something useful that people will be willing to buy.  The second part of the challenge involves @Kevin_McCloud beating the plane's scrap value by selling of all the items, whilst not sending anything to landfill.  There is so more to say so we will add the information in the article below the images.

If you like this article have a look at our other Sustainable articles.

Personalise your Coffee with Images and Text

Ripple Maker is the culmination of all the coffee art that we have seen in the past, some of which we have featured here on Design Stack (links below, in the post).  Most of the past drawings were made by hand or by machine with limited scope for diversity of imagery.  There is a video below that will explain all of the features of the machine.  To sum them up the owner of the machine can use a bank of drawings provided with the machine, to which he or she can add their own drawings or  photos.  The beauty is that the customers can get in on the act as well, by uploading their own pictures.  Imagine the café owner can print on your coffee any specials the have going on at the time, as well as any message they want.