Our friends at Direct Dimensions in Owings Mills, Maryland, will be "creating a 3D CAD model" of the Roberto Clemente Bridge in our hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The resulting files will then be used to create 3D prints of the bridge for an upcoming RAPID + TCT show being held in Pittsburgh in May.
Pittsburgh, long recognized for its sports accomplishments, is becoming well known as a Center of Excellence in Additive Manufacturing as well.
RapidMade especially enjoys working on projects designed to improve the lives of others. And we are thrilled when we get to see them "in action." Recently SweetSense asked us to 3D print SLS parts that were used to produce remote sensors in Kenya that allow residents to better maintain water supplies and sanitary latrines.
According to Taylor Sharpe, SweetSense is a "social enterprise" that is a spin-off of the Portland State SWEET Lab and partners with other agencies to provide high-tech solutions to problems faced by residents in developing countries.
“...in one case monitoring boreholes (deep water pumps that service 100s to 1000s of people) in Isiolo and Turkana counties in Kenya; and in the other case helping manage collection routines and operator issues of Sanergy Fresh Life latrines in the Mukuru informal settlements outside of Nairobi, Kenya.”
For one of its initiatives, it has partnered with Sanergy to produce a
“rugged enclosure that contains an occupancy sensor and am RFID reader, to respectively estimate the fill level of latrines before conversion to fertilizer and to give Fresh Life Operators a direct line of contact with Sanergy HQ in the case of emergencies.”
In another, the Sat Spacer, SweetSense worked with Kenya RAPID...
“RapidMade parts were used to allow SweetSense to provide satellite-based monitoring in areas with no cellular coverage.”
Development model shown to Portland city council for project approval.
Click image to read case study.
One of the juicier projects we've had involved 3D scanning real 10-lb crabs to recreate life-like replicas for Bering Sea Crab Fisherman's Tour. The captain and his crew take tourists out on the high seas in the summer to watch them work. Unfortunately, they were losing much of their inventory recreating their catches - this was both costly and unsustainable.
Once we 3D scanned the real thing, we 3D printed a master pattern which was used to create a mold. The mold allowed RapidMade to cast the crab look alikes in urethane rubber. See the results here.
RapidMade's founders were recently interviewed by U.S. News and World for an article explaining how 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, has helped entrepreneurs innovate.
Here's an excerpt from the story which was published on line this week:
“Renee and Mark Eaton, with their son Micah Chaban, founded RapidMade, a 3-D printing, manufacturing and engineering company, based in Portland, Oregon, in 2011. About to graduate from the University of Oregon, Chaban told his parents he was contemplating job searching in Germany. Living in England at the time, the Eatons had read an article in “The Economist” on 3-D printing and the idea for RapidMade was born.
’We had both worked in manufacturing for years and were disheartened that so many kids were gravitating to lower-paying service jobs because high-tech manufacturing jobs either weren’t well known or readily available,’ Renee Eaton, chief executive officer of RapidMade, wrote in an email.
’During our careers, we had both been forced to close or downsize plants and relocate production, so we wanted very much to bring back manufacturing. We thought Additive Manufacturing (3D printing) was a great local and sustainable way to do that.’
She explained that entrepreneurs can develop and evaluate a design in little time with rapid prototyping and that by using 3-D printing to create tools, they can decrease lead times and cost. Most of RapidMade’s customers are new to 3-D printing, and the company’s engineers can help determine the best technology to create a product from a design, she wrote.”
Photo Credit: Joe Shearer/The Daily Nonpareil via AP
Iowans have 3D scanned the historic Dark Angel Statue in Council Bluff, IA in an effort to preserve this piece of art. The statue, officially a memorial to the wife of a local Civil War general, is 96 years old and was sculpted by Daniel Chester French, who is better known for another work of his-the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The people of Council Bluffs raised enough money to get the statue scanned so that if any parts break off or if it falls into disrepair, it can be easily replicated with the exact dimensions of the original design. The community is happy with its investment in the preservation of the local landmark and historic work of art.
If only ancient Egyptians had had the technology, we would know what the Sphinx’s nose looked like.
Photo Credit: Shell/3Dprint.com
2D engineering drawings fail to capture the minds and hearts of lay people. I remember Nabisco engineers willingly sharing their blue prints with production employees to coax their input and buy in to equipment designs and line lay outs. These machines and lines can cost millions of dollars, so there's a real need to "get it right the first time." Invariably there would often be miscommunication and frustration when both parties thought they were getting what they needed only to discover when the equipment was delivered and the line was installed that they had missed the mark - sometimes quite literally. One time, the operator was on one side of the line and the controls were on the other!
Now, 3D printing and rapid prototyping allow stakeholders to physically see, touch and manipulate what is being proposed. They can more easily assess what will work and what won't, saving time, money and aggravation.
In one such situation, Shell Oil recently produced a prototype that allowed the firm to design and construct an elaborate buoy. As one executive explained
“that for the offshore crews in particular there are challenges due to the high cost of installation. Patterson also says that their crews in ‘the Americas’ have been exploring 3D printing for prototyping. Upon working in the Stones project in the Gulf of Mexico—about 200 miles southwest of New Orleans—engineers were faced with how to put together enormous blocks of syntactic foam into a buoy that would need to disconnect to an FPSO (Floating Production Storage and Offloading) vessel area at what is going to go down in history as the world’s deepest water installation at 2,900m of water.”
Can you imagine hauling something that large, expensive and complex out to sea only to discover it didn't work as engineered? This is a great example of why rapid prototyping was one of the earliest applications of 3D printing technology.
If you are interested in learning more about how rapid prototyping can improve your next project, please contact RapidMade.
Photo Credit: Brittany Herbert/Mashable
New Balance joins Nike, Adidas and others in the race to gain a foothold in the 3D printed shoe market. NB has announced a new $400 sneaker that utilizes additive manufacturing. As technology develops, shoe companies are looking for new, innovative ways to make shoes stronger, more comfortable, more versatile and adaptive. The sneaker touts a new porous insole that molds to the wearer’s foot. This is another example of how 3D printed wearables are becoming more prominent and how the expansion of 3D printing technology is spurring creativity in industry. Time will tell if the industry has put its right foot forward.
As Pittsburgh natives, we've been awaiting the Opening of GE's New Additive Manufacturing Facility there. The Grand Opening was earlier this week. Officially named the Center for Additive Technology Advancement (CATA), the plant is officially located southwest of the city near the airport in Findlay Township. The move symbolizes GE's belief that improving the speed and effectiveness of additive manufacturing will give it a strategic advantage. Just "down the road" from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh - Hail Pitt - perhaps GE will collaborate with these schools on AM research.
According to Business Wire,
“The new facility represents a $39 million investment over three years and will result in the creation of 50 high-tech engineering jobs initially, in disciplines ranging from mechanical and electrical to systems and software engineering. This is GE’s first multi-modal site in the U.S., designed as an innovation hub offering training and development in both design and applications.”
Having lived through the repeated Pittsburgh-based plant closings of the 80s and 90s, personally we're hoping this is just the beginning of a bright, high-tech renaissance for SW Pennsylvania.
Photo Credit: NewHistorian.com
We've written before about using 3D printing to create artwork and artifacts. These stories are especially interesting to us given that RapidMade has been privileged to 3D print both originals and replicas. And apparently we are in good company...
In another brilliant example of this approach, Cambridge University is 3D scanning and printing reproductions of Ox bones. During the Shang Dynasty in China, roughly 1339 BCE-1112 BCE, oracles would inscribe their writings on Ox bones which are being recreated for research and educational purposes. These bones provide insight into the way of life during the Shang Dynasty. Archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians alike can now safely continue to learn from the information contained in these bones while ensuring their preservation. The university’s collection contains over 600 bones (that is a lot of scanning and printing) which will now be more readily available for study due to these replicas.
We've blogged before about ventures that have involved 3D printing houses. Now, UCLA researchers are working on a 3D printing process that allows them to reuse captive carbon dioxide as an ingredient in cement. They call their revolutionary material CO2NCRETE.
Now that they've identified a process that works, the team is thinking about how to scale up and commercialize it so the 3D printed CO2NCRETE can be marketed and sold:
“We know how to capture the carbon. We know how to improve the efficiency. We know how to shape it with 3D printing, but we need to do all of that at the lab scale now, and begin the process of actually increasing the volume of material and then thinking about how to pilot it commercially,” states DeShazo, who has been responsible for providing ‘public policy and economic guidance’ in terms of this research.”
Maybe someday, the 3D printed cement can be used to 3D print those houses.
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Credit: 3Dprint.com
Dr. Ralph Mobbs of the Sydney Spine Clinic turned to 3D printing to save the life of a patient suffering from a rare form of cancer. Drage Josevski was diagnosed with chordoma, a cancer that affects the spine. His case was especially difficult because the tumor was located in his top two vertebrae. Dr. Mobbs performed a landmark procedure that replaced the vertebrae with a 3D printed titanium implant. Josevski’s surgery was a success, and he is in rehabilitation to adjust to the implant. This achievement is yet another example of the possibilities 3D printing creates for the medical field.
Credit: Andy Wood
We've posted before about artists using 3D Scanning and Printing to recreate antiquities damaged by ISIS and to digitally catalog priceless exhibits. Another effort is being undertaken by an Iranian artist in Mosul, Iraq.
Morrehshin Allhyari is working on an exhibition of 3D printed replicas of artifacts destroyed at the Nineveh Museum in Mosul, Iraq by ISIS. Taking images and 3D scans of the museum’s collection, Morrehshin is able to replicate the lost artifacts with 3D printers: “The more files that are saved on people's computers, even if they’re never printed, the number of PDF files that are read or kept, the more that history that was initially removed by ISIS will be saved.” The exhibition is titled “Material Speculation” and is widely seen as an act of historic preservation, political activism, and art, simultaneously. It also makes a great point of the pragmatism of using 3D scanning and printing technology for museum collections and historic exhibitions.
Photo Credit: 3Dprintingindustry.com
One popular application of 3D printing is creating exact reproductions of antiquities. As is often the case, museums want to display artifacts but face challenges making priceless objects available to the public. The latest example of this technique is the recreation of the Iceman.
Ötzi - the Iceman, the oldest European mummy, was replicated by Additive Manufacturing. Two 3D replicas have been made for display at the South Tyrol Museum in Italy. Using CAT scans taken of Ötzi, the models were rendered and printed using 3D engineering and manufacturing techniques. Once printed and assembled, a rubber mold was applied to the replicas, which were then sculpted and painted. Because Ötzi needs to be preserved, he will be stored in stable conditions while visitors of the museum can see these identical models.
The prospect of medical teams being able to print replacement body parts is exciting. As someone who has experienced reconstructive surgery, the idea that surgeons can perfectly recreate an exact match brings great hope. Patients would no longer have to rely on artistry and good fortune - or repeated surgeries - to obtain symmetrical, life-like results.
New 3D printing technology created by a team at Wake Forest University in North Carolina is showing great promise reliably printing human tissue and organs. Bioprinting, as it is known, is a big leap for medical technology and is now coming into its own as an effective and beneficial means of healthcare and healing. The bioprinter works similarly to other 3D printers, but instead of printing in metals or plastics, it prints hydrogels containing human cells. What is special about this new printer is that the tissue that it prints is able to accept blood vessels and therefore essentially keep the cells alive. This research is especially exciting for the medical community, which is already looking to the future and the potential that this technology has for us.
It is now easy to make your own custom solder-free circuit boards through 3D printing. An independent creator on DIY website Instructables has 3D printed its own personally designed circuit board. The circuit board was created in CAD, printed, and its trace channels lined with conductive material. Once built, this circuit board does not require solder to establish working electrical connections, an easier and cleaner way of building your own circuit boards. This is perfect for hobbyists but also indicative of the many custom applications 3D printing can have in technology development. Read the article for more details on how to build your own custom circuit board.
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The Oregon Manufacturing Awards are intended to recognize Oregon Manufacturers. This is one of the few public awards programs for manufacturers in the United States. We're honoring manufacturing firms from all over our region for outstanding operations, products, facilities, and most importantly, the best manufacturing workforces in the world.
As part of the awards program, Tim Boyle, CEO of Columbia Sportswear will be joining us for a live Q&A with Publisher Craig Wessel. Tim is at the helm of the 70 year old sportswear apparel giant which his grandparents began in 1938. Although it is a public company today, Columbia remains a family affair. Boyle's 91-year-old mother Gertrude, aka "one tough mother" is chairman of the board, and both his son Joe and sister Sarah Bany are on the board. Tim started working at the company after his father passed away, helping his mother Gert run the fledgling retailer while he was finishing college. He took over as CEO in 1989.
Don't miss this conversation with this fascinating Oregon company, and discussion on where Columbia is headed in the future!
Companies being recognized this year are:
