Sure, manufacturing companies have 3-D printers that are able to weld metal pieces. You can even send designs to Shapeways to get them printed in steel. But wouldn't you want your own metal 3-D printer at home? One California man is making it happen. DIY hobbyist Steve Delaire is working on making a home 3-D printer that lays down wire, layer by layer, and welds it together.
Desktop 3D printers often have a resolution problem. Resolution refers to the size of the stream of molten plastic laid down by the machine in layers; if the layers are too big, they become visible, so you can see and feel the grooves in the finished product. Not good! But the ProDesk3D from botObjects, an as-yet-unreleased 3D printer, says they've conquered this problem.
The first real lunar base should look literally out-of-this-world cool. Maybe it will look as spacey as Apple's new campus, or Virgin's Spaceport America. Foster + Partners, the architectural firm to dream up those ideas, has a new lunar-base concept for the European Space Agency. (Let's hope it is better-executed than Las Vegas' beleaguered Harmon Hotel.)
For a long time now, the ability to print electronic circuitry and components on commercially available 3D printers has been viewed as the development that will thrust 3D printing out of its current nascent maker space and into the mainstream of both manufacturing and home fabrication. And while it's already been demonstrated on specialized printers in the lab, researcher at the University of Warwick in the UK have developed a low-cost material they've named "carbomorph" that is conductive, piezoresistive, and printable in currently available, consumer-affordable 3D printers.
