The latest from the wonderful world of 3D printing

This is easily the technology that I'm keenly following more than any other right now.  And for plenty of good reasons...

3D printing is now capable of producing replacement bones using living cells.

Desktop-produced firearms continues to be developed and refined, beyond the control of any government.

Laser-guided 3D printing can now produce metal objects with high precision.  You will soon be taking your car into a garage and have a new custom part created in-house.

High-capacity lithium-ion batteries smaller than the size of a grain of sand have been created in the laboratory and it's thought that they could eventually be used to power ridiculously tiny gadgets, including next-generation medical devices like pacemakers.

And then there's this: 4D printing!  Objects which are manufactured in 3D "folded-up", then are allowed to self-assemble themselves.  One possible use mentioned is being able to buy furniture packed-flat from a store, bring it home and then take it out of the box and watch it put itself together.  More serious applications could be for building construction in hazardous situations.

No doubt parents across the country will be happy to know about 4D printing.  It will potentially bring an end to those most dreaded of words found on just about every toy or game box: "some assembly required"!

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Department of Defense has 3D printed gun yanked... but I got it anyway (and so can you!)

The Liberator: Coming soon to
a desktop near you!

Defense Distributed has made a lot of headlines lately about the Liberator: a firearm which is completely fabricated by "3D printing", apart from the firing pin.  I think the success of this gun already is that it's got politicians like Charles Schumer and Steve Israel all steamed-up about it.  Schumer wants 3D printed guns to be outlawed completely.

The thing is, politicos like Schumer can't figure out how to pull that off.  3D printing will soon be a household implement and if it can be drawn up on a computer, anyone will be able to produce a fully-functioning model right on their desktop.  The computer doesn't care if it's a replacement part for a kitchen appliance or an action figure or a real working handgun.  The barn door has been thrown wide open and there's no getting that horse back inside.

Never let something like common sense stop the government from trying.  Earlier today the Department of Defense requested that Defense Distributed remove all its 3D weapons-related files from its website.   Defense Distributed's founder Cody Wilson is laying the blame on the doorstep of Secretary of State John Kerry.

As of this writing, Defense Distributed's site has "gone dark".

But less than five minutes after reading about the government having the Liberator pulled from the web, I had downloaded the gun.  And not once, but twice.

Here's how I did it, and how anybody else can as well:

Download µTorrent if you don't have it already (it's a free download) and run the install.  Any other torrent client should work too.  I found the Liberator files on The Pirate Bay.  There are two torrents for it so far: here's #1 and here's #2.  If either of those can't be found just do a search for "liberator" and "gun": I got those two results at once.  The file size is 2.02 megabytes (such a tiny thing for something so much fuss about).

And then... just download your Liberator files!  If you possess a 3D printer you can start making your Liberator pistol immediately.

I downloaded the file from each of those two torrents.  It is on my hard drive.  It is also on at least two USB drives that I've copied it too.  I can e-mail the file to anyone, anywhere in the world.  I could even set up a torrent on my own and allow people to download it from me directly.

In fact, it is happening right now.  Not by me, but by other people.  Lots and lots of other people.

Shutting down the Defense Distributed website was just about the worst thing that the United States federal government could have done, if it didn't want the Liberator to get into the wild.  By trying to outlaw it, the feds have made it so that practically everyone can want it.  Defense Distributed could not have asked for better publicity for and dissemination of its product!

Anyhoo... "Annie get your gun!" :-)

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I just downloaded a functional .22 pistol

In two months' time DEFCAD has garnered more than three thousand visits an hour and nearly a quarter-million downloads.  What makes up the bulk of that traffic?

Guns, guns, guns.  Parts for guns.  Accessories like suppressors.  Ammo casings for NATO and Warsaw Pact small arms and rifles.  Even combat munitions like hand grenades.

And they all work too.

Provided you've a 3D printer, the right materials and a few other items that can be bought at most any hardware store, you or anybody else can spend a nice relaxing evening or weekend putting together a small arsenal in your home office.

Sorta brings whole new meaning to desktop publishing a magazine, huh?

I just downloaded a .22 single-shot pistol from DEFCAD, designed by a user named "caboose".  The entire ZIPped-up file was over half a megabyte.  I don't possess a 3D printing setup but in the future, that will probably be a standard appliance in many homes.  I may take a stab at it then, if not sooner.

There's an intriguing article at Venture Beat about DEFCAD, including an interview with site founder Cody Wilson.  Among other things he notes that DEFCAD is getting lots of visits from foreign countries.  Might we speculate that at least some of that is from places with stringent gun control?

Why smuggle in weapons for your revolution when you can just get it off the Internet?

'Course, this will probably mean that 3D printers are soon to become a restricted technology.  But hey, "when 3D prototyping is outlawed..."

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Latest 3-D Printing news: Action figures and functional firearms

The realm of 3-D printing is one that continues to bear watching. A few months ago there was some legal action taken by Games Workshop in regard to a printable 3-D version of one of the company's more iconic models. At the time I remarked that the "Dreadnought" in question was worse than lame, that it was craptacular. I quietly wondered how long would it be before the quality of this kind of thing would catch-up to traditional molding and casting.

Ooh-boy...

From computer scientists at Harvard University comes some new software that will let you print highly-detailed and fully-ARTICULATED action figures! And it's pretty insane how the software does it too: it takes an animated 3-D character and automatically figures out where all the movable joints will be, and figures-in how to manufacture those joints in a real-world model. In other words you could take a picture of Shrek and turn him into a fully poseable toy. Or print your own Star Wars: Clone Wars action figures. Which no doubt Lucasfilm's licensing department would have something to say about that (and you thought Games Workshop's lawyers were bad...). But all the same, the Harvard thinkin' dudes are planning to make their software available commercially. Eventually. Click on the link above for some groovy pics and video of the process in action.

And then there's this lil' application of 3-D printing that's sure to put gun control nuts into conniption fits: The world's first 3-D printed gun.

Yes, it really works too.

Apart from the chamber (which remains solid metal), this .22-caliber pistol is entirely printed plastic. It fires 200 rounds with no apparent wear or damage to the weapon. It was manufactured with an older 3-D printer and about $30 of resin, but its gunsmith - who goes by the Internet nom de plume "HaveBlue" - reckons that it could be made for as little as ten bucks.

So in the very near future, it may not be that big of a hassle to go out and buy a guy at all. Just download the 3-D model from a website like The Pirate Bay or Demonoid and in a few hours time you'll have a fully-functional firearm to defend your home and loved ones with. And with the cost of 3-D printers dropping to the point where one can be sitting in your living room...

I can already envision some politicians are going to hear about this and decide "something must be done about it, think of the childrun...!"

When 3-D printers are outlawed, only outlaws will have 3-D printers :-P

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3-D Printing: The next battleground for digital copyright law?

Been a might busy on numerous fronts lately so I haven't had much of a chance to get in a game of Warhammer 40,000 in awhile (though that also owes to the fact that I've been building up my army of Orks, muhahahahahaha!!!)

Anyhoo, it's from the world of 40K which this next item comes from. Seems that Swedish torrent-trackin' site/political party/new religious denomination The Pirate Bay, which has already made a name for itself letting users search for songs, movies, video games and books, has now added 3-D models to its database.

Which means that through the ever-improving technology of 3-D printing, it is now possible to download physical objects via the Internet.

Here's how it works: you download the model and using a 3-D printer, the computer lays down layer upon layer of plastic or resinous material, gradually building-up a physical object. Right now the technology is still pretty rough, not to mention hideously expensive. But, it's rapidly getting cheaper and more refined...

So only a week or so since The Pirate Bay started offering links to 3-D models and already they're in legal trouble. Lo and behold this first bit o' litigation comes from Games Workshop, the producers of the wildly popular Warhammer 40,000 miniatures wargame. As was reported on the Huffington Post's website, Games Workshop sent a cease and desist order to The Pirate Bay after finding that one user had uploaded a 3-D file from which folks could download a Space Marines Dreadnought.

Lemme 'splain why this is significant. In the universe of 40K, a Dreadnought is a bipedal walking tank piloted by a Space Marine who, though grievously wounded and near death on his own, is given a new lease on life as a cyborg. And the model for this attractive bit of tactical tabletop weaponry costs in the neighborhood of fifty dollars American.

Now you start to understand why Games Workshop is eager to nip this in the bud before it has a chance to blossom. Games Workshop is charging copyright infringement and The Pirate Bay has acquiesced by removing the link to the model's file.

I can see why this will be a problem. And as much as many people complain about the high cost of Games Workshop's models, I for one can understand it. The craftsmanship of that company's artists is top-notch: we're not only buying the models, we're giving compensation to the men and women who come up with these crazy good minis!

But even so, and as many of this blog's readers know already, I have a lot of issues with much of digital copyright law, while at the same time absolutely respecting the rights of the content's originators.

Wanna know what I think? The quality of the finished products are fairly crappy. At least, they are right now. That won't last for much longer though. And when the time comes when 3-D printing is as ubiquitous on our desktops as the monitor and speakers, companies like Games Workshop should not only be ready for it but embrace it as a new market. I can certainly see Games Workshop selling official 3-D models to print via a client application right at your own computer. Need some new appendages for those Tyranids? Just click "buy" and you'll be entitled to one digitally-rights managed set of horrific slashing arms for your gene-stealers! Need more? Simply add to your quantity of purchased product. Easy-peasey, Japan-easy! Games Workshop gets its due and the end user gets official models and parts for his or her army! Hey, that's the model which has worked wonders for iTunes. I don't see any reason why it won't work for 3-D printing either.

There's some exuberant discussion going on right now at Bell of Lost Souls, my favorite 40K-dedicated blog (I visit it several times a day, and they cover a lot of other wargaming mini systems as well). Definitely worth checking out to see what other, more seasoned wargamers are saying about the implications of 3-D printing not only on this hobby but on culture as a whole.

As for how things stack up currently, I don't think Games Workshop needs to worry itself too much. Here's a picture of the printable Dreadnought in question...

Good Lord, that thing is HIDEOUS!! I wouldn't dare bring such a fugly model to the table. Nor would any other respectable 40K player. Even the ones who allowed that one guy to use a Coke can as a substitute for a Carnifex.

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Want a new house? This new gadget will PRINT you out one

3-D printing is starting to become quite a commercially viable technology. And now a smart-thinkin' dude named Enrico Dini has raised the game bigtime with the D-Shape printer: a large-scale printer that consumes sand and along with magnesium-based glue, can churn out furniture, sculpture... and even entire buildings!

Dini suggests that in the future, his technique could be used to quickly establish a base on the Moon by supplying it with native lunar dust and building required structures from there, instead of hauling material from Earth.

Hit here for more about the D-Shape printer, which will probably be pretty cheap when it comes to market... but the cost of the ink cartridges will be insane! :-P

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3D printing of an unborn baby

I'd already thought that 3D printing is one of the neatest new technologies to have come along in recent years.

But look at what Jorge Lopes, a design student and doctoral candidate of the Royal College of Art, has done with it...

Marrying ultrasound imaging and MRI data to the rapid prototyping process, Lopes has engineered a way to create a life-sized exact model of a human fetus while it's within its mother's womb!

Whoa.

Lopes foresees the technology being used in the near future to give expectant parents a model of their forthcoming new arrival, as well as becoming useful in treating birth defects.

Absolutely, unbelievably mind-boggling stuff. Jorge Lopes is a genius!

Click here for the rest of the story and more amazing photos!

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