3D Printing

3D Printing

Postby winston » Thu Mar 08, 2012 7:56 pm

3D Printing: How "Desktop Factories" Will Create the Next $1 Trillion Industry By Michael Robinson

Don't worry if you've never heard of 3D printing. It's so new it's not on many radar screens yet.

But soon everyone will know about it.

Still in its very early stages, 3D printing is destined to have a huge impact on the entire world economy.

These "desktop factories" will one day become a $1 trillion industry-completely changing the traditional factory model forever.

It's what's known as a "disruptive technology."

Here's why...

By the end of this decade, everyone from consumers to big businesses to solo inventors will be able to make their own unique products in just a couple of hours.

Need a special tool?... Or a new spare part?

Soon you will be able to fire up the 3D printer and make one from composite materials.

Indeed, I recently watched a YouTube video of Z Corp. making an adjustable wrench from high-tech compounds. It was a copy made from metal.

Though it weighed less than the original, the "printed" wrench worked just as well and looked every bit as strong.

And let's not gloss over the medical products that can be created by these revolutionary printers. An 83-year-old woman in Europe recently received a new jaw doctors printed with titanium powder.

Medical team members said they made the implant in just a few hours compared with the several days usually required with existing methods.

That's why I say this technology symbolizes the Era of Radical Change. Now, anyone who knows computer basics can make or invent products on the fly.

http://moneymorning.com/2012/03/08/3d-p ... -industry/
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: New Technologies

Postby winston » Sun Apr 08, 2012 8:56 pm

The Biggest Tech Breakthrough in 50 Years By Michael A. Robinson

There are somewhere between two and three billion computers in the world right now.

And every last one is about to become obsolete.

Sorry, but yes, that goes for the computer you're using to read this.

It's a fundamental redesign of computing power that has been 50 years in the making.

You could probably manage to hang on to your current computer for a year or two, if you're patient.

But once your friends and neighbors start showing off the incredible speed and power of their new gadgets, or it turns out that incredible new software you've been eyeing won't run on your current computer, well, it's only a matter of time until you'll sign up this game-changing upgrade.

And consumer upgrades are just the beginning.

I predict this key breakthrough technology will soon have a dramatic impact on everything from artificial intelligence and robotics to medical research to aerospace to gaming and beyond.

It's very rare that a new technology truly represents a "sea change" across so many industries and applications. The last one of this enormity was the advent of the transistor in the late 1950s - the basis of modern electronics and undoubtedly the greatest invention of the 20th century.

And when this next breakthrough makes its debut on April 29, 2012, I believe it will deliver a bonanza payday for two very savvy companies and their investors.
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: New Technologies

Postby winston » Sun Apr 08, 2012 8:59 pm

Continue ...

High Tech is About to Enter a Whole New Dimension

We're still waiting for atomic computing - computing technology in which devices are made up of just a few molecules - to enter the realm of possibility. But that's likely a decade or more off.

In the meantime, 3D computing is the breakthrough that will dominate the next decade, taking computing to a level almost unimaginable.

Now, you may already know that America's high-tech economy depends on devices - called microprocessors - that are about the size and shape of postage stamps. Ever since their invention, these chips have fueled huge growth in computing as electronics have gotten ever smaller.

Let me explain the importance of small scale.

It's thanks to the steadily shrinking size of these chips that your smart phone today packs more punch than the huge computers NASA had when it put Neil Armstrong on the moon. If they hadn't gotten smaller, cell phones would still be the size of bricks. And you could forget about having wireless Internet, built-in video cameras, or music players in your phone.

As it turns out, there's a principle that explains - or really predicts - this continued exponential growth in semiconductor speed and power.

It's called Moore's Law. A Silicon Valley legend, Gordon Moore predicted that processing power would double roughly every two years.

That doubling has come as engineers kept finding new ways to put more transistors on a single chip. Transistors are the tiny gizmos that move and store data. Today, semiconductors now boast more than one billion transistors - ones so small you can't see them without a microscope.

And therein lies the problem. Chip makers are simply running out of real estate.

Right now the physical limit of integrated circuits stems from their basic design. Since they're flat, they only work in two dimensions. And that's been standing in the way of Moore's prediction.

But what if you could stack transistors on top of each other? You would greatly increase computing capacity. Think of it this way. A file cabinet holds a lot more information than a single sheet of paper.

As basic as that sounds, engineers have only just now figured out to go 3D and add "drawers" filled with transistors.

And one company is debuting its new chips this summer.
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: New Technologies

Postby winston » Sun Apr 08, 2012 9:20 pm

Continue ...

This Ushers in a New Era of Moore's Law

I wrote this report on 3D computing because I believe it symbolizes the Era of Radical Change.

It all goes back to Moore's Law.

Computing power has doubled more than 25 times in the past 50 years. With 3D computing, those exponential increases will be able to keep up with Moore's Law. With Tri-Gate transistors, Intel claims to have extended Moore's at least another two years.

And after that? Well, I'll let you know.

Whatever happens, it's clear that the years ahead will be like nothing we've seen before... and take the entire high-tech ecosystem to a whole new level.

Consider this...

Because of 3D computing, just one technological advance I'm tracking - one among many - the very near future is going to look a whole lot different.

Imagine one U.S. soldier able to control dozens of drones and robots at the same time from a device no bigger than a smart phone...

An autonomous vehicle driving itself down a safe, high-tech highway...

Some of your "coworkers" will be robots much "smarter" than humans...

You'll have the ability to download a video library in a matter of seconds and store it on a flash drive the size of your pinkie finger... and doctors will augment your IQ with chips implanted in your brain that will give you the intelligence of 10 Albert Einsteins.

Personally, I just love this stuff. And if it grabs your attention the way it does mine, stay tuned.

I'll have a lot more for you in the coming weeks about these profitable trends that make up this Era of Radical Change.

Here's a sample of the exciting tech on my investment radar screen:

• A new see-through computer screen that converts files into 3D images you can move with your hands.

• Solar panels constructed as mini-towers that deliver 20 times more power than conventional arrays.

• The microdevice that amounts to putting a human stomach on a chip.

• The device is actually lined with cells from the intestine and is designed to go inside the body to detect disease.

• Making a robotic spy "plane" the size of a hummingbird that flies like the real thing. The Pentagon paid a publicly traded, small-cap firm to develop what I predict will be the next generation of drone technology.

• Researchers are designing highways that act as charging stations to juice up electric vehicles - while the cars are still racing down the road.

• The trip from New York to Beijing could take just two hours, thanks to a novel transport tube that looks like something out of science fiction. Passenger capsules would float inside the tube, powered by exotic superconductors, and zoom people around the globe at speeds of up to 4,000 mph.

• Carbon nanotubes that can make objects appear invisible. In a project funded by the Pentagon, scientists found that bending light in certain ways created the "mirage" that objects weren't really there.


http://moneymorning.com/2012/04/06/the- ... -50-years/
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

3D Printing

Postby winston » Tue Jun 12, 2012 8:38 am

Hong Kong: Home to the World’s Cheapest 3D Printer by Hamish McKenzie

Ensconced on the 12th floor of a mostly disused industrial building in Hong Kong’s New Territories – a part of the metropolis in which few Westerners set foot – Jon Buford is building what he says is the world’s cheapest 3D printer.

For the last six months, the Atlanta native and his team of six have been working on the MakiBox, an easy-to-assemble 3D printer that will retail for about $300.

It will also offer a new way to feed plastic source material into the machine, eschewing the conventional string filament used by most printers in favor of much cheaper pellets.

http://pandodaily.com/2012/06/11/hong-k ... d-printer/
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: 3D Printing

Postby winston » Sat Aug 11, 2012 5:30 pm

3-D Printer Brings “Magic Arms” to a Two-Year-Old

I’m not usually a sucker for the warm and uplifting. But I’ll admit it: A recent viral YouTube video featuring a child’s inspiring story has got me all choked up.

Two-year-old Emma Lavelle was born with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita (or AMC), a condition that stunts the development of her muscles and stiffens her joints. As a result, her capacity for movement has been severely limited, and she has spent much of her life undergoing surgeries and corrective treatments.

One of the most promising treatments for those with AMC is the WREX device, a type of body cast that aids AMC patients in lifting their limbs with the help of elastic bands and artificial support joints.

Problem was, Emma was far too young and small for the typical size WREX devices. So two Wilmington, Del., researchers — Dr. Tariq Rahman and designer Whitney Sample — developed a scaled-down version of the cast that fit for Emma’s smaller frame.

The two took CAD blueprints from the existing WREX design and scaled them down to the size they would need to be to fit Emma. Unfortunately, the machinery they used to build past WREX devices couldn’t deal with the smaller-sized parts for Emma’s model.

So they got creative. Using a smaller 3-D printer that Rahman already had in his office, the researchers were able to print the smaller WREX parts from the scaled-down designs.

Instead of metal, the 3-D printer fabricated the new parts out of ABS plastic, which proved sturdy enough to hold up to everyday use.

http://allthingsd.com/20120804/3-d-prin ... -year-old/
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: 3D Printing

Postby Muhajir » Tue Aug 14, 2012 12:47 am

Hi Guys,

I personally have a little 3D printer catering to mainly architectural firms here who want to do models of their projects and thus allowing me to charge a premium for our services

I must say I am very excited by the potential of the technology and how far it can go as scope seems limitless. And as you guys might say I decided to put my money where my mouth is by investing in 3d Sysytems (ticker DDD) who is the manufacturer of the printer I have.

And I happily point out that both my investments paid off in rather dramatic fashion. I feel its still early in the game.

The key thing to watch out is for smaller manufacturers in asia making the same printers who will one day catch up and the market becomes saturated. I am hoping to walk away long before that.

Ali
Muhajir
Coolie
 
Posts: 220
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 4:23 am
Location: Maldives

Re: 3D Printing

Postby winston » Fri Sep 14, 2012 6:15 am

3D printers bring hi-tech manufacturing to the home By Sruthi Ramakrishnan and Neha Alawadhi

(Reuters) - Not so long ago, harried moms and dads would brave the holiday season crowds at the mall to buy those Lego accessories or that Star Wars battle cruiser.

Now, with increasingly cheap and easy-to-use three-dimensional printers, they can turn out such gifts in the comfort of the family living room or garage.

3D printers -- which use a process called additive manufacturing to make objects from a digital model by laying down layers of material -- aren't new. They've been used to make manufacturing and engineering prototypes for more than 25 years.

But printer makers are now turning their attention to the consumer market, and have been rewarded with soaring sales and stock prices -- as well as the prospect of lucrative buyouts.

Some printers capable of churning out simple items such as keychains, wine bottle holders and missing board game pieces are already selling for as little as $350. That's cheaper than a high-end version of Microsoft's Xbox 360 with Kinect.

"If someone develops a very inexpensive and safe 3D printer for children, then I could envision maybe more than half of homes having 3D printers in them, as a toy," said Wohlers President Terry Wohlers.

Michael Puryear, managing director at Howard Capital Management, said fundamentals are very strong.

Nardone, who runs a marketing company, believes these printers hold great potential for making homemade toys, or as toys themselves.

"Some company will launch this device and it'll be $199 and your kids will be begging you to buy them."

3D Systems operates an online design platform, Cubify.com (cubify.com), that works like Apple Inc's iTunes and Google Inc's Android app store.

The owner of a printer can download patterns for jewelry, toys, lamp shades and more -- many of them created by independent developers.

Taking a cut of those sales generate recurring revenue for 3D Systems, as does the sale of consumables and a service where users can order a printed product and get it delivered.

Others have gone a more open route. MakerBot offers open source design and software downloads for free on its Thingiverse online platform (www.thingiverse.com) as it focuses on sales of printers and printing materials.

Copyright holders will cringe, but people are already using printers to make Star Wars battle cruisers or a cheaper alternative to Lego or Mattel Inc toys.

One thing Nardone realized right away, though, is that the process is slow -- about 45 minutes to make something the size of an egg, and about four hours to create an item the size of a soft drink can.

Items he has made so far include shoe lifts for his young daughter and a back scratcher.

"The longest it took to make something was nine hours, it was a big plastic heart I made for my wife," he said. "When we woke up in the morning it was still printing."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/ ... nologyNews
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: 3D Printing

Postby winston » Tue Sep 25, 2012 6:43 am

3D printing: The next disruptive technology advances rapidly by Mark J. Perry

3-D printing is one of the most exciting technological innovations in recent years, and it’s advancing at a rapid pace.

In two recent articles about 3D printing, editor-in-chief of Wired Chris Anderson says 3-D printing has reached an inflection point, and Gizmag’s Doug Hendrie highlights 3-D printing’s huge potential for revolutionizing medical science:

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/09/3d-pri ... s-rapidly/
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Re: 3D Printing

Postby winston » Thu Sep 27, 2012 9:42 pm

The Precision of Stereolithography.

Right on Your Desktop.

The Form 1 marries high-end stereolithography (SL) technology and a seamless user experience at a price affordable to the professional designer, engineer and maker.

http://formlabs.com/
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"
User avatar
winston
Billionaire Boss
 
Posts: 118528
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 9:28 am

Next

Return to Business Sectors & Industries

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests