“Julia Koerner is an award-winning Austrian designer working at the convergence of architecture, product and fashion design. She is internationally recognised for design innovation in 3D-Printing, Julia’s work stands out at the top of these disciplines,” her website states. “The constantly intriguing aspect of Julia’s work is its embodiment of a beautiful organic aesthetic.”
She was one of 15 designers chosen by non-profit organization Austrianfashion.net to show her work—the 3D printed Setae jacket—at its recent Virtual Design Festival (VDF). The organization is a platform that is focused on promoting contemporary Austrian fashion designers and partnered with VDF to exhibit innovative fashion designs and accessories by designers who were either born, or are currently based, in Austria, and also produce their work locally and sustainably.
Austrianfashion.net said, “[Körner’s] work on the future of 3D, as well as on its current applications, can be seen as revolutionary practice. Strongly believing that the future of fashion is 3D, Körner is making sure she is at the forefront of the revolution.”
Her beautiful, 3D-printed Setae Jacket is part of the 3D printed Chro-Morpho fashion design collection by Stratasys, which we’ve discussed here before, and was also inspired by colorful butterfly wings. The collection is meant to show how technology and textiles can work together, and even create commercially viable pieces of clothing. The jacket was 3D printed out of flexible Vero material on one of the company’s multimaterial printers, either the J750 or the J850, and every bristle resembles setae, which is a stiff structure akin to a hair or a bristle.
“The research explores digital setae pattern design and multi-color 3D printing on fabric, inspired by microscopic butterfly wing patterns. Butterfly wings are made up of membranes which are covered by thousands of colorful scales and hairs, plate-like setae,” Körner’s website states.
She used photographs of Madagascan Sunset Butterfly wings, and the setae on the wings were actually digitized into an algorithm, “which translates the color pixels into 3D bristle patterns which correspond to the form of the garment design.”
“The digital designs are 3D printed in an innovative way, without any support material and directly on fabric,” the site continues. “The relation between the colourful rigid setae and the flexible fabric create enigmatic visual effects when the garment is in motion.”
To form the jacket, the bristles were 3D printed on denim. When the garment is worn, the setae move along with the person, which is a really interesting effect.
“Due to the movement and delicate color transformation, it expresses a true organic animal flow that comes to life,” Stratasys states.
Do I spy a zipper?
It is definitely a unique piece, and while lack of comfort and wearability is always one of my biggest critiques when it comes to 3D-printed fashion, the Setae Jacket absolutely looks wearable to me.
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In November, the non-commercial, global trade group AMGTA, or the Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association, was launched in order to promote the many environmental, green benefits of using additive manufacturing (AM) rather than conventional technology. The AMGTA has just commissioned its first university research project, which will be a systematic review of the environmental sustainability of metal 3D printing. The review will be literature-based, and will look at existing studies focused on the environmental benefits of the technology.
Based in Hollywood, Florida, the non-profit AMGTA is unaffiliated, meaning it is open to any industry stakeholder or additive manufacturer who meets specific criteria that are related to sustainability in processes and production.
“The AMGTA seeks to educate the public and industry about these positive environmental benefits, promote the adoption of AM as an alternative to traditional manufacturing, develop best practices for additive manufacturing, and help the organization’s members grow their businesses and acquire new customers,” the website states. “In order to accomplish these goals, the AMGTA will engage in marketing and advertising campaigns, sponsor and conduct research and publish the results, and grow the organization’s membership.”
3D printing has many benefits in terms of sustainability. For instance, it uses less material, which equals less waste, and also uses less energy than other processes. Additionally, parts can also be fabricated closer to the consumer, so that helps lower the carbon footprint as well by reducing, or even negating, shipping travel.
According to Sherry Handel, the AMGTA’s Executive Director, the commissioned research paper will be “…describing where metal additive manufacturing provides environmental benefits compared to older manufacturing methods.”
“This research may also reveal areas in the manufacturing process where AM could cause higher environmental impacts than older manufacturing methods. Through rigorous, independent and ongoing research the AMGTA will publish research findings and share with industry and other key stakeholders what our eco-footprint is now and what we will need to focus on in the future to be more sustainable.”
The AMGTA announced that it has chosen Dr. Jeremy Faludi, PhD, LEED AP BD+C, a design strategist and sustainable engineering researcher, to oversee the project. With degrees from UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and Reed College, Dr. Faludi is currently an assistant professor of design engineering at the Technical University of Delft (TU Delft) in the Netherlands, focused on green 3D printing and design for the circular economy. He has previously taught at Stanford and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and is also an adjunct faculty member of engineering at Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering.
Dr. Jeremy Faludi, PhD, LEED AP BD+C
“We are excited to announce our first research project and thrilled to be able to work with Dr. Faludi. This project will provide our membership and the public in general with an excellent survey of existing research on the sustainability benefits of AM. Dr. Faludi is a renowned researcher within this field, and we are looking forward to understanding better the existing scope of research on this topic,” Handel said.
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(Images: Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association)
“We have news for aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators that use 3D printing and digital fabrication. Wikifactory is partnering with the 2019 Thought for Food Challenge – a global “collaborative competition” to develop and launch breakthrough hardware solutions to sustainably feed the world,” Wikifactory’s Growth and Community Manager Caroline Portugal told 3DPrint.com.
TFF is an innovation engine for food and agriculture, and thanks to this new partnership, the Wikifactory platform is now integrated into its TFF Digital Labs startup acceleration and collaboration platform.
Anyone who is passionate about creating food system change can sign up for the 2019 TFF Challenge at no cost. According to the challenge website, the non-profit is working with top partners this year to “launch specific innovation challenges in order to encourage solution development” in several areas, such as the Circular Economy of Food, Regenerative Agroforestry, and space colonization.
“We are excited to partner with Thought For Food to build a thriving ecosystem of open hardware for food innovation,” said Christina Rebel, Co-founder and Chief Communities Officer at Wikifactory. “We want to see food-tech innovators, farmers, engineers, and agripreneurs to apply the open mindset of a software designer to accelerate the solution development for challenges facing our food systems. We might not have all the answers as individuals, but by sharing openly with a global community we can arrive at solutions faster.”
Collaboration is key to TFF’s approach to innovation, and the organization has spent years investigating different types of business models that allow for cooperation by many different parties. TFF is hoping to decrease what it calls “duplicative innovation efforts” by encouraging cross-licensing programs and technology transfer, so that organizations can work together to efficiently create helpful innovations.
Due to this collaboration, all teams participating in this year’s TFF Challenge will now be able to freely access Wikifactory’s social platform, taking advantage of more than 800 open hardware projects – on topics like drones, robotics, food-waste technology, sensors, and recycling – from the community of over 8,000 people from 130 countries. Additionally, participants can easily work with project innovators and hardware developers in order to gain feedback by using Wikifactory’s free collaboration tools, such as feedback and task systems, a powerful 3D viewer for 30+ CAD formats, and a documentation editor. These tools will allow teams to host and view projects online and manage their work across virtual teams.
Two of the example open source projects that TFF Challenge teams can help contribute to are the Dronecoria platform, which aims to use drones to sow seed balls from the air in order for reforestation efforts, and the Smart Citizen Kit, which uses a mobile app, Arduino-compatible hardware, and a data visualization web API for environmental monitoring purposes.
Wikifactory is making food and agriculture tech more accessible and affordable for smaller players, like the TFF Foundation and its challenge, by using inexpensive sensors and small automated systems that use Arduino and Raspberry Pi. Then, innovators are able to use makerspaces and 3D printer networks to deploy their solutions into the world.
Christine Gould
“We have seen the massive innovation boost that open source has brought to the software industry, and we want to bring that spirit to the food and agriculture industry. We need more people creating innovations, participating in using it, and integrating solutions to create broader impact,” stated Christine Gould, the Founder and CEO of Thought For Food. “Our world has reached a critical turning point where our old innovation systems are ripe for reinvention by mass collaboration. We need to reboot all the old models, approaches and structures, and this is one way we can help do this. By supporting the open hardware and open-source movement, Thought For Food and Wikifactory aim to increase the speed and impact of food system innovation towards sustainability and inclusivity.”
TFF Challenge participants can access the TFF Digital Labs – now integrated with Wikifactory’s tools – an innovation roadmap, expert and peer-to-peer mentoring from the foundation’s global community, practical learning content, and the opportunity to win travel and funding opportunities. The judges will choose the winners by looking at the innovation, implementation and scalability, team spirit, and uniqueness of each team’s solution. Finalists will have the opportunity to travel to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in March 2020 to pitch their ideas in front of investors and jury members, and win other prizes.
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Jeff Erenstone, the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Create O&P, is a certified prosthetist-orthotist. He already had his own clinical practice, Mountain Orthotic and Prosthetic Services, when he launched the company in late 2014 after seeing the potential of using 3D printing to increase productivity in the orthotic and prosthetic care industry. Now, he’s decided to move on in order to continue advancing and improving clinical and prosthetic care in the developing world, and this week announced his resignation as the company’s CTO.
“I am very proud to have co-founded this business and work with hundreds of clinic owners to improve care for their patients and enhance efficiency at the same time. I am excited to take the lessons we learned here and improve care in the developing world where this technology will allow for clinical care in areas where it otherwise is currently unavailable,” Erenstone said.
Erenstone will be continuing his work in the orthotics and prosthetics field by expanding the use of applied 3D printing solutions in clinical work in developing regions of the world through his non-profit organization, Operation Namaste, which he also co-founded. This is a pretty inspiring move, in my opinion.
“I am very proud of the products we developed at Create O&P, which today includes 3D printers, software, education and other tools with which O&P clinicians can produce a whole range of products. With Create O&P’s capabilities, clinicians in the United States and throughout the world have seen drastic improvements in the efficiency of their practices,” said Erenstone. “I am glad to be leaving this company in competent and energetic hands.”
The heartwarming Operation Namaste organization wants to ensure that amputees all around the world can have easy access to 3D printed prosthetic care. Its mission is “to provide a continuum of prosthetic care and related rehabilitative services to the people of Nepal” and other developing countries as well, such as Haiti.
Some of the projects that Operation Namaste has worked on include a summit on prosthetics and orthotics, Camp Namaste for Nepalese children with limb differences, and the Nepal Warrior Trek, where a team of amputees (including an Ohio police officer) and business owners journeyed to the country for a long trek with the purpose of raising awareness and financial assistance for victims of the 2015 Nepal earthquake.
“We will very much miss Jeff at Create O&P and wish him the best of luck as he brings 3D technology to places where patients too often don’t receive care. Jeff’s contributions to this company are immeasurable,” stated Create O&P’s CEO Cecilia “Cissi” Schaffer. “As a clinician, practitioner and visionary, Jeff saw the challenges domestic clinics face, particularly as they relate to net margins. He knew that 3D printing was the only solution that would both improve efficiency and improve clinical care.”
Erenstone was the company’s first CEO, and oversaw the development of two generations of its 3D printers, which includes its current series that makes it possible to manufacture diagnostic sockets, hands-free, in less than three hours. In addition, he also created Create O&P’s Rapid Plaster software, digitally replicates the processes that clinicians use in order to design sockets, as well as other devices, for their patients.
[Image: Create O&P]
“It was an honor to co-found this company with Jeff. We are implementing Jeff’s vision, which he himself tirelessly pursued for over four years,” said Create O&P Co-Founder and Chief Financial Officer Dan Kelleher. “I am grateful to Jeff for the opportunity to help him pursue this digital future since 2014.”
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Last year, Halifax resident Jacob Boudreau, who works for a logistics company, watched a TED Talk by heartwarming 3D printed prosthetics volunteer organization e-NABLE, and was inspired to open his own non-profit e-NABLE chapter, called Kindness3D.
Boudreau said, “This project really resonated with me because it’s the perfect marriage between health and tech.”
Isabella, from Nosara, Costa Rica, received a 3D printed prosthetic hand from Kindness3D. [Image: Kindness3D]
Things started off normally enough, with Kindness3D using regular PLA material to fabricate prosthetics, including a 3D printed hand and arm for Brazilian athlete Kelly De Oliveira Malaquias and a hand for a young girl in Costa Rica.
But Boudreau’s work to provide 3D printed prosthetics is now dovetailing with another passion – recycling plastic waste from what he refers to as the “excessive cannabis packaging conundrum” of the NSLC (Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation), the province’s legal cannabis distributor.
Boudreau said, “There’s no real plan in place for how much waste is being put through the NSLC.”
Recently, Canada became the first major world economy to legalize recreational marijuana. But many customers in Nova Scotia are criticizing the NSLC for using excessive packaging for the product. Cannabis guidelines for Health Canada say that the packaging must be tamper-proof, child-resistant, and prevent contamination.
Easy Cheesy cannabis, purchased at the NSLC in Halifax. [Image: CBC News]
While the white plastic containers that Canada’s pot comes in do meet these guidelines, some consumers say they are environmentally unfriendly and not able to be recycled. Boudreau says that all of the lids will eventually end up in landfills…so he’s taking action.
“We just noticed that there was an obscene amount of waste. To me it seemed incredibly wasteful. It was actually frustrating for me as a consumer,” Boudreau said.
He first got the idea to recycle the plastic cannabis lids into plastic for 3D printed prosthetic limbs when customers asked him if he could help with the waste problem.
“We jumped on board, noticing that there wasn’t really a plan in place to deal with this kind of waste. It’s something we’re really excited about,” Boudreau said. “We’re doing our part to kind of help out and as well repurpose this packaging and create some artificial limbs from it.”
Lizzy Brown of Kindness3D holds up an empty cannabis package at the recent workshop in Halifax. The group is asking Haligonians to drop off the used caps from cannabis packaging at various spots around the city for them to be shredded and turned into 3D printed prosthetics. [Image: Fadila Chater, Star Metro]
First, Kindness3D modified a paper shredder so it could be used to break down the plastic pot container lids, so the shredded plastic could be used in the organization’s 3D printer. Then, it began to ask other local businesses to collect the used lids. Now, Kindness3D asks Nova Scotians to bring the empty cannabis containers, lids and all, to Boudreau’s Dalhousie University Sexton Campus operation, and various other drop-off points, for recycling and reprocessing into prosthetic limbs.
Boudreau hopes to use the lids of cannabis containers to make prosthetic limbs. [Image: CBC, Kindness3D]
Since beginning the cannabis lid recycling project, Boudreau is already working to complete a 3D printed prosthetic arm for a four-year-old girl in California. Additionally, he started a petition in hopes of convincing the NSLC to collect and donate all of its used cannabis packaging to Kindness3D.
But, according to NSLC spokesperson Beverley Ware, the corporation has not been contacted by Kindness3D yet…maybe it’s waiting to get a certain number of signatures first?
Ware is also requesting that customers continue to follow the recycling programs already set up in their communities.
Ware explained, “We do not recycle bottle or cans and don’t have the room in our stores to provide such a drop-off service or the infrastructure to deliver products for recycling.”
I hope this recycling initiative by Kindess3D doesn’t turn into some kind of legal battle. I understand that there are rules for a reason, and maybe the infrastructure doesn’t allow for this sort of program just yet. But the non-profit is trying to do a very noble thing in both recycling large amounts of wasteful plastic and providing 3D printed prosthetics to the people who need them most, so I hope that everything will work out in the end.
[Image: Kindness3D]
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We’ve got some business news to start things off with in today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, followed by a little research and a really cool 3D printed costume. The Department of Defense has awarded a contract to Contour Crafting, and Sutrue is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Facebook has made the decision to ban blueprints for 3D printed guns, and a Siggraph paper takes an in-depth look into near-eye displays. Finally, several companies helped the non-profit organization Magic Wheelchair make a really cool 3D printed wheelchair costume for a big Star Wars fan.
Contour Crafting Receives Department of Defense Contract
According to the company’s website , “Effective 25 JUL 2018, the Department of Defense has awarded Contour Crafting Corporation with a Rapid Innovation Fund contract in the domain of large and construction scale 3D printing. The outcome of this funded R&D program is expected to be a technology which, among other applications, will effectively respond to disaster relief situations with expedient, safe and sustainable structures and buildings.”
This information confirms that the DoD is not putting all of its eggs into one basket, so to speak, and is seeking outside help for its construction 3D printing goals.
Sutrue Celebrates Ten Years
Medical device startup Sutrue first started working on a 3D printed suture stitching device to help prevent needle stick injuries back in 2014, and became the first company to successfully 3D print a suture device. But Sutrue’s story actually began back in August of 2008, when its founder Alex Berry was stuck at home with a broken ankle and watched a documentary that provided some insight into robotic suturing. In an effort to keep busy during his recovery, Berry, who had some basic CAD knowledge, got to work.
After moving to the UK, Berry officially started Sutrue in 2012, meeting some influential people along the way who helped him get closer to achieving his goal of creating a 3D printed suture device. The startup completed a £30,000 crowdfunding campaign in 2014, submitted another patent, developed a few mutually beneficial relationships with other companies, and secured further funding for continued device development. Now, Sutrue is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Berry’s initial idea.
The startup wrote in a post, “It’s been ten years of ups and downs, filled with much uncertainty particularly in the first five years in which Berry didn’t even know for sure that the device would work. He has maintained the progression of the device through having a healthy dose of insanity, extreme resourcefulness, and an inquiring and problem-solving mind. He’s gone against many societal norms to have created two working prototypes of his automated suturing device – the robotic and the handheld, but as the route to market becomes closer and closer, he’s glad to have fought against the odds to see the project through to completion.”
Facebook Bans 3D Printed Gun Blueprints
Gun with 3D printed parts. [Image: CNET]
There’s been an increased amount of conversation on the topic of 3D printed guns recently, after news broke of a settlement between the US State Department and Texas open source 3D printed gun designer Defense Distributed, run by Cody Wilson. The settlement states that Wilson and his non-profit organization can publish files, plans, and 3D drawings of guns in any form, and are also exempted from export restrictions; additionally, the government will be paying nearly $40,000 of Wilson’s legal fees. This means that people who weren’t legally able to purchase firearms before, such as felons and domestic abusers, can 3D print their own guns without serial numbers. As you can imagine, many are not happy with this decision. This week, Facebook, the world’s largest social network, said that it will ban any websites that host and share blueprints of 3D printed guns, though the designs have already been available online for years.
According to BuzzFeed News, a Facebook spokesperson said, “Sharing instructions on how to print firearms using 3D printers is not allowed under our Community Standards. In line with our policies, we are removing this content from Facebook.”
MSN reports that Facebook did not “immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the Ghost Gunner” 3D printed gun.
Siggraph Paper on Optical Design for Augmented Reality Near Eye Displays
This year’s annual conference on computer graphics, SIGGRAPH 2018, starts this Sunday, August 12th, in Vancouver. One of the papers published for the conference, titled “Steerable application-adaptive near eye displays,” discusses see-through near eye displays (NED), which are currently being used in the Hololens, among other things. According to the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab, most NEDs work by using a stereoscopic image pair to optically drive the visual system’s vergence state to “arbitrary distances,” but drives the focus (accommodation) state towards a fixed distance.
The technology is a bit of a long shot, due to people getting motion sickness or their eyes getting tired, but if we can get it to work, I bet every movie theatre in the world will employ it.
The abstract of the paper reads, “The design challenges of see-through near-eye displays can be mitigated by specializing an augmented reality device for a particular application. We present a novel optical design for augmented reality near-eye displays exploiting 3D stereolithography printing techniques to achieve similar characteristics to progressive prescription binoculars. We propose to manufacture inter-changeable optical components using 3D printing, leading to arbitrary shaped static projection screen surfaces that are adaptive to the targeted applications. We identify a computational optical design methodology to generate various optical components accordingly, leading to small compute and power demands. To this end, we introduce our augmented reality prototype with a moderate form-factor, large field of view. We have also presented that our prototype is promising high resolutions for a foveation technique using a moving lens in front of a projection system. We believe our display technique provides a gate-way to application-adaptive, easily replicable, customizable, and cost-effective near-eye display designs.”
Co-authors of the paper are NVIDIA Corporation‘s Kishore Rathinavel, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Kaan Akşit, Josef Spjut, Ben Boudaoud, Turner Whitted, David Luebke, and Henry Fuchs from UNC Chapel Hill.
3D Printed Star Wars Wheelchair Costume
Here’s something fun and heartwarming to kick off your weekend – non-profit organization Magic Wheelchair, which makes free, bespoke wheelchair costumes for kids, created a 3D printed Poe Dameron X-Wing Fighter wheelchair costume for a 13-year-old, wheelchair-bound Star Wars fan named Vedant Singhania to wear at last month’s Comic-Con International. Project partners included Pixologic, which used its ZBrush digital sculpting software to provide the design and modeling work, and Dangling Carrot Creative, which used the high print speeds of the Massivit 1800 3D printer to make 50 separate costume pieces in a little over two weeks. Massivit also donated 3D printing materials, and Monster City Studios assembled the large wheelchair costume.
“We connected with Magic Wheelchair because we knew our technology and modelling expertise could assist them with the fantastic work they are doing for children in wheelchairs,” said Pixologic’s 3D Product Development Manager Paul Gaboury. “After we designed the costume, Dangling Carrot Creative was the final piece to the puzzle. The company allowed us to 3D print life-size to help remove the need for molds or casting which saves substantial time and money.”
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