News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
Who has never dreamed of having a life-size 3D printed Jabba the Hut in their living room? When affordable 3D printers became a reality, they made it possible for these highly personalized “dreams” to come true. In what is certainly an effective promotional campaign, the YouTube channel Mighty Jabba’s Collection created a life-size replica of the popular gangster from the Star Wars Universe.
Since as early as 2014, Dutch designer Lilian van Daal has sought to combine digital manufacturing practices, such as 3D printing, with bioinspired design to create stunningly complex and original pieces of furniture and art. The Arnhem-based designer recently presented her latest project: a 3D printed chair called Radiolaria #1, which showcases the amazing potential of turning to nature for structural design inspiration.
Airbus Helicopters has officially launched the production of latch shafts for the doors of A350 passenger aircraft using 3D manufacturing. The printed components are cheaper to produce and weigh less than their counterparts made using traditional means, thereby helping Airbus to offer ever more economical and environmentally friendly aircraft. Airbus Helicopters in Donauwörth is manufacturing doors for all Airbus aircraft programmes as a supplier. The redesign of the latch shafts and the new production process have resulted in Airbus’s first large-scale production using metallic 3D printing.
Fuel3D, a leading 3D capture and imaging innovator, and eyewear technology developer Sfered, today announced a new mirror-based 3D scanning system to support the deployment and fitting of custom eyewear. The system is being demonstrated this week in collaboration with 3D printed eyewear firm, monoqool, at SILMO, the world’s biggest eyewear tradeshow.
Since before Eadweard Muybridge famously photographed the motions of a running horse in the 1870s, humans have sought to understand how our bodies and those of animals move through space. Evidently, this drive to dissect and understand movement continues today, as a team of researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a new, state-of-the-art technique for analyzing movement.
Endocon GmbH, a German medical device company, has turned to additive manufacturing to improve hip and knee replacement surgeries. The company utilized metal AM technologies from GE Additive to create the endoCupcut, an innovative medical device that makes hip cup extraction easier, more cost effective and more reliable.
AddUp, the French metal AM company founded by Fives and Michelin, has announced its plan to acquire a majority stake in France-based metal AM specialist Poly-Shape. The news comes months after AddUp announced it had acquired Strasbourg-based BeAM, known for its Directed Energy Deposition (DED) technology.
Presented at the BMW AG Annual General Meeting, the new BMW Vision iNEXT project (now officially going into production as the new iX range) is set to take the company’s early moves in all-electric mobility – which began with BMW i3 in 2013 and define how we will move around in the future. The mass customization of parts made possible by 3D printing – something that BMW is intensively experimenting with and investing on for its “i” fleet – will play a central role. In particular, in the first BMW Vision iNEXT concept, it will be shaping custom smart controls through it kidney grille and “four-eyed” front end.
Like a phone case, which dresses up your smartphone and sets it apart from those around you who share the same hardware, a fun watch band for the Apple Watch lends a sense of personality and style to the increasingly popular wearable device. The latest Apple Watch bands to catch our eye are part of a 3D printed collection by Dutch designer Matthijs Kok and sold under the Freshfiber brand.
With over 1.5 million users around the globe, CGTrader is one of the leading marketplaces for 3D models. More than just hosting over 680,000 individual models, the company brings together all manner of 3D designs—from industry, professional design fields and from the maker community—and for various applications, including AR/VR and game development, computer graphics and, perhaps most notably, 3D printing.