Science Projects

Create 3D Printed Objects In Air: The traditional 3D printers used the regular horizontal surfaces to print objects on. But how cool would it be to have a 3D printer that can take away the surface dependency? Basically that means you can virtually print 3D objects anywhere in the air! This is what the new 3D robotic printer called “Mataerial” can achieve. It’s unique characteristic is to allow users to print 3D objects in the air extending from any surface. It uses the principles of Anti-gravity object modeling and does not require any supporting structures to print objects in air. This unique method enables users to print natural objects by using 3D curves in free motion. The material that comes out of the nozzle is already solidified due to a chemical reaction between two source components. Users can play around with different sizes and shapes giving them good flexibility to print such objects without using any particular surface. This is a collaborative effort of Petr Novikov, Sasa Jokic and Joris Laarman studio. Read more.

RFID readers aren’t very expensive to buy. But if you are real hobbyist and like building instead of purchasing stuff, then Attiny13 based RFID reader might be interesting to experiment with. It was build by Vassilis Serasidis – author of many great projects. As always he tries to keep things simple, cheap and easy to follow. The RFID reader he builds works with standard 125kHz tags that uses EM4100 protocol. There is a good explanation on how the circuit works in physical level. It includes how reader transmits data and receives from passive tag. Reader is assembled on prototyping board using through hole components and hand made coil on the back. You will also get some understanding how to calibrate coil to have great range and reliability. Currently reader outputs the 10-digit Tag serial number via Serial interface 2400 bps 8N1.

Bioresorbable Airway Splint Created with a Three-Dimensional Printer — NEJM. Tracheobronchomalacia in newborns, which manifests with dynamic airway collapse and respiratory insufficiency, is difficult to treat.1,2 In an infant with tracheobronchomalacia, we implanted a customized, bioresorbable tracheal splint, created with a computer-aided design based on a computed tomographic image of the patient’s airway and fabricated with the use of laser-based three-dimensional printing, to treat this life-threatening condition. At birth at 35 weeks’ gestation, the patient did not have respiratory distress and otherwise appeared to be in normal health. At 6 weeks of age, he had chest-wall retractions and difficulty feeding. By 2 months of age, his symptoms progressed and he required endotracheal intubation to sustain ventilation. The workup revealed the following: an anomalous origin and malposition of the pulmonary arteries, with crisscross anatomy; right pulmonary-artery hypoplasia; compression of the left mainstem bronchus between an abnormally leftward-coursing ascending aorta and an anteriorly displaced descending aorta; air trapping; and postobstructive pneumonia. Despite placement of a tracheostomy tube, mechanical ventilation, and sedation, ventilation that was sufficient to prevent recurring cardiopulmonary arrests could not be maintained. We reasoned that the localized tracheobronchomalacia was the cause of this physiological abnormality and made a custom-designed and custom-fabricated resorbable airway splint. Our bellowed topology design, similar to the hose of a vacuum cleaner, provides resistance against collapse while simultaneously allowing flexion, extension, and expansion with growth. The splint was manufactured from polycaprolactone with the use of a three-dimensional printer.

Platige Image and Bridge created BIOSTAGOG – an interactive sculpture which combines algorithmic design, 3D printing, mapping and interaction. This parametrically generated, multicellular form has been integrated with projection and by that it gives a possibility of interaction between installation and its audience. BIOSTAGOG can display creative content made by artists working at Platige Image and by using Kinect technology it may equally involve both the company staff and the visitors.

During Google’s I/O developer conference,Wednesday, May 15th,2013,the company made a popular announcement that a new developer suite called Android Studio was launched, which invoked intense feedback among attendees, for the crowd “ooh’d” and “ahh’d” as screenshots were shown on stage. Android Studio,  based on IntelliJ ,  is specifically designed for  developers  and is exactly...

That honkin' big photodiode is a surplus PIN-10AP that's been lying in wait

Check out the latest 3D printed project with embedded electronics from Kris Kortright — one of my favorites of his to date! (And a great demonstration for using Blender to creating electronics projects.) You can find it at Thingiverse Thing 91160: This is a wand/protector for the Adafruit RFID Breakout Board that I’m using in my RiderScan project. (The 10mm LEDs (2) for them can be found here.) It’s one of the best RFID/NFC breakout boards around, and since I’ll be using mine in a Horse Barn environment, I needed an enclosure that could stand up to wear and tear, as well as be functional and easy to use. This is my 2nd attempt to make such an enclosure using Blender and my trust MakerBot Replicator – I have ideas for a 3rd design in the works now. The board is made by Kevin Townsand of Adafruit, and is a particularly well-made product – really ahead of it’s time. Branded with both the Adafruit and MakerBot logo’s, this is my Nod to both of these fabulous companies – some of the best modeling I think I’ve done to date, and I hope the community finds it useful for your projects as well And of course, you know where to find the MakerBot Replicator!! I’m making updates to the handle, and will post a new version soon! Read more. Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers! Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D! The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here! Featured Adafruit Products! PN532 NFC/RFID controller breakout board – v1.3: The PN532 is the most popular NFC chip, and is what is embedded in pretty much every phone or device that does NFC. It can pretty much do it all, such as read and write to tags and cards, communicate with phones (say for payment processing), and ‘act’ like a NFC tag. If you want to do any sort of embedded NFC work, this is the chip you’ll want to use! (read more) MakerBot Adafruit Edition: Adafruit has teamed up with our friends over at MakerBot to offer the MakerBot Adafruit Edition. The talented members of the Adafruit community are exploring 3D printed solutions for their inventions, electronics enclosures, mounting hardware, and artwork, so we have bundled a MakerBot Replicator 2™ desktop 3D printer with three of our more popular DIY electronics projects. After you’ve built your kits use your new MakerBot to print out the kit enclosures! This MakerBot includes a special limited edition MakerBot + Adafruit build plate and a 3d printing for electronics pack! (read more)

Use it with Processing! – Adafruit Color Sensors @ The Adafruit Learning System. The Adafruit_TCS34725 Library includes a processing sketch to communicate with the ColorView Arduino sketch and display color on your computer screen in real time. RGB Color Sensor with IR filter – TCS34725. Flora Color Sensor – TCS34725.

Dr. Mishra Wins Competitve NSF Grant to Support Funding to Help 3D Printers ‘Learn’, via Metal Powder Report. Dr. Sandipan Mishra, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has won a five-year US$400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to improve the additive manufacturing (AM) process. Dr Mishra, who works in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering, plans to use the money to investigate and develop new sensing and controls paradigms to help develop additive manufacturing, according to a press release. The project, titled “Multi-objective learning control strategies for additive manufacturing,” will develop advanced sensing and controls algorithms for improving the precision and reliability of additive manufacturing technologies, including 3D printing. Despite its tremendous potential, additive manufacturing is hampered by poor process reliability and throughput, and systems currently are not precise or robust enough to be scaled up and used for commercial, mass-manufactured products, it is suggested. Dr Mishra’s goal is to overcome this challenge by creating smarter control systems that will use sensor measurements to help 3D printers learn and adapt as they are operating. Many additive manufacturing technologies work by applying or printing thin layers of materials on top of one another, constructing the object from the ground up, one layer at a time. Dr Mishra will create and design a feedback system that will enable an additive manufacturing system to make small, iterative refinements in the midst of a printing job. The system will be able to continually assess the progress of a print job, and then automatically make necessary adjustments to ensure the finished good will have specific pre-determined properties or geometries. These process improvements could boost the overall reliability of 3D printing, and open the door to creating larger and faster additive manufacturing technologies suitable for industrial-scale production. The grant, part of a Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) is given to faculty members at the beginning of their academic careers and is one of NSF’s most competitive awards. “We congratulate Dr Mishra for receiving an NSF CAREER Award to support his promising and timely research into control systems for additive manufacturing,” said David Rosowsky, dean of the School of Engineering at Rensselaer. “The CAREER Award is among the highest honours a new faculty member can receive, and recognizes their potential for significant scholarly impact early in their academic career.” Read more. Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers! Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D! The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!

As the number of 3D parts repositories have been increasing tremendously in recent days as desktop 3D printing enthusiasts and 3D artists hunger for new sources for models to print out and manipulate based on interests, brand loyalty (or frustration), and opportunities to using versioning tools to track part changes, a handful of specialty sites have appeared to curate unique collections such as the Forme 3D scans of natural objects, from Fabbaloo: Another new source for 3D models has launched: Forme, focused on high-resolution scans of a wide variety of object categories. This model repository offers something quite different from the numerous other 3D model repositories that have popped up lately. Forme offers 3D scans, not modeled objects. They’re not provided in STL form, but instead in OBJ format. Forme says: Forme has created a digital design library that gives 3D modellers easy, affordable access to a fascinating range of digitised objects. These ready-to-use, high resolution models mean intricate details or natural forms can be rapidly and accurately recreated. They can also act as a starting point or building block – saving the time and effort of creating entire models from scratch. An inspection of Forme’s library shows a very broad selection of scans. For example, their “Reference” section contains these subcategories: Plant: Bark, Leaves, Fruit and veg, Nuts and seeds, Flowers, Twigs Animal: Horns, Shells, Bones, Sea creatures, Pelts, Teeth, Insects, Organs Mineral: Crystals, Miscellaneous Forme also includes a wide selection of cups, bowls, plates, and patterns. The items are moderately priced, typically around USD$10 each. Aside from the fascinatingly unique collection, we’re most excited about the possibility of integrating these models into other 3D designs. Imagine putting tree bark on the side of your bookends, or having a crab sit on top of that coathook? Read more.