physics Archives - Perfect 3D Printing Filament

3D Printing News Briefs, July 18, 2020: DOMO & RPD, AMPM2021, Alloyed

In today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, DOMO Chemicals and RPD have announced a partnership related to a Sinterline initiative. The 2021 AMPM event is calling for technical papers related to metal additive manufacturing. Finally, Alloyed has won a prestigious award.

DOMO Chemicals and RPD Partnering

DOMO’s Sinterline PA6 powders combined with RPD’s SLS printer, modified and upgraded by LSS, enable OEMs to step up their 3D printed parts performance. (Photo courtesy of RPD)

Polyamide solutions provider DOMO Chemicals and Rapid Product Development GmbH (RPD), a specialist in prototyping and serial production of complex parts and assemblies, have formed a strategic partnership for the purposes of speeding up the growth of plastic materials for selective laser sintering (SLS) 3D printing. The collaboration will merge the continuing development of DOMO’s Sinterline Technyl PA6 SLS powder materials with a package of support services for SLS technology, benefiting from RPD’s expertise in application development and the SLS process. Sinterline PA6 powders are an oft-used nylon in the industry, especially by demanding markets like automotive.

“Sinterline® has pioneered the use of high-performance PA6 in 3D printing, and allows us to leverage the same polymer base that has proven so successful in many existing injection molding applications. Backed by the joint application development services of our companies, even highly stressed automotive components can now be successfully 3D printed in PA6 to near-series and fully functional quality standards,” stated Wolfgang Kraschitzer, General Manager and Plastics Processing Leader at RPD.

AMPM Conference Seeking Papers and Posters

The Additive Manufacturing with Powder Metallurgy Conference (AMPM2021) will be held in Orlando, Florida from June 20-23, 2021. While this may seem far in the future, the event’s program committee is looking ahead, and has issued a call for technical papers and posters that are focused on new developments in the metal additive manufacturing market. Stuart Jackson, Renishaw, Inc., and Sunder Atre, University of Louisville, the technical program co-chairman, are asking for abstracts that cover any aspect of metal AM, such as sintering, materials, applications, particulate production, post-build operations, and more.

“As the only annual additive manufacturing/3D printing conference focused on metal, the AMPM conferences provide the latest R&D in this thriving technology. The continued growth of the metal AM industry relies on technology transfer of the latest research and development, a pivotal function of AMPM2021,” said James P. Adams, Executive Director and CEO of the Metal Powder Industries Federation.

The submission deadline for abstracts is November 13, 2020, and must be submitted to the co-located PowderMet2021: International Conference on Powder Metallurgy & Particulate Materials.

Alloyed Wins IOP Business Award

Alloys By Design (ABD)

UK company Alloyed, formerly OxMet Technologies, has won a prestigious award from the Institute of Physics (IOP), the learned society and professional body for physics. The IOP is committed to working with business based in physics, and its Business Awards recognize the contributions made by physicists in industry. Alloyed has won the IOP Business Start-up Award, which OxMet submitted for consideration before merging with Betatype to form Alloyed, and recognizes the team’s hard work in developing its digital platform Alloys By Design (ABD). This platform is helping to set new metal material development standards, including the commercialization of Alloyed’s ABD-850AM and ABD-900AM alloys for additive manufacturing.

“Everything we do in every bit of our business rests on the foundations provided by physics, and we’re delighted that the judges believe we have made a contribution to the field,” Alloyed CEO Michael Holmes said about winning the IOP Business award.

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What is Metrology Part 15: Inverse Filtering

Signal Processing

Signal processing is the name of the game that must be played in order to do image processing. Image processing is such a fascinating subject that I am excited to expand upon it. It has amazing cross sectionality within various fields such as metrology, 3D printing, biomedical industries, and any industry that uses imaging as its main technology. Today we will be taking a look into inverse filtering as a specific method within signal processing. Signal processing is a general domain of expertise that can be applied in different settings. For the purposes of where we are in our metrology series, we will only focus on image processing.

Inverse Filtering

Inverse filtering is a method from standard signal processing. For a filter g, an inverse filter h is one that where the sequence of applying g then h to a signal results in the original signal. Software or electronic inverse filters are often used to compensate for the effect of unwanted environmental filtering of signals. Within inverse filtering there is typically two methodologies or approaches taken: thresholding and iterative methods. The point of this method is to essentially correct an image through a two way filter method. Hypothetically if an image is perfect, there will be no visible difference. The filters applied will correct a majority of errors within an image.

When we know of or have the skill to create a good model for a blurring function of an image, it is best to use inverse filtering. This is because having a model, or let’s say algorithm, allows us to efficiently and succinctly apply mathematical constraints to data in an instantaneous manner. The inverse filter is typically a high pass filter.

ECG high-pass filter

A high-pass filter (HPF) is an electronic filter that passes signals with a frequency higher than a certain cutoff frequency and attenuates signals with frequencies lower than the cutoff frequency. In physics, attenuation is the continuous loss of flux intensity through an object. Flux is a rate of flow through a surface or substance in physics. For instance, dark glasses attenuate sunlight, lead attenuates X-rays, and water and air attenuate both light and sound at variable attenuation rates. The amount of attenuation for each frequency depends on the filter design. A high-pass filter is usually modeled as a linear time-invariant system. It is sometimes called a low-cut filter or bass-cut filter. If the cutoff frequency is lower than the cutoff frequency, our image will not allow for certain features to be shown in the next image transformation. This efficient method is great for low frequency signals, but the world and image data is not low frequency. The outputs from the world are typically noisy. The linear time-invariant system of a high pass filter is needed in order to constrain the outputs one receives from the universe. When time is added as a variable for a signal, wild things can happen in terms of frequency. In order to conduct an inverse filter we have two techniques: thresholding and the iterative procedure.

Thresholding

The word threshold can be defined as a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not. Thresholding in image processing refers to setting a value limit on the pixel intensity of an image. This threshold can be thought of in terms of our earlier discussion on filters. The image processing method is able to create a binary image. This technique is usually applied to grayscale images, but it can be applied to color images as well. We are able to dictate the level of intensity that we want to have our transformed image at. Pixels that are below this value are converted to black – this is the value of zero in binary code. Pixels above the threshold value are then converted to white – this is the value of one in binary code.

The iterative method within inverse filtering is more of a mathematical guess and check solution. The goal is to guess what the original image was in terms of image processing. With each mathematical guess, a user is able to build a better fitting model to represent a digital image. This method is more of a brute force algorithm method. This method is not as efficient as the thresholding method, but it does have the advantage of better stability when dealing with noise. We do not need to be time invariant when dealing with this method.

Overall, this is only one of the many examples of image processing techniques. As a follow up to this article, I will do some interactive code and I’ll showcase some of the power of these methods when we are taking a look at these problems through the lens of computer science and engineering.

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3Dflow Computer Vision Software

3Dflow

3Dflow

3Dflow is a private software company operating in the field of Computer Vision and Image Processing. It was established in 2011 as a spin-off of the University of Verona, and in 2012 it became a spin-off of the University of Udine. 3Dflow is a company that provides solutions in Photogrammetry, 3D modeling of reality, 3D processing, and 3D visual effects. Their customers range from small industries competitors to large scale entertainment companies. In this article we will be analyzing this company as well as showcasing their workshop for 3D imaging and photogrammetry, as well as their world cup competition.

3Dflow is a company that is based in Italy. It is a small organization with fewer than 15 employees. The main value proposition this organization gives is its ability to use computer vision and software in combination to create 3D image data. For the stitching of the point cloud data of multiple photos, the organization provides software that does this for the user. The software is called 3DF Zephyr. 3DF Zephyr comes in the following forms:

3DF Zephyr Free
3DF Zephyr Lite
3DF Zephyr Pro
3DF Zephyr Aerial

Image result for 3d flow photogrammetry

3DF Zephyr Free

The free version of 3DF Zephyr includes full 3D construction, a 50 photo limit, single NVIDIA GPU support, basic exporting capabilities, and basic editing tools, and full forum support. 3DF Zephyr Lite differences include Dual NVIDIA GPU Support, 1 year upgrades included, basic email, and full forum support. The 3DF Zephyr Pro version has full exporting capabilities, advanced editing tools, control points & measurements, laser scan support, 1 year upgrades included, full email, and forum support. 3D Zephyr Aerial has all the previous abilities and GIS, CAD, and Survey Tools.

3Dflow still comes from an educational background in terms of its founding story. It explains how they have transitioned to a consulting company as well as an organization that is focused on research and development. It also explains why they offer a free version of their software as an educational version for students. They care about building software for the future of photogrammetry as well as 3D imaging. They have developed specific algorithms and frameworks that are proprietary to their organization. This includes:

3DF Samantha
3DF Statsia
3DF Sasha
3DF Masquerade

3DF Stasia is the proprietary algorithm to extract very accurate dense point clouds from a set of 2D images. In Computer Vision this process is best known as a multiview stereo. The first step is to extract the corresponding points in two images and the second step is the 3D reconstruction with algorithms like Discrete Linear Transform. The Discrete Linear Transform, or Discrete Fourier Transform used in a linear model, converts a finite sequence of equally-spaced samples of a function into a same-length sequence of equally-spaced samples of the discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT), which is a complex-valued function of frequency. The function we are dealing with in this case is the stitching together or images into 3D object data. Using DLT, the reconstruction is done only where there are SCPs. By increasing the number of points, the results improve but it is time consuming. This method has low accuracy because of low reproducibility and time consumption. This method is dependent on the skill of the operator. This method is not suitable for bony structures with continuous shape. This method is generally used as an initial solution for other methods. Hence the other technology developed by 3DF is vital.

Mathematics of Discrete Fourier Transform

3DF Sasha is their proprietary algorithm for mesh extraction: given a dense point cloud full of details, it is important to preserve as much detail as possible when extracting the surface. Sasha allows one to get sharp edges on a 3D model and that is why it is more suitable for applications such as architecture, industrial surveying, and urban monitoring. Without the precision of point cloud data, the resulting stitch of 2D images would come out to be noisy.

To clean up residual noise from the data, 3Dflow employs their 3DF Masquerade tool. This tool has been developed as an external executable that is included in the 3DF Zephyr installation package. Masquerade can mask images so it can save time during masking operations. 3DF Masquerade is helpful when there is a lot of background noise or when the subject has been moved incoherently with the background: the most common scenario is a subject that is being acquired on a turntable.

Image result for noisy 3D data

Example of a Noisy 3D mesh

The first photogrammetry & 3D scanning training course in the English language by 3Dflow in Verona (Italy), next September 30th, October 1st and October 2nd! One will learn photogrammetry with 3DF Zephyr: this course will tackle everything from photography for photogrammetry (basic and advanced shooting techniques) to data processing with 3DF Zephyr, on both photogrammetry-only workflows and a external-data oriented workflows (e.g. laser scanners). Theory and practice on the software will be paired with an actual test-acquisition Verona, a world-famous history-rich cities in Italy and home of 3Dflow.

I will be attending this workshop to learn and report on this next month, but I encourage others to look into the 3Dflow organization and see what they are doing. Also be sure to signup for their workshop here.

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What is Metrology Part 8: Complex Analysis, Optics, and Metrology

The field of metrology is interesting for me as it integrates a lot of what I enjoy in physics and technology. The field from the outside seems very bland, but when you delve into the background, it becomes a more colorful picture. The field is reliant on the physics behind optics and image processing. These are areas of extreme interest to me. Visualization and capturing visualization data is essential for the field. A lot of this data is difficult to interact with as well because the data must be interpreted as a function that can be manipulated for reconstruction purposes from point cloud data. The mathematics behind this is what can be referred to a complex analysis. Today I will give some basic insight into these advanced concepts of physics and how they open us to learning more about metrology and 3D scanning.

Let’s first talk about the field of optics. Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties.

Optical science is studied in many related disciplines including astronomy, various engineering fields, photography, and medicine. Practical applications of optics are found in a variety of technologies and everyday objects, including mirrors, lenses, telescopes, microscopes, lasers, and fibre optics, as well as metrology practices.

Yes Imaginary Numbers are useful

I personally have a strong fascination with the field of optics. Firstly, I wear glasses and my glasses help me “see” more. The field of optics quickly takes a dive into metaphysical thought processes on human perception as well as what we actually see. Optics is the center of how most of us “see” the world. When we are in the field of metrology we are relying on man-made technology to measure what we see as humans. The realization that we as humans are measuring reality and physical dimensions is a bit mind-boggling. We do not necessarily know what reality is, but we use metrology to measure for us what is within our “grasp”.

Here is where it starts to become a bit more interesting. What defines the system we are in as humans who are measuring within their current state of reality? There must be a larger system that allows for this to occur. This is where complex analysis comes into play. Complex analysis, traditionally known as the theory of functions of a complex variable, is the branch of mathematical analysis that investigates functions of complex numbers. It is useful in many branches of mathematics, including algebraic geometry, number theory, analytic combinatorics, applied mathematics; as well as in physics. As a differentiable function of a complex variable is equal to the sum of its Taylor series (that is, it is analytic), complex analysis is particularly concerned with analytic functions of a complex variable (that is, holomorphic functions).

Complex Analysis 3D Function

For those of you intimidated by math, I will explain the meaning behind the math. Complex analysis is the branch of mathematics that is trying to understand the imaginary or complex plane of the universe we are confined to. We are working within 3 degrees of freedom or 3-dimensionality within our universe. The system of the universe is not determined by what is seen in the 3-dimensional world. Our perception is not what easily moves the universe. The forces that work on our 3-dimensional universe are applied through the fourth dimension or the complex plane of the universe. For all those who want to learn more physics be sure to enjoy immense philosophical implications. So why is all of this relevant to metrology and optics? Think about this. The signals or data we receive from viewing images is distorted by the complex realm. If it was not, there would be extremely high resolution images taken on a consistent basis. That tiny bit of blur in a photo, for example, is a byproduct of the complex world interacting with the physical realm we are within. This is what typically creates a noisy signal typically in physics. In signal processing, noise is a general term for unwanted (and, in general, unknown) modifications that a signal may suffer during capture, storage, transmission, processing, or conversion. Noise reduction, the recovery of the original signal from the noise-corrupted one, is a very common goal in the design of signal processing systems, especially filters. The mathematical limits for noise removal are set by information theory, namely the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem.

The data we are collecting, or information, is prone to noise. We live in the 3rd dimensions and the complex plane consistently is interacting with our signals or data. Thus we use filters to help with noise cancellation. This is the basis of image processing and digital image reconstruction. The algorithms being created currently for photogrammetric filters are extremely vital for the future of 3D reconstruction. These filters will rely heavily on the field of complex analysis to build better filters. Then we will have very clean 3D reconstructions from our metrology practices. For all those who are intrigued, I will continue to explain different items within the 3D metrology field.

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Interview with Mark Wrigley of Elektric-Works

Mark Wrigley

Inspired by the Apollo moon landings, Mark Wrigley embarked on a career in physics in the early 1970s. Initially specialising in optics and infra-red pyrometery his social skills soon took his career into program management, sales, marketing and product management. He is a great communicator and can transcend boundaries with his ability to explain technically complex issues to a wide audience. Operating at the forefront of disruptive technological change, he participated in the explosive growth of the mobile digital communication industry. In 2011 he set up his own company; Elektric-Works which explores the way disruptive technology and making can empower individuals and startups.

Give us some background and how it has influenced your career.

Firstly, I like social mobility. When I was a child my grandfather was a coal miner. He had the ethos of education being the gateway to a better life. It led me to working in physics. With 3D printing I want to show people that technology is a great thing. I find disruption amazing as well. When I was doing my physics degree, digital was not heard of at the time. Throughout my career I have seen stuff that changes the game completely. It is amazing to see how these technological advances make changes to the industry.

What benefits do you see in terms of being creative in the artistic sense and tech sense?

When people say art it is a form of communication. It may be that you are communicating emotions. Art is a sophisticated way of communicating. If you leave some of us physicists to only communicate it may become too boring. I always gravitate to ultra realism.

Mark Making

Talk about some of your outreach work you do?

I started doing it 7 years ago. I do stuff with the institute of Physics. We generally are at science fairs with various experiences. We try to make things oriented toward teenagers. We want to make engaging experiences. This is how we are able to incorporate maker events. People sit down and build projects and it is engaging. This gives people a tangible thought process on this type of work. We have an ethos of addressing people that are disadvantaged. About 3 years ago I became the chair of the Yorkshire branch. I was a trustee before this time.

What are your thoughts on the Maker Movement?

It is interesting. The term maker gets used for a lot of things. I came across it 4 years ago. To me I think of laser cutting, 3D printing, raspberry pi’s, and various things. There are two ways it has developed. Anyone who can make something thought of themselves as a maker. This refers to any type of artform. I have mixed feelings as it brings people in to a technical maker movement ideal as well. The word is getting diluted. My partner is part of a committee that set up a makerspace in her hometown. I have to say that some maker events are just something to do with your kids. I think that dilutes things. I would rather be in a place where makers inspire people.

Pikon Device made by Mark

How important is passion to the work you do?

I was 25 years and I read the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The book talks a lot about gumption. It even talks about a gumption trap. It is important to be filled with quality. This stayed with me a lot. I see it a lot in society that people are not excited about things. I feel privileged as I have done my grind doing the 9-5pm work to be financially stable. There is a fear factor people have and it stops them from pushing for their dreams.

Moon Photo Taken by Mark

What are some things that you want all makers to know?

It is important to embrace disruption. Whatever is new can be used in a bad way, but it also can be used in beneficial manners. Because I am a physicist, I work on learning life and the universe. It is important to understand existence. There is an ethos that embodies exploration.

How did your science career fuel your sense of exploration?

I think it went the other way. When I got into physics I had large questions about consciousness. When I got into my career I got more into the application of my degree into specific things. This is what allowed me to appreciate disruption. I got into instrumentation at the time PCM and Digital became a thing. In the back of my mind, I am always impressed and in awe of scientific discoveries being made. I have started with large goals and then I have come down to certain specifics. If I look at my career in reverse, there is no way I could have predicted certain things like mobile communication. I just have a curiosity. I think the human species has multiplied due to this curiosity. This applies to science and new technology.