Microcomputers help many of you out there for your at-home projects. Right now the top single-board computer manufacturers are the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and BeagleBone.

Of the three the Raspberry Pi may be one of the most used due to the low price range of $25-35. The hardware does not compare to the other boards, but with the cheaper price more people are inclined to purchase it for their desires.

This includes the 3D printing industry as the price of desktop printers, partially thanks to the rep-rap project, has decreased by using cheaper materials like the electronic controller. To combat the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone designed the BeagleBone Black.

A Look at the BeagleBone Black

The new computer looks like a credit card with some chips and ports on it. The company decided to use the open-source Linux operating system.

That’s why they named it Black

The chip of choice is the 1GHz Sitara AM335x Cortex A8 ARM processor from Texas Instruments. The board has 2 GB of storage but can be expanded through the micro SD card slot. BeagleBone also doubled the RAM from the original to 512MB.

The new BeagleBone already has support for various connective devices such as Ethernet, micro-HDMI, and USB. The Black host several expansion headers for hooking it up to external electronics. This includes 65 digital I/O connectors, seven analog ones, four serial ports, and eight pulse-width modulators.

The biggest difference between the Black and the original is the price. Cut down from $89, the BeagleBone Black’s cost of $45 can now compete efficiently with the Raspberry Pi. “At $45, you can put these boards in your projects and forget about them,” said Kridner, TI’s Software Architecture Manager for Applications Processors.

Some feel that it should be sold for less to beat the Pi, but with the advanced hardware and technology, the hand-held device is a better value than the others on the market and will have no problem with the competition. 3D Printer makers and enthusiasts now have a valuable alternative at their disposal.

Google constantly explores new possibilities and ideas and while we all know Google as the search engine giant, some of their exploring is outside their original web search business. Thanks to Google’s curiosity, we could possibly see glasses that are often seen in spy movies, sometime in the near future.

Google’s glasses are almost ready

Google Glass

Google’s revolutionizing glasses do not provide any type of vision improvement. Instead of lenses the right eye has a small rectangular screen. It is roughly the size of a stamp if you remember what those look like. The screen projects data from a small computer that runs on Google’s own Android operating system. You can take pictures and videos, view maps, and much more. Google glass provides the user with a hands-free experience.

Get Your Pair

Well if you are like me; I am sure most of you are, you will need to wait until 2014 and pay no more than $1,500 to have a pair. If you are not like me and you are either a Google employee or a developer you may already have or obtain one soon enough.

The process of building the beginning prototypes involves a 3d printer.  The printer builds the glasses in a customized manner for each person’s own head. Google did this for all the ones it printed so far. This personal customization might not be available to regular consumers, but the printed glasses should still be great.

So while Google continues to work on the world’s latest hands-free device, you can still work on your own projects. Even the world’s largest corporations cannot avoid the 3d printer and its additive manufacturing use.

In a recent post about custom Pez head dispensers, I mentioned how a 3D jewelry store utilized the Xbox Kinect Sensor as a scanner. Many others have chosen to spend $100 to buy the Kinect instead of forking up the $20,000 – $200,000 for a scanner just made for scanning. Austin, TX based Lynx Laboratories spent over a year and a half designing the Lynx A, an inexpensive, tablet-like device for capturing images in 3D.

Not your average tablet…

The Lynx A looks like a bulky, 6 pound deadweight object when you compare it to something like the iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tablet. It’s even worse when you look at the digital camera industry where it theoretically should be, but it is difficult to compare them together. Most people will describe traditional tablets as small computer-like devices and cameras obviously take pictures. This camera though, is built to have the power of a full computer – not a basic app-running tablet– in order to process the 3D images and motion captured. The Lynx A created and belongs in a class by itself. The most important feature is the front-mounted 640×480 color camera and 3D sensor. The 3D camera hosts 500 GB of storage space. It also nests an Intel Core i5 2.6GHz processor and an undisclosed GPU inside. The builders at Lynx Laboratories also gave the camera a 14’’ color LCD display which is partially why the size is 11.5″ x 8″ x 1”. Also they inserted two USB 3.0 slots and an HDMI output into it. The battery life is an estimated 4 hours. For a clumsy looking device, they definitely tricked it out.

It sure seems great on paper but what exactly can it do? The company created the Lynx A to capture and produce 3D images. That’s it. They made 3 types of features: Scene Modeling, Object Modeling, and Motion Capture. With Scene Modeling you can spin the camera in the middle of a room and produce a 3D image of the area. As Lynx A describes it “It is like a paintbrush”. With Object Modeling you walk around the designated target and the camera builds a 3D model of it. The model will be constructed with a relatively similar scale, shape, and color to the real object. You also have Motion Capture which can provide game and movie developers with real life object movements. You just record and the camera will do 80% of the job. The rest you need to finish.

Surely you feel like it will be difficult to use, but it couldn’t have been made easier. There are four buttons. Yes, unlike many digital cameras out there, the number of buttons and dials have been kept to a minimum. No need to struggle learning what all those symbols and tools are for. Also the Lynx A has two game-like controller joysticks that allow you to view previous images or navigate through a UI configured with simplicity in mind. Also, unlike the hours or days waiting time of several 3D scanning tools on the market right now, the Lynx provides a minute’s wait for its processing.

How does it compare to the products currently out on the market? Lynx Laboratories has said that it plans on open sourcing its image processing library later in the year. They also said that the device has less than half a centimeter accuracy for object modeling and a third to three centimeters accuracy for scene modeling (depending on what is being captured). It may not be as accurate as the industrial scanners (accuracy in millimeters for the higher end models), but for any small business or personal use the Lynx A will deliver a lot more than a single system can provide – without the hefty price-tag.

Currently the 5-person team placed the 3D Camera on Kickstarter. People have already pledged a total of around $36,000 and are looking for $50,000 in all. The last day is March 18 so if you want to be able to have one, visit their Kickstarter page. So for all of you 3D printer fans out there, you can pledge a minimum donation of $1,799 and receive a Lynx A camera with the object modeling feature installed on it ($2,249 for object modeling and motion capture and $2,699 for all three). The company has a great invention and appears to be genuinely concerned with being able to mass produce it for the 3D world. Hopefully this technology will be available for purchase soon so we can once again start using our Kinect for its intended purpose, playing games.

Sure, James Bond has his shaken martini, his Walther PPK, and all those gadgets from Q. But he wouldn’t really be 007 without his Aston Martin DB5. That car has saved the spy on more than one occasion, and looked going doing it. But it has also taken a beating in the line of duty. It’s no different in the latest bond movie, Skyfall. Spoiler alert: the car does not survive the end of the film. Luckily, no actual Aston Martin DB5s were harmed in the making of this movie.

Since you can’t exactly go blowing up a priceless car like that, filmmakers had to find another way to make the scene look realistic. To make this happen, they turned to 3D printing, as reported by CNET.

Small but stylish!

German 3D printing company Voxeljet created three 1:3 scale models of the Aston Martin DB5, each made up of 18 separately printed components that they assembled much like a real car. While the printer is capable of printing out the whole car in one piece, manufacturing it in parts meant the models could have things such as doors and hoods that can open and close.

“We could have easily printed the legendary sports car in one piece at a scale of 1:3 using our high-end VX4000 printer, which can build moulds and models in dimensions of up to eight cubic metres,” said Voxeljet CEO Dr. Ingo Ederer. “But the British model builders were pursuing a different approach. To ensure that the Aston Martin was as true to detail as possible, and for the purpose of integrating numerous functions into the film models, they decided on an assembly consisting of a total of 18 individual components. The entire body is based on a steel frame, almost identical to how vehicles were assembled in the past.”

After they were completed, the models were painted, given bullet holes, and put to work on the set of Skyfall. One met its fiery end during a stunt filmed for the movie’s climax. Another model was sold for nearly $100,000.

This is another example of the precision work that can be done with the right 3D printer. If it’s good enough for James Bond, it must be good enough for the rest of us, right?

We’ve already talked about all the research being done to use 3D printing in the production of homes, airplanes, medicine, even meat. Most of these are still in the development stages. But there’s one place that 3D printing already has a strong foothold: your mouth.

If you’ve had a dental crown or bridge put in recently, there’s a good chance that part of it was created using a 3D printer. According to Forbes, an estimated 50 million dental copings have been produced so far using 3D printing. Copings are the main structure of dental crowns and bridges and more and more dental labs are moving towards 3D printing for dental restorations.

Elegant, efficient, precise

In fact, 3D printing all the bits and pieces that we humans decide to have put in our mouths has become big business. Objet Ltd., a leading provider of 3D printers, has recently partnered with South African company 3D Digital Dental to provide local dentists access to the benefits of 3D printing.

3D Digital Dental will provide dental technicians and dentists the models they need for crowns and bridges using an Objet 3D printer. They will also be used to produce orthodontic appliances, retainers and removal appliances.

“By having the Objet 3D Printer in-house, we will not only reduce time by eliminating the need to create plaster models, but will free up time to focus on more important tasks involving treatment planning,” says Dr. Dharmesh Mistry, a practicing orthodontist and the man behind 3D Digital Dental. “In addition to traditional uses, we will also be able to fabricate surgical stents and models in bio compatible material, which can be used for training purposes in implant courses, amongst others.”

In addition to practicing dentists and orthodontists, dental and medical schools can also benefit from 3D printing. Cost-effective models can be created for classes and be used for training students on how to perform procedures or create models from CT scans.

A trip to the dentist is no one’s idea of a good time, especially if you’re in to get a crown or bridge put in. But the next time this happens, ask your dentist if that crown came from a 3D printer. At least then you can walk around with a tiny piece of the future in your mouth.

The Areion, a single-seat racecar built for last month’s Formula Student challenge, can go from 0 to 62 mph in 3.2 seconds and has a top speed of 88 mph. While that may qualify it to replace the DeLorean next time Marty McFly wants to travel through time, there’s another even more impressive stat: the car went from initial design to completed car body in three weeks flat.

That’s because the group of engineering students who designed and built it used a 3D printer, according to Business Insider. Engineers from Formula Group T, a university in Leuven, Belgium near Brussels, printed the entire body for the car using Mammoth stereolithography machines built by Materialise.

Fast and Furious!

The nose of the race car was printed with a shark-skin texture similar to that found on high-tech swimsuits with the idea of making the car cut through air just as Olympic swimmers cut through water. The cool factor was just an added bonus.

The left and right side pods of the car were also made using a 3D printer. Printed into the right side pod are complex channels that create a cyclone effect to remove water and dirt from the air before it enters the engine compartment. On the left side, a nozzle behind the radiator was printed as well as a diffuser, which keeps things cool by creating the perfect airflow through the radiator.

The Areion was entered in the annual European motosport competition run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, which challenges university engineers to design and build a single-seat racing car as well as develop a business plan and cost analysis. The team competed in Germany on the Hockenheim racing circuit and finished 11^th in the international competition.

The success of the Areion could be the first step in integrating 3D printing technology into the auto industry. Cars could be specifically designed and printed for one person without having to worry about the economies of scale. I can certainly visualize a one-of-a-kind Ferrari sitting in my driveway, how about you?

For more information on the Areion, check out Formula Group T’s website.

When a soldier in a war zone comes up with an idea for something that could help them on the battlefield, they don’t need it in a few weeks. They need it now. Since the ability to quickly manufacture specialized equipment is needed nowhere more than the front lines, the U.S. Army has deployed a new mobile laboratory equipped with a 3D printer to Afghanistan.

According to military.com, this mobile Expeditionary Lab was developed by the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force. It’s a 20-foot shipping container chocked full with the latest manufacturing tools – along with the engineers who know how to use them – that can be moved by truck or helicopter to wherever they are needed at the moment.

Innovation on the Battlefield

Col. Peter Newell, director of the REF, says soldiers on the ground are the ones who truly know what is needed but they don’t have the technical expertise to construct it themselves. So instead they make a request for a new piece of equipment, which is then created by Army developers who are often half a world away. Often the result not only comes too late, it is not even what the soldier had in mind in the first place.

“It’s really difficult to connect the guy who is building the product to the kid who really needed it to begin with, so what we went after is to connect the scientist to the soldier,” said Col. Newell. “Rather than bringing the soldier home to the scientist, we have uprooted the scientist and the engineer and brought them to the soldier.”

The Rapid Protyping 3D Printer is part of this mobile lab and can produce specialized plastic parts that are designed to solve a particular problem of the moment. The time between when a soldier has a problem and when he is holding the solution in his hand is greatly reduced.

Col. Newell has plans for the mobile lab long after U.S. soldiers have left Afghanistan. Many such labs can be deployed quickly to the site of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans or the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors that were damaged by a tsunami in Japan.

“This is really the platform for the future of the Rapid Equipping Force,” Newell said.

Where’s the beef you ask? Someday soon it very well could be coming from a 3D printer.

Gabor Forgacs, a professor at the University of Missouri, has developed a bioprinting technique that can be used to create life-saving organs and tissues. That’s a very worth cause of course, but his son has another application in mind. Andras Forgacs knows what every good red-blooded American out there really wants: meat.

Artificial but tasty!

He is CEO of a startup in Columbia, Missouri called Modern Meadow that plans to first print leather products made from animal cells. Now you can have that leather belt or leopard skin purse you’ve always wanted with none of the guilt. If all goes well with the leather production, Modern Meadow will then progress to printing a meat replacement ready to be served at a dinner table near you.

Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel thinks this is a fantastic idea, as he recently announced that the Thiel Foundation is investing $350,000 in the company to help create these 3D-printed delicacies.

“Modern Meadow is combining regenerative medicine with 3D printing to imagine an economic and compassionate solution to the global problem,” said Lindy Fishburne, executive director of Breakout Labs, a division of the Thiel Foundation that is devoted to supporting early stage science.

Andras told Co.Exist that the idea to print meat stemmed from their work on printing tissues for the medical industry.

“The idea struck us that if we can make medical-grade tissues that are good enough for drug companies, good enough for patients, then certainly we can find other applications for tissue engineering,” he explained.

This is all great news for vegetarians looking for a cruelty-free meat replacement, as no animals are harmed in the production. The researchers do biopsy a living animal to isolate the desired cells. They then grow those cells into tens of thousands of cell aggregates, which is the raw material used to print the meat or leather products.

The whole process is much less costly than traditional methods, which will hopefully mean more food production for those parts of the world that don’t currently have access to a safe meat supply.

Finally, meat that vegetarians and carnivores alike might just be able to get behind. Although I’m thinking it might take a strong stomach to take that first bite.

Stories about the latest application for 3D printers often have me smiling in wonder. Sometimes they even make me gasp out loud. But this is the first time one has made me want to cry.

Emma Lavelle was born with a rare disease called arthrogryposis multiplex congenita (AMC). It’s a condition that causes severely underdeveloped muscles and stiff joints. When Emma was born, her legs were folded up next to her ears and her shoulders were turned in. She spent much of the next two years of her life undergoing surgery and wearing casts and was completely unable to use her arms.

Emma --Working on a Puzzle

Then at an AMC conference in Philadelphia, Emma’s mom Megan found out about the Wilmington Robotic Exoskeleton (WREX). Megan met with Tariq Rahman, head of pediatric engineering and research, and Whitney Sample, a research designer. The two had been working for years at the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware to make the WREX as small as possible so younger patients could use it. But the youngest so far was 6 years old and Emma was only 2, and a small 2 at that.

At Whitney’s workshop, they strapped her into a small, stationary version of the WREX and for the first time, she was able to play and lift her arms toward her mouth. But the device was way too heavy for little Emma to carry around with her.

Using a 3D printer, Tariq and Whitney were able to create a WREX made of the same kind of lightweight yet sturdy plastic used to make LEGOs. They were able to custom make the device to perfectly fit Emma’s little body. The other big advantage of 3D printing the WREX is that as she grows or parts need replaced, new pieces can instantly be printed.

“If the WREX breaks, all I have to do is take a picture and email it to Whitney. He knows exactly what the piece is, he prints it out, I go to the hospital, or he’s even mailed them,” says Megan. “She outgrew the first one and now we’re on our second one and it’s still evolving.”

Now Emma and 14 other kids are using one of these custom 3D-printed devices, allowing them to play, hug and take part in everyday life more than ever previously imagined.

If you aren’t teary eyed yet, wait until you hear what Emma thinks of her WREX.

“We would say, ‘Emma, you know we’re going to put the WREX on.’ And she called them her magic arms,” said her mother Megan.

Her magic arms. Somebody hand me a tissue.

For more info and a great video all about Emma and her 3D-printed WREX, check out this case study.