Beat Screen Addiction

Excessive screen time is rewiring our brains

Consider this: what if the various laptop, tablet and smartphone screens surrounding you are reshaping your brain to the same extent that they have already reshaped your daily habits? Think about it for a moment.

Instead of talking with a friend over the phone or walking over to a colleague’s desk to ask for feedback, you can forego real-time face-to-face conversation with the help of emails and…

Boffles, an Auckland-based 3D Printing Initiative

If you don’t have a 3D printer at home but you’re a pretty accomplished 3D designer, there are now plenty of great web-based services that let you submit your STL files and print your designs. You can probably find a 3D printer close to homewho charges a competitive rate by using an online network like 3D Hubs or MakeXYZ. Even if you’re short on 3D design skills, you can still locate a vast…

A German museum has put on display a copy of Vincent van Gogh’s ear that was grown using genetic material provided by one of the 19th-century Dutch artist’s living relatives.

The Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe said artist Diemut Strebe made the replica using living cells from Lieuwe van Gogh, the great-great-grandson of Vincent’s brother Theo. Using a 3D-printer, the cells were shaped to…

Nasa emails spanner to space station

Astronauts on the International Space Station have used their 3-D printer to make a wrench from instructions sent up in an email.

It is the first time hardware has been “emailed” to space. Nasa was responding to a request by ISS commander Barry Wilmore for a ratcheting socket wrench.

Previously, if astronauts requested a specific item they could have waited months for it to be flown up on one of…

2015 3D Printer Guide

3D Printing is getting bigger and bigger, when will you join the revolution? International 3D printing broker 3D Hubs has put together the ultimate 2015 3D printer buying guide. With a choice of 235 different printers, I’m sure you’ll be able to find the right printer for you.

There are printers for enthusiasts, looking for a reliable machine that consistently produces high quality prints. These…

Here’s a fun project for the entire family: unleash your creativity, draw your own unique custom cookie cutter, and download the file to have it 3D printed by us. The drawing board makes it easy to design a cookie cutter using an image file or simply your imagination. The fastest way to get started with CookieCasteris to upload an image to trace, like we have done with the kiwi image above. Have…

123D Catch Android App

Autodesk 123D Catch is now available as an appfor your Android smart phone. This cool free software let’s you create 3D scans of virtually any object. 123D Catch is making use of a technique called ‘photogrammetry’, which is the science of making measurements from photographs, especially for recovering the exact positions of surface points. You circle around the object and take several…

Break a bone, 3D printing makes it fun and social

#CAST is the new way to customize your broken arm cast with personal messages aggregated from your family and friends through social media. Using the latest in advanced manufacturing technologies and 3D CAD software, an arm can be 3D scanned at a doctor’s office and a one-of-a-kind cast made in a breathable nylon material using an additive technology called Selective Laser Sintering (SLS).

Using…

It may seem paradoxical that a lounge chair entirely made in polyamide, the artificial polymer also known as nylon, is more natural and sustainable than any soft seat made by more traditional manufacturing methods. Yet that is exactly the case for this biomimicry 3D printed soft seat created by design student Lilian van Daal.

The soft seat, which is her graduation project, uses 3D printing…

Health effects of operating a 3D printer

3D printers are gaining popularity as rapid prototyping and small scale manufacturing devices. The development of low-cost desktop versions has made this technology widely accessible for use in home and office settings. Previous studies of moderately high temperature thermal processing of thermoplastics in large scale industrial extrusion equipment have shown that both gases and particles are…

While most of us probably are not aware of the elephant captivity problems, they are quite significant. Worldwide, there are 25,000 elephants that are currently held in captivity, with 4,000-5,000 being used in the tourism industry. Elephant rides remain extremely popular in countries like Thailand, India, and Nepal.

“Most of the captive elephants in the tourism industry have been captured…

New Zealand students get $27.5m pledge to advance 3D skills

New Zealand secondary schools, vocational institutions and universities will soon be granted free access to software company Autodesk’s professional 3D design software and creativity apps.

It is part of a pledge, estimated by the company to be worth NZ$27.5 million, to promote careers in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics to students across Australia and New Zealand. It is…

My Little 3D Printed Pony

One of the challenging questions in 3D Printing is how to handle intellectual property (IP). Since anyone can scan a copyrighted design and then 3D print it on their home machine, large companies with strong brands and their legal counsel are grappling with how to protect themselves in this new fabrication world. Although those of us in the trenches know that the man or woman on the street cannot…

Selling my Makerbot 2X

A bit of self-promotion this time: I’m selling my Makerbot Replicator 2X. This cool printer has offered me a lot of fun (total runtime: 900 hours) and is still working great, but now it’s time to upgrade to a printer with a larger printbed. If you are located in New Zealand, you can get yourself a bargain now!

Will mass customisation lead to the 3D printing break-through?

Next month music lovers will be able to walk into a store in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood and order personalised headphones that are manufactured to the exact specifications of their ears, representing a new wave in the 3D printing revolution.

Headphone manufacturer Normalis just one of many new retailers looking to profit from what is being called ‘on-demand 3D printing’ or ‘mass…

Will 3D Printed Fingerprints pose a security risk?

Until about 20 years ago, fingerprint scans weren’t that common, and were generally only used for law enforcement to identify criminals. Today, however, fingerprints are used in various situations, from border security to commercial applications such as the iPhone unlocking touch-ID.

Typically, when a new fingerprint scanner is created, researchers run millions of fingerprint images through the…