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In GE they know what is the future of work and there are probably no human workers in it

What else can it build? ... a world without work ...

Here is a new promotional video from General Electric where they show a "factory" with 3d printers and robots. Video ends with the question "What else can it build?".

Once upon a time, a factory built one thing. Now, a factory can build as many things as there are people to imagine them.
GE works on things that matter. The best people and the best technologies taking on the toughest challenges. Finding solutions in energy, health and home, transportation and finance. Building, powering, moving and curing the world. Not just imagining. Doing. GE works.

I see human workers in this video as decoration and corporate marketing

Theoretically there could be a large robotic factories in internationals waters without any workers and in tax-free regime ...
Humans are not even needed for design ...

Will it cause global dystopic favela or utopia of technoprogressive heaven ... or both like in Elysium ...

Another question that comes to my mind is can new factories even be called "factories". They are basically just a one big large fabrication machine ...

Future will be interesting ...

free sketchup model modern villa #26 with vrmesh & proxy vray material

MODERN VILLA #26
This impressive contribution is a courtesy of Jason Diocera , author of the 3D visualization, and to Jeffrey Vallejo Tanate , author of the 3d model (made in sketchup 2014) both 3D Visualizer and CAD Designer, that have wanted to share with us both the 3d model, that the vray materials , used for the realization of the render.
The file in fact contains a real treasure of useful vray materials: Maserati and Audi car with Proxy and Vrmesh, palm and trees with proxy, vrmesh and sketchup 3d model, and finally, the HDRI image used to render the scene made with vray 2.0.
A big thanks to Jason and Jeffrey for your support!

Download HERE 3d sketchup model villa#26 | rar file 188 MB

PASSOWORD 26jason

ATTENTION : the password to extract the file, must be typed, do not copy and paste

vray 2.0 render by Jason Diocera

26#-sketchup-3d-model_Modern-Villa-vray-proxy-and-hdri-

you can not upload this job on your website or on your blog

TAKE NOTE HERE OUR DISCLAIMER

DIY 3d printers controlled with Raspberry Pi ONLY

I will get a Raspberrry Pi soon so I wanted to see what can bt done with it beside using it as a server, so I found that you could use a Pi and its GPIOs to directly control the stepper drivers, fan, heater and other aspect of a 3d printer without any additional processing electronics. So, entire 3d printer is controlled by a single Raspberry Pi only.

First project I found was the one by Owen Jeffreys who actually calls it "The World's First Raspberry PI 3D Printer" and it was reported on many 3d printing blogs.

Owen's project description:

This video briefly outlines the building and testing of a unique, home-built, 3D printer which uses a Raspberry PI as its "brain" or CPU.

If you Google (or Bing!) Raspberry PI 3D printer you will find several people who claim to have made "Raspberry PI *Powered* 3D Printers", but if you examine them in detail, they are not actually *powered* by the Raspberry PI at all. These people use the standard firmware which comes with the 3D printer and replace the PC interface with the Raspberry PI - hence the PI is not controlling/powering the printer at all, but simply sending buffered GCODE commands to the pre-built printer and acting as a neat user interface to display print progress etc. This unique 3D printer is not like those; the PI actually controls every part of the machine including, but limited to the motors, heaters and temperature sensors. The 800MHz PI runs the time-critical (virtually real-time), dedicated program with great ease making it possible for a 3-dimensional, plastic (ABS or PLA) model to be printed layer by layer.

This 3D printer was designed and built as an individual, level 3, engineering project, chosen by me as I owned a PI and wanted to do something useful and unique with it which would help people who dismiss the PI to realise that it is capable of a lot more than they could possible imagine. It was a very challenging task covering a whole range of engineering fields. Almost every part of the 3D printer was made from scratch, including, but not limited to, the circuit board, the aluminium framework, the drive system and the C++ program to run on the PI.

The PI can be hooked up to a HDTV or laptop to display the print progress and other useful information, or it can run completely stand-alone. The 3D printer runs at around ¼ speed compared to a typical, hobby 3D printer (e.g. RapMan, Cube or Touch), taking around 25 hours to print a 60mm high chess piece – the speed only limited by the stepper motor choice and gearing.

It took approximately eight months to complete and would not have been possible without the help from family, friends, teachers and instructors. In particular, the help from an exceptional teacher and project supervisor, Laurence Hyett, was invaluable and very much appreciated. Although this 3D printer works, the project is not entirely complete - there is still room for improvement. One such improvement which is underway is to modify the interface board used to connect the PI to the 3D printer from a hand-etched, double-sided PCB to a compact “shield” which will stack neatly on top of any PI. Faster print speeds and a twin print head are also being considered.

Any common 3D CAD package can be used to create a 3D model which can be sent to the PI to be printed, alternatively a 3D model from a collection of many thousands can be downloaded from Thingiverse for free. The test piece in this video was designed by me using a professional 3D modelling package widely used in the CG film world, but there are a number of cheap or even free packages which are just as good. I'd personally recommend "Blender" for those that are interested, as it is a completely free, open source, community contributed project which is unbelievingly powerful

Owen has not yet released any code with his project.
In response to this claim, Colin aka. "Wallacoloo" commented that there are probably three projects developed earlier and one of them is his called the Printipi.

Printipi is well documented on GitHub with all the code available:

https://github.com/Wallacoloo/printipi

Printipi project description:

Printipi is a software package designed to bring 3d printing to the Raspberry Pi. It takes on all of the roles generally given to dedicated microcontrollers (interfacing with stepper drivers, temperature control of the hotend, and cooling fans) while also running under an operating system. This means that the same device that is running the firmware can also perform other tasks while printing, such as hosting a web interface like Octoprint.

Although called Printipi, it is not necessarily limited to running on the Pi. The Example machine can compile and run on most Linux machines, as a proof of concept (it does no electrical I/O), and new machines can be supported by implementing a handful of interfaces (see the section below for more info).

Printipi also aims to support a multitude of printers including typical cartesian printers, delta-style printers like the Kossel, or polar-based printers - without the messy use of hundreds of #defines, some of which may not even be applicable to your printer. Instead, each machine type gets its own file and C++ class under src/drivers/machines that exposes its coordinate system and peripherals through a handful of public member functions and typedefs. In this way it is possible to add support for a new type of printer without digging into the guts of Printipi.

Third project is piPrint by Ian D. Miller and Kenan Bitikofer

piPrint is well documented on GitHub with all the code available, but it is under heavy developemnt:
https://github.com/iandouglas96/piPrint

and fourth project is by Dado Sebo but no further information is available:

Using Pi is not an optimal solution but it is interesting project, there will probably bi more developments in the future.

Simple desktop DIY CNC mill with detailed construction guide

If you made your own 3d printer you will nbe able to make this simple and small desktop cnc mill that will expand your tool options. It can engrave and make PCBs and any other thing you can imagine.

The project is developed by Instructables user liquidhandwash and it is made with 3d printed plastic parts, Arduino Uno, lasercut acrylic plates for frame (hand cut wood looks doable also), NEMA style motors and other simple parts. The spindle motor was recycled from an old cordless drill. There is no exact price but it looks very affordable.

Very detailed construction guide, software and all the files needed can be found at:

http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-printed-CNC-mill/?ALLSTEPS

So much interesting projects, so little time ...

FlatFab software lets you design in 2d surfaces to make 3d objects for CNC cutting

FlatFab is a new CAD software that lets you intuitively design with two dimensional surfaces which you can then combine in 3d objects. It looks ideal for designing furniture or objects for CNC cutting.

I'm really getting interested in CNC cutting and milling since you can make larger functional objects like furniture from cheap materials like plywood.

Here is a simple FlatFab tutorial:

FlatFab homepage where you can download the software: http://flatfab.com/

There is no information on price or open source availability. It looks like it is in early stages of development so new features and improvements can be expected. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Update:

Here is a response from FlatFab team member:

"hi, flatfab is not open source at the moment, but it is FREE, and we intend to keep it that way. we also plan to grow with our user community so try it out and keep your feature requests coming."

Nice job FlatFab!

FlatFab user interface

Small pencil holder made with FlatFab

Update:

here is flatfab UIST 2014 presentation "Interactive modeling with planar sections":

German guy made a large 3d printed toy gun that folds and shoots paper planes

A German guy made a 3d printed "machine gun" that folds and fires paper planes! Now, how cool is THAT! It is powered by cordless screwdriver from China.

The youtube channel is : Papierfliegerei

The homepage is: http://papierfliegerei.de/ and there are some nice paper airplane designs! It is in German but the wonderful people of Google gave us Google Translate ....

Kerbal Space Program DIY 3d printed game controller based on Apollo guidance computer

Reddit user KK4TEE made this awesome must-have 3d printed game accessory if you are Kerbal Space Program fan. It is a custom designed game controller that lets you read flight data and pilot your in-game spaceship. The device is powered by Arduino and communicates with Telemachus module inside the game. The design is based on original DSKY Apollo guidance computer.
I tried playing Kerbal Space Program some time ago and loved it but I lack time and concentration so I left it ... maybe sometimes in the future I'll have all the time I need ...

Great work KK4TEE!

Reddit thread about enclosure build:

http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/2gnxrb/3d_printed_dsky_i_made_for_ksp/

and here is a thread about construction of electronics board:

http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1s1hn6/my_custom_ksp_control_board/

All the files needed for 3d printing the enclosure:

https://github.com/KK4TEE/3DSKY

All the code and instructions needed for Arduino to communicate with Telemachus module inside Kerbal Space Program:

https://github.com/KK4TEE/Control-Panel

All images from the project:

Ghost Gunner is a desktop weapon making CNC that will raise a lot of controversy and fear mongering

Defense Distributed know for their work on 3d printed guns released the Ghost Gunner. It is a small simplified desktop CNC machine that can finish a specific type of metal gun receiver. The controversy is that the receiver is the only gun part that is tracked in USA. Other parts to finish the complete gun one can purchase freely in the USA. Media is already hyping this news as "machine that is producing METAL guns untraceable by law enforcement". So few things to consider before panicking:

Everything this machine does can be made by hand easily with simple power tools
The machine development is closely linked to USA law and gun part market, since other countries have different definitions of what a traceable gun part is.
A change in the law, for example: making gun barrels traceable also can make it completely obsolete. Granted, someone can then develop open source gun barrel maker (which is much more complex then this CNC) ... even so, most of countries have much stricter gun laws then USA
CNC machines that can perform all this functions are available on the market for decades with slightly higher prices (which will drop in the future anyway)

It will be interesting to watch how this technology develops in the future and how will the lawmakers and media react to it. It will be also interesting to see how will the usage scenarios develop.
This machine makes only one thing now from semi-finished aluminum object, but it looks like it could be programmed to make other designs so DIY gunsmithing ecosystem could emerge.

Ghost Gunner technical specifications:

Machinable dimensions: 175 x 75 x 60mm (~6.75 x 2.95 x 2.35")
Maximum part dimensions: 230 x 90 x 100mm (~9.05 x 3.50 x 3.90")
Overall footprint: 330 x 280mm (~13 x 11")
Weight: 20kg (~45 pounds)
Spindle Speed: 10,000+ RPM (Final Value TBD)
Requirements: Windows 7 or higher. Mac version TBD.
Price: in 1199 USD range

https://ghostgunner.net/

About Ghost Gunner from their page:

Ghost Gunner is a non-profit open source hardware effort by Defense Distributed. Ghost Gunner builds on the open source community's existing hard work, including the gshield 3 axis motion hardware, the grbl g-code parser and motion controller, and the legendary Arduino microcontroller. All GhostGunner schematics and design files will be published into the public domain. Defense Distributed decided to build our own machine from the ground up. We found existing CNC machines too expensive, too DIY, or too inaccurate to manufacture firearms for the casual user. By miniaturizing the build envelope to just large enough to mill common firearm receivers, we were able to improve rigidity, reduce material cost and simultaneously relax some design limits, allowing us to sell an inexpensive machine with more than enough accuracy to manufacture firearms.

Ghost Gunner has undergone several design revisions to reduce machine chatter, backlash, and jitter, all with the goal of keeping total design cost low. Rather than using plastic, wood, or even an aluminum frame, Ghost Gunner is constructed with maximally rigid plasma-cut A36 steel and 304 stainless steel. In addition, the machine part count is greatly reduced compared to a traditional CNC, which both increases rigidity and further decreases cost. The end result is a small, cheap, and simple machine that exceeds most consumer-priced CNC machine specifications.

Ghost Gunner is a miniature CNC machine designed to automatically manufacture publicy created designs with nearly zero user interaction. No prior CNC knowledge or experience is required to manufacture from design files. Defense Distributed's first design is the venerable AR-15 lower receiver. Ghost Gunner automatically finds and aligns your 80% lower receiver to the machine, with simple installation instructions, point and click software and all required tools. Just follow a few simple instructions to mount your 80% lower receiver, tighten a couple screws (with simple tools we provide), and on day one, Ghost Gunner can help you legally manufacture unserialized firearms in the comfort of your own home.

As shipped, Ghost Gunner can manufacture any mil-spec 80% AR-15 lower receiver that already has the rear take down well milled out. Lowers with non-mil-spec trigger guards that are otherwise mil-spec are also compatible.

Ghost Gunner is capable of manufacturing more than just firearm receivers. With Defense Distributed's open source Physibles Development SDK (pDev), designers can distribute files via our '.dd' file format, which contains all installation and assembly instructions, any required jig files to hold the part in place (that users can print with a 3D printer), and all machine definitions and code to physically manufacture a particular design.
To a casual user, the .dd file is a one-stop solution to manufacturing any aluminum physible that the public can design to fit into the build envelope. Defense Distributed will be developing in and supporting this format, and we are happy to publish your own innovations and contributions.

Here is more detailed analysis by Firearm blog if you are interested in guns:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/10/02/thoughts-defense-distributed-ghost-gunner/

Rifle receiver made by Ghost Gunner, source: ghostgunner.net

Update (24.2.2015.):

FedEx refuses to ship and deliver Ghost Gunner and they claim it is not regulated by law:

http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/23/cody-wilsons-ghost-gunner-banned-by-fede

Jon's homemade CNC router converted into DIY 3d printer

If you want to see another homemade CNC machine converted to 3d printer go and see Jon's project

http://www.jonshobbies.com/convert-a-cnc-router-to-a-3d-printer.html

He still controls this cnc 3d printer with Mach3 software. Since it has heavy aluminum gantry and was designed for routing, it is lot slower when 3d printing.

Here is his machine in action printing a whistle:

This is Jon's home made CNC router before conversion:

And here is the 3d print head attachment after it:

To learn more about Mach3 used for 3d printing and cnc to 3d printer conversions start here:

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2014/01/turn-your-cnc-into-3d-printer-with-add.html

How to upgrade your Velleman K8200 3d printer into CNC mill and drill

Velleman K8200 (or 3Drag) is 3d printer type with many users and with developed upgrade ecosystem. Here is a detailed guide on how to upgrade it into desktop CNC mill / drill machine ideal for PCB milling with simple alterations and attachments to basic model machine. Mill is usually a Dremel or similar multitool.

Detailed guide with all the steps and softwarecan be found at:

http://www.open-electronics.org/how-to-transform-your-3drag-3d-printer-in-a-cnc-milling-machine/

YT user under alias DCM made similar DIY modification to his Velleman K8200 making it into CNC mill and drill with air cleaning and here is video and forum post demonstrating it:

http://forum.velleman.eu/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=10292

Vray for sketchup proxy package #3 Ivy - vrmesh and vrmat

Let us thank very much Thilina Liyanage for this great package that contains 2 new very useful ivy proxy materials vray for sketchup, complete with vrmesh and vrmat file, and the 3D model made in sketchup, as you can see in the render below

For those who wishes to deepen how to use the 3d proxy material click here for tutorial

Download here grass proxy package #3 - rar file 37 MB

PASSWORD 3thilina

ATTENTION : the password to extract the file, must be typed, do not copy and paste

ivy proxy vray for sketchup materials by Thilina Liyanage

you can not upload this job on your website or on your blog

TAKE NOTE HERE OUR DISCLAIMER

ROBOpuppet low cost 3d printed control unit for industrial robots

"Robots are hard to drive. ROBOPuppet exists to make them easier to drive." This is a first sentence on ROBOpuppet "About" page and it explains this project perfectly.

ROBOpuppet is basically a miniature copy of full size industrial robot that you can move and use it as simple low cost control unit. All the movements of the ROBopuppet are followed by the big robot.

This teleoperation control unit can be made for as low as 85 USD.

http://www.iu.edu/~motion/robopuppet/

You can make this robot control unit yourself. All the files and instructions are published at:

http://www.iu.edu/~motion/robopuppet/method.html

How to make a solar water desalination and purification still from a plastic bottle and 3d printed ring container

CreatorLes made this interesting project which uses waste plastic bottles and simple 3d printed part to make a solar still that can be used as an cheap water desalinator or purifier. The water inside bottle evaporates in sun and looses salt or microorganisms and is made good for human consumption.
His idea is to use it in emergencies or developing countries without adequate access to clean water.

I would like to see further testing in realistic conditions and also the economics calculations of large(r) scale deployment. How much water can it clean or desalinate under which conditions? I messaged Les and his estimate is that it will take about dozen bottles for one person per day.

Used plastic bottles can be found even on remote uninhabited islands and DIY 3d printers are also emerging in the poorest of countries made from electronic waste.

Good project Les!

He also presents a method of ppurifyingwater without need for 3d printed parts and three (glass?) containers:

All the files and instructions can be found at:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:464463

In addition here you can see a simple solar still made from a plastic bottle and an aluminum can you can make without any machining and purify water. The video is made by Thomas Kim.

This is not a first project for water purification on small scale that uses 3d printing.

The first project that I know of is WaterMaker by Cem Schnitzler, which uses more complex and larger cone structure and industrial grade 3d printers and high tech materials.

The STL for Water Maker files can be found at:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ktoi0ccu25l8jjf/WaterMaker.zip

It works like this:

Here is a different still, the WaterCone that uses similar principles but it is made with traditional production methods: