The Glade 4.0

Honestly, within a few years I'm thinking it will be a cost-effective home tool that everybody will want to have.

Scientists have built a 3-D printer that creates material resembling human tissues. The novel substance, a deceptively simple network of water droplets coated in lipids, could one day be used to deliver drugs to the body -- or perhaps even to replace damaged tissue in living organs.

The creation, described in the journal Science, consists of lipid bilayers separating droplets of water -- rather like cell membranes, whose double layers allow the body’s cells to mesh with their watery environments while still protecting their contents.

“The great thing about these droplets is that they use pretty much exclusively biological materials,” said study co-author and University of Oxford researcher Gabriel Villar, making them ideal for medical uses.

Lipid bilayers are formed by two rows of molecules that each have a hydrophobic, water-repelling side and a hydrophilic, water-loving side. They’re crucial to the existence of cells: In cell membranes, the hydrophobic tails of each layer face inward, creating the inner layer of the cell membrane, and the water-loving heads point outward.

Scientists had been creating lipid layers by inserting droplets into lipid-filled oil, causing the lipids to collect around the water droplets’ surface, and then pushing them together. The lipid ends would attract to one another and pull the monolayers together, creating a lipid bilayer.

But doing this by hand was a laborious process. So Villar built a 3-D printer that would use a micropipette to squeeze out droplets in exact orders, speeding up the process. They created networks of up to 35,000 droplets. And in the process, they began to look at the material they were creating differently.

“What we didn’t really expect was that once we could print these droplets out and eject them en masse and assemble them into different geometries, the collection of droplets behaved not just as a loose aggregate of objects but really as a cohesive material, and that kind of changed our thinking throughout the work,” Villar said.

The lipid bilayers surround droplets 50 microns across -- about five times bigger than living cells -- but they’re biocompatible, and scientists think that if protein channels can be inserted into the layers, they can act as nerve pathways through the system.

Villar also showed that the material could be triggered into contracting like a muscle -- folding up into unprintable, flower-like shapes. They were even able to send electrical signals after building a conductive pathway through some of the tissue -- like a rudimentary nerve.

Any potential medical uses were far out on the horizon, Villar said -- but the faux-tissue could be used to graft onto organs to replace damaged parts, employed as scaffolding on which to grow more cells, or could be inserted into the body to release medication at given times, in certain spots, with specific triggers.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

I forsee whole new levels of intellectual property fighting.

We're currently discussing the purchase of a mid-range 3D Printer in our wargaming group. We've found several very decent machines in the $4000-6000 range that would make good miniatures and terrain features, etc.

(CNN) -- There is no shortage of amazing industrial commercial applications for 3-D printing -- internal organs, stem cells, artificial limbs, art, cars, customizable furniture.

But if you had a 3-D printer sitting on your desk at home, what would you make?

Some people know immediately: They'd create physical Minecraft models, make manga figurines, pop out replacement parts for a motorcycle. But most people will likely see a 3-D printer, think it's cool, then have no idea what to do next and move on.

That could change, though, as dirt-cheap 3-D printers like the Printrbot or new MakiBox simplify the technology and put it in more people's hands and home offices.

2012: Could 3-D printers make a gun? "The market for desktop 3-D printers right now is really makers, professional users and people who have a lot of patience and time," said Jonathan Buford, the entrepreneur behind the $200 MakiBox 3-D printer.

The MakiBox attempts to simplify 3-D printing for a more consumer-friendly experience, by lowering the price and reducing the complexity of assembling the devices and minting objects. Amateurs, basement inventors and hobbyists with no experience printing in three dimensions can jump right in and start experimenting with minimal investment.

There are trade-offs, of course. The $200 version uses only the less expensive PLA plastic, which can melt at a lower temperature than other materials. A $300 version of the printer is available that can work with more substances. The final products will be a step down from what you could make with more professional machines.

"We're not optimizing on quality because we think there's actually room for 'good enough,'" said Buford.

The idea for MakiBox grew out of the Makible crowdfunding site. The project's goal was to connect the dots between product prototypes, crowdfunding, and the eventual manufacturing process. Say a product designer comes up with an idea for a pedometer armband. He could raise money from interested mall-walkers, then be guided through the product manufacturing process.

Buford has unique experience in all three areas. Based in Hong Kong, he studied mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and has worked as a toy designer.

In 2005, he struck out on his own, crowdfunding a product before starting a co-working space in Hong Hong called Boot.hk. He launched Makible in 2011.

To get the ball rolling and generate interest in the site, Makible posted a seed project the team had been working on internally: a cheap and fast 3-D printer. Posted in January 2012, the MakiBox kit was priced at $350 and aimed at entry-level consumers who didn't want to drop thousands of dollars on a higher-end desktop 3-D printer like the MakerBot Replicator ($2,000).

It quickly raised $100,000, and the team pushed aside the crowdsourcing idea to work full time on the 3-D printer.

Now a staff of six full-time employees is perfecting and shipping beta versions of the MakiBox A6 for $200, feeling out the nascent market for cheap 3-D printers.

Buford thinks that if the technology becomes more accessible, creative people will come up with broader applications we haven't thought of yet, and desktop 3-D printer sales could take off.

Or the 3-D printer could go the way of the home photo printer. When personal photo printers first debuted, there was a spike in sales, but slowly the demand dropped. People weren't printing out as many photos, and if they did it was generally cheaper and easier to have them done by one of the photo services with higher-end printers, such as Wal-Mart or Shutterfly.

Staples has already announced plans to offer 3-D printing services in some stores.

"I'm not really sure there is an established market for this or that people do know what they're going to use it for," said Buford. "It's a Wild West market right now; we don't really know where it's going to end up."

Over the next six months, Buford plans to contine rolling out the MaxiBox while also returning to the idea of connecting engineers, inventors and product developers to the sometimes confusing world of manufacturing. He's already seeing a surge in everyday devices that connect to the Internet and is working with local entrepreneurs in Hong Kong.

"What we're looking at doing is developing tech that bridges that gap between traditional manufacturing and 3-D printing," Buford said.

Part-time inventors experimenting on cheap 3-D printers might be the next wave of people seeking out his help.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

Anyone know what the cost on raw materials runs?

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

I look forward to the day I can download a car.

Complete 3D-Printed Handgun Just Weeks Away, Says Cody Wilson

J.D. Tuccille|Apr. 24, 2013 2:19 pm



ReasonIf you think 3D printers have given would-be gun controllers the vapors already, just wait until you hear the latest from Cody Wilson, the head honcho of Defense Distributed. He told reporters at the Inside 3D Printing Conference in New York City that the group's latest project — a gun made entirely with 3D-printed parts (except for a metal firing pin) — is just weeks away from success. If Wilson and company can deliver on the promise, it would be an important step beyond their already impressive accomplishments in producing functioning AR-15 lower receivers and "high-capacity" magazines for AR-15s and AK-style rifles. It would also be an unmistakable message to government officials that gun control laws are becoming ever-more unenforceable.

From Mashable:

For Cody Wilson, the world's most notorious 3D printing gunsmith, it all started with a simple question: "Can you use a 3D printer to print a gun?" The answer to that question might come sooner than anybody expected, as Wilson says he will 3D-print an entire handgun in just a couple of weeks.

If Wilson does print an entire handgun, he will reach a milestone that many thought couldn't be reached so soon. And he will also throw a monkey wrench into not only the broader gun control debate, but also into recent legislative efforts to limit the use of 3D printers to make weapons.

Yesterday, the controversial founder and director of Defense Distributed, a non-profit that he launched to explore the possibility of manufacturing weapons with 3D printers, was in Manhattan to talk at the Inside 3D Printing Conference. After a panel on how copyright affects the 3D printing industry, he confirmed to Mashable what he had already hinted at before: that what was once unthinkable — a gun entirely made of 3D-printed parts — is actually right around the corner.

Will it work? Wilson thinks it will, and it won't be just a one-shot wonder it will be able to fire a few shots before melting or breaking.

Some critics of Defense Distributed's efforts have pointed to the limitations of the materials used by all but the highest-end 3D printers as imposing barriers to creating a full firearm, at least at the current state of technology. But CNet separately reports Wilson's claim that "he and others successfully fired 11 rounds through a 3D-printed gun barrel not long ago." The trick seems to be that Defense Distributed is creating an all-new design around the material (ABS plastic) rather than trying to print parts for an existing firearm design.

I mostly just picked it because you like trains.

Three-dimensional printing has been used to make a jawbone, a functioning bladder, as well as a model kidney, and there have been successful experiments in printing tissue such as skin cells for burn treatments and even the external part of an ear. Now scientists at Princeton University have, for the first time, printed not only the tissue for an ear but also the electronic components that would make an artificial sensory organ work. It’s the first step toward printing organs that behave like the real thing.Heart Cells Beat in a Lab DishMichael McAlpine, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and his colleagues used a commercially available 3-D printer to do the work. The “inks” consisted of hydrogels mixed with calf cells and silver nanoparticles. Layer-by-layer, the ink was laid down onto a surface, building up the three-dimensional structure of the ear and embedded electronics. Because it’s the first attempt, the electronics are just a simple antenna. But if it were connected to a receiver that in turn could be connected to a person’s auditory nerve with electrodes, it would allow a deaf person to hear.McAlpine has experimented with tissue-compatible electronics before: last year, he and his team created “tattoos” for teeth that were sophisticated electronic sensors.

There’s also the tantalizing possibility that such printed organs could enhance human capabilities — granting humans super-powers a la the Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman television series. An electronic ear, for instance, needn’t be limited to the frequencies and volumes humans can usually hear.

The research team published their work in the journal Nano Letters.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

I can sense the libs coming up with reasons to ban this already.