smartphone Archives - Perfect 3D Printing Filament

T3D Announces New LCD-Based High-Speed 3D Printing System

Taiwan 3D Tech, also known as T3D, is a startup spin-off from the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST). Headquartered in Taipei, the company was officially founded in 2017 by Jeng Ywan-Jeng, a Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the High Speed 3D Printing Research Center at the university, as well as the Founder of the 3D Printing Association in Taiwan.

Jeng had been working on a 3D printing system since 2012, and finally showed off his smartphone-based 3D printer to the world at Inside 3D Printing Shanghai 2015, launching a Kickstarter campaign for the small SLA system two years later. He told 3DPrint.com at formnext 2017 that T3D’s unique printer, which he had once referred to as “a cyber physic system (CPS) machine,” can cure a 100 micron layer in 15 seconds.

“The idea is to use only a smartphone, no PC; we use this light for its energy to do something. We have already proved it can be done,” Jeng told us at the event in Frankfurt.

The 3D printer uses light from the smartphone to cure specialty resin from a vat sitting on top of the phone to the print bed above, a concept we’ve seen before in the OLO smartphone-powered 3D printer. Both 3D printing systems had successful Kickstarter campaigns, but the difference between the two is that while there has been no news on the OLO, now the ONO, for roughly two years, T3D is actively getting its product to customers, while also continuing to innovate.

“T3D is the first mobile 3D printer in Taiwan,” the company states. “No complicated operation and no restrictions. Just print your lifestyle. We are a team of hardware, software, and chemical engineers aiming to disrupt the traditional 3D printing industry.”

Recently, the T3D team announced its newest product, the T3D LCD High-Speed 3D Printer, which will officially be launched at the Taiwan Innotech Expo event in Taipei this September.

According to T3D, its new High-Speed 3D Printer is able to speed up the 3D printing process by achieving fast print speeds of 10 cm per hour. In addition, thanks to the startup’s multiple colors of visible light curing photosensitive resin and “special fep film,” as a press release states, the system can also print continuously.

Just like with the original T3D smartphone-powered system, the T3D High-Speed 3D Printer also comes with an app that appears to make the process quick and easy. Users can search the Cloud Gallery for a variety of public models, and with one click can select their desired print. The T3D app works with many kinds of mobile phones, so you shouldn’t need to worry about corrupting any files, and you can also select your print settings in the app as well.

T3D, which aims to make 3D printing easier for consumers, states that the High-Speed 3D printer features “high productivity and accuracy,” which is definitely in line with this mission. Other competitive advantages the new T3D High-Speed 3D Printer features include 47 um precision and advanced software to ensure an easier workflow.

(Images courtesy of T3D)

The post T3D Announces New LCD-Based High-Speed 3D Printing System appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

3D Printing in Ophthalmology: Smartphone Slit-Lamp Adapter for Diagnostics

A trio of researchers from hospitals in Egypt and India recently published a paper, titled “Custom-made three-dimensional-printed adapter for smartphone slit-lamp photography,” about their work designing a custom 3D printed smartphone slit-lamp adapter for photography applications in ophthalmology. A slit-lamp consists of a high-intensity light source, used with a biomicroscope, that can be focused to shine light into the eye for examination of the anterior and posterior segments in order to diagnose many conditions, like macular degeneration, cataracts, corneal injuries, and a detached retina.

3D printed adapter fixed on eyepiece to refine the sizing.

Many people have smartphones these days, and they are being paired more often with 3D printing for diagnostic and imaging purposes, especially in the offices of eye doctors.

“Smartphone photography in ophthalmology has a wide variety of uses including examination with or without other examination tools such as slit lamp or condensing lenses,” the researchers wrote. “Smartphones can be used for fundus photography,^[2],[3],[4] slit-lamp photography,^[5] microscope-free anterior segment photography,^[6] gonioscopy,^[7] and more.^[5]“

3D printed adapters can help make these tasks more efficient, as they are a quick, low-cost option. Custom adapters are built for just one smartphone design and slit lamp, while universal adapters can be adjusted to fit many designs. There are pros and cons for each option, which is why these researchers chose to “combine the advantages of both approaches” for their 3D printed smartphone slit-lamp adapter.

Two copies of the blink 3D printed slit-lamp adapter (in gray and black ABS material) fixed to universal smartphone holders.

“It is built upon a commercially available part used in selfie sticks and tripods which is used to hold the phone,” they explained. “The rest of the adapter is designed and 3D printed to enable attaching the mobile with that holder to the selected eyepiece.”

Smartphone fixed on the Blink adapter and placed on slit-lamp eyepiece.

The goal was to make a design that complements different slit-lamps and automatically fits the microscope eyepiece that slides into the adapter; gravity, plus the weight of the smartphone, will keep it in place. Then all of you have to do is place the phone’s camera against the eyepiece. The team named their creation Blink, for its “ease of use and quick adjustment like in a blink of an eye.”

After they chose their target slit-lamp microscope, the researchers used Vernier calipers to measure the eyepiece, and used the dimensions to create a CAD model of the adapter in Tinkercad. They refined the model using SketchUp, and prepared it for printing with Repetier software. The adapter was then 3D printed out of ABS material on a Rostock MAX v2 3D printer from SeeMeCNC.

Measurements of slit-lamp eyepiece being taken with digital Vernier calipers.

The 3D printed adapter was then fixed to the universal smartphone holder, and finally the fitting was “tested and refined to account for manufacturing tolerances.” Once the smartphone was placed in the holder, the device was attached to the slit-lamp’s eyepiece for easy imaging.

“The blink 3D-printed smartphone slit-lamp adapter was successfully designed, modeled, 3D-printed, and tested,” the researchers wrote. “Each type of slit-lamp eyepiece required a small modification in the 3D design based on measurements. Good-quality images could be captured in diffuse, slit, retro, and cobalt-blue illumination.”

The time it took to remove and modify the device was only seconds, which makes the 3D printed adapter very useful in slit-lamp photography.

“More units can be easily made by printing the same CAD file and fixing it to the universal smartphone holding bracket,” the researchers noted.

Additionally, the team confirmed that they could image the fundus – the part of the eyeball opposite the pupil – using a 90D lens.

“Our article describes the process of designing and building a smartphone slit-lamp adapter to solve the problem of slit-lamp photography,” the researchers concluded. “The cost of 3D printing a small part such as the adapter described here is small and can be done at a 3D printing shop which is available in all major cities in India, Egypt, and many other countries. Most of the work involved is in designing the CAD model according to measurements and physical constraints.

“Development of this type of innovation from idea to virtual design to hardware does not need much time or money – only an innovative mind and the drive to learn these new techniques.”

Discuss this story and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below.

The post 3D Printing in Ophthalmology: Smartphone Slit-Lamp Adapter for Diagnostics appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

A Google Pixel 3a microscope adapter #Photography #3Dprinting

Ed Nisley posts about building yet another camera adapter, this time for a microscope eyepiece.

Hand-holding my Google Pixel 3a phone over the microscope eyepiece worked well enough to justify building Yet Another Camera Adapter:

The snout is a loose fit around the 5× widefield microscope eyepiece, with the difference made up in a wrap of black tape; it’s much easier to adjust the fit upward than to bore out the snout. An overwrap of tape secures the snout to the eyepiece, which I’ve dedicated to the cause; the scope normally rocks 10× widefield glass.

The tapered hole exposes the phone’s fingerprint reader to simplify unlocking, should it shut down while I’m fiddling with something else.

The microscope doesn’t fully illuminate the camera’s entrance pupil at minimum zoom, with 4.5× filling the screen and (mostly) eliminating the vignette. The corner blocks have oversize holes to allow aligning the camera lens axis over the microscope optical axis. The solid model incorporates Lessons Learned from the version you see here, because you (well, I) can’t measure the camera axis with respect to the outside dimensions accurately enough.

See the post for details.

DeepRC Robot Car is a new kind of Smart Car #MachineLearning #ArtificialIntelligence #SmartPhone #3Dprinting #Robot #DeepLearning #TensorFlow @pyetras @hackaday

From the ‘DeepRC Robot Car’ project on hackaday.io by Piotr Sokólski

The ‘DeepRC Robot Car’ project on hackaday.io by Piotr Sokólski aims to create a miniature self-driving car that can be trained at home. Probably the coolest part about this project is that it incorporates a smartphone for a number of the pieces of hardware. For instance, a mirror was used to shift the phone camera view to the front of the vehicle so the car can see the road (see below). The chassis was 3D printed and a number of other small electronics were used to build the car (like the NRF52 SOC).

For controlling the actuators and reading telemetry data a small number of electronic components are installed on the chassis. The main circuit board is based on an excellent NRF52 SOC. It provides a Bluetooth LE radio to communicate with the phone. The servo is controlled by the chip directly, however the motor requires an additional Electronic Speed Controller (ESC).

The software powering the robot was split between an app on the phone and a computer. @pyetras trained the robot to avoid collisions using deep reinforcement learning. Specifically, the TensorFlow agents implementation of the Soft Actor-Critic algorithm was used.

For a Deep Reinforcement Learning algorithm I chose Soft Actor-Critic (SAC)(specifically the tf-agents implementation). I picked this algorithm since it promises to be sample-efficient (therefore decreasing data collection time, an important feature when running on a real robot and not a simulation) and there were already some successful applications on simulated cars and real robots.

The model followed methodology from several projects including “Learning to Drive smoothly” and “Learning to Drive in a Day“. If you would like to learn more about this project checkout @pyetras YouTube video or GitHub.

Ophthalmology: Researchers Explore Progress in Bioprinting

A large group of researchers came together to author Bioprinting in Ophthalmology: Current Advances and Future Pathways, published recently regarding their findings on bioprinting within the field of ophthalmology. While they understand the promise 3D printing with cells has in so many applications, there is serious potential for ‘highly delicate organs’ like the eyes and the heart. Here, they review some of the strides made in bioprinting over the past 20 years, and specifically in ophthalmology.

As the researchers point out, over 30 percent of people around the world have visual impairment issues of some kind. Because the eye presents such an easy access point, however, doctors have excellent access for performing medical procedures and supplying implants. This means that the eyes are also very conducive to treatments with bioprinting.

3D printing so far has been responsible for a wide range of developments in optics, whether for lenses in smart phones, or a variety of different printing systems to include those for fabricating models of the eye for surgeons. Although bioprinting allows for tissue engineering and the potential for transplants, the benefits of 3D medical models alone are enormous as they give medical professionals access to visual aids for more accurate diagnoses, treatment, and education for both patients and their families.

Medical models of the eye also serve as invaluable training devices for procedures for medical students, and for surgeons who may be performing unique surgeries never attempted. They may even use the models in the operating room. Most of these models today are created with the 3D Systems Z650 printer.

(a) Schematic view of the cross-section of our physical model eye; (b) two printed parts provided main structure of the physical model eye; (c) use of the physical eye model for assessing the fundus range of the viewing system; (d–f) pictures of the angle bars photographed under 128D lens, 60D lens, and 60D lens with model eye tilt; (g–i) other three eye models printed and fabricated with different anterior chamber and total axial length.

The authors point out that because there are still so few ‘workable materials’ for ophthalmology in additive manufacturing, there is still substantial room for further innovation:

“The printing of artificial lenses, glaucoma valves and other medical implants developed in customized processes will be a reality in the future,” stated the authors.

“It is believed that printing of artificial lenses, glaucoma valves and other medical implants with customization and on-demand supply will be possible in the coming years. Further, numerous next generations ophthalmological products are likely to be benefited with this technology.”

Smart-phone technology, the impetus for many different applications today, also allows for an interesting ‘alternative use of 3D printing,’ as a variety of different devices can be attached to mobile phones for examination of areas like the ocular anterior segment, giving medical professionals easy access to detect conditions like cataracts, uveitis, ulcers, and other defects.

“These devices are more than ten times cheaper than standard ocular imaging devices,” state the authors.

(A) 3D printed retinal imaging adapter on a smartphone; (B) an image of a glaucomatous disc captured with the smartphone retinal imaging adapter; (C) an image of the same glaucomatous disc captured with a standard fundus camera; (D) 3D printed smartphone slit lamp microscope, (E) an image of a patient with a white cataract captured on a smartphone with the 3D printed slit lamp microscope.

Bioprinting systems for ophthalmology are still difficult to come by, due to the lack of suitable materials, mechanical limits, speed in production, and affordability; however, the researchers are convinced that because so many innovations are being continually presented, ‘the development of a fully functional artificial eye’ is imminent.

“Overall, it can be concluded from the research endeavors in 3D printing in ophthalmology that this technology has the potential to improve the treatments of vision impaired patient by helping the doctors in performing risky surgery,” concluded the researchers. “The only need for this is to explore the innovative trends in customization of the medical devices which are highly desirable in-terms of market demand. Ultimately, the printed ophthalmological devices can heal the poor vision and other ocular diseases.”

Bioprinting continues to make steady impacts in the medical field, and while so many fascinating innovations have been made in ophthalmology, from orbital implants to prosthetic eyes, researchers continue to branch out into nearly every area of human health with medical models, and a variety of other implants and devices to change patient’s lives around the globe. Find out more about bioprinting efforts in ophthalmology here.

[Source / Images: Bioprinting in Ophthalmology: Current Advances and Future Pathways]

Philippines: Researchers Create 3D Printing App for Learning Braille

To lose one of your senses, or to be born without such faculties, means being left out of so much that society and culture have to offer—until your world is opened through another route like sign language or hearing aids or in the case of the visually impaired, Braille. Now, researchers from the Philippines are exploring the world of assistive technology further in ‘Braille3D: using haptic and voice feedback for braille recognition and 3D printing for the blind.’

With the goal of helping the visually impaired to enjoy more access to technology and greater ease in learning Braille, the researchers began working on a mobile educational app to include both haptic and voice feedback. The app, meant for kindergarten students, is designed around learning Braille, but also 3D printing, and it functions with their use of their smart phones. Because the students are so young, most of the lessons are basic in terms of presenting elementary Braille lessons.

Learning module for letter A

The app is made up of modules for learning the Braille characters and spelling, and users can review each character along with following example words—and then if desired, they can 3D print that word in Braille if a model is available. They can also learn to count to nine.

“The user can visit this module to learn and review the pattern for each Braille characters. Each letter shall have example words that the app will read to the student when prompted, as well as an option to 3D print that word example if there is an available 3D model for that word,” state the researchers. “The learning module for the numbers shall be presented in an orderly manner to also teach the user to count from zero to nine.

Teachers are also involved, assessing progress of the students and then assigning new exercises. They can add more example words, along with adding more 3D models into the mix. The students can 3D print through wireless communications or USB, as well as using a 3D printing application developed for this project.

“Since this process might be too complex for a kindergarten student, the teacher, or someone who has knowledge in 3D printing, must handle the 3D printing process,” state the researchers.

The potential for 3D printing in education is already being tapped around the world, with students of all ages enjoying design and printing labs, along with completing many different complex projects—and even items like prosthetics for others in need. But here, 3D printing and the use of educational models are serving as reading comprehension and literacy aids.

“Since blind people have difficulty in gathering/accessing information, 3D printing can be of aid to the visual impaired community,” state the researchers. “Moreover, 3D printed objects give the person the form and structure of the 3D model through the sense of touch. Thus, giving the justification of the relevance of 3D printing in the proposed topic. Other researches were focused on a tactile-based solution to improve touchscreen mobile interface exploration by blind users.”

The educational app, created on Android, consists of five phases, and students can select which exercises they want to do within their assigned work. They can 3D print models by choosing the machine of their choice within the systems that show up in their settings. The researchers used a da Vinci 1.0 AiO 3D printer for testing at the Philippine National School for the Blind (PNSB) and found that fabrication of a model like a rabbit took around four hours. Overall, the success rate for students engaging in this type of learning was found to be high.

In conclusion, the authors stated:

“The proponents have noted that the application is exceedingly beneficial to totally blind students because it helped them understand and gain familiarization to the Braille characters faster than the traditional devices they are using. The proponents recommend looking on more functionalities which can be beneficial to the development of this assistive technology.”

Many different 3D printing innovations have been geared toward the blind, whether in museum paintings that allow them to enjoy the artistic experience, creating campus maps for university students so they can find their own way around, or enjoying other types of educational models, and so much more. What do you think of this news? Let us know your thoughts! Join the discussion of this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com.

Totally blind students’ success rate and then partially blind students’ success rate

[Source / Images: ‘Braille3D: using haptic and voice feedback for braille recognition and 3D printing for the blind’]

rCrumbl, the Ultimate Raspberry Pi Smartphone #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi

Great project from Steward’s Notes via Hackaday:

About a year ago I set out to create a functional smartphone from a Raspberry Pi. Its been a fun adventure. I began this project with only a moderate amount of experience in working with electronics, and I’ve come a long way since that time. I am by no means the first person to create a raspberry pi phone there are one or two people who I am certain have come before me. In order to claim some sort of title for the work that I would be doing, I decided that I would attempt to create the smallest form factor phone possible given my knowledge and experience. This alone became quite the challege, but in the process I learned a great deal about product design, CAD, and 3D printing.

Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

3D Printing and a Smartphone Create an Inexpensive, Compact Interferometer

Smartphones serve many functions, including that of scientific instruments. With a little tinkering and 3D printing help, makers have turned smartphones into things like microscopes, and in a paper entitled “Design of a 3D printed compact interferometric system and required phone application for small angular measurements,” a pair of researchers document how they used 3D printing and a smartphone to create an interferometer, a scientific instrument that takes precise measurements through the interference of two beams of light.

“The working principle of the proposed interferometer is based on the formation of circular interference fringes due to the reflection of the monochromatic light beam from the top and inner bottom face of a microscopic glass slide,” the researchers explain. “The optical path difference (OPD) between these two interfering beams can be varied by changing the inclination angle of the glass slide with respect to the incident light beam. The central bright fringe gradually changes to dark fringe with the change in OPD, and consecutively there is a variation in the fringe order with angular rotations. The smartphone camera has been used to record the interferogram, and then it is processed by the custom designed application for automatic calculation of the change in the fringe order, the pixel shift of the interferogram from the initial position and intensity variation of the central fringe to calculate the angular rotation of the glass slide.”

The opto-mechanical components for the system were all developed using ZW3D CAD software and then 3D printed on a Raise N2 Plus 3D printer. Optical components such as a lens and pinhole were mounted to the 3D printed components. The phone itself is equipped with a 13 megapixel count CMOS sensor with high resolution. An Android application was developed for onboard fringe processing and automatic evaluation of angular rotation of the glass slide.

“The usability of the designed optical tool has been demonstrated for the monitoring of small angular variations with high precision and reliability,” the researchers conclude. “The smartphone has been visualized as a platform for automated complex fringe analysis and interferometric data processing which is a critical point in any interferometry based sensing applications. The required opto-mechanical parts for the present work have been obtained from 3D printing technology which reduces the overall fabrication cost of the designed interferometer. In the future, the applicability of the proposed device will be demonstrated for more complex interferometry based applications such as determination of thin film thickness and refractive index with the required optimizations in the device parameters.”

3D printing has been used to create all sorts of low-cost laboratory equipment, including reactors, drug testing systems and much more. The purpose of the researchers’ paper was to demonstrate that a complex interferometer could be created using accessible, inexpensive means – a smartphone and 3D printed components. Not only is the device inexpensive, it’s user-friendly and compact, making it portable enough to take anywhere in the field. These are the advantages of 3D printing – the ability to take complex tools and reduce them to only a few components, drastically cutting back on cost and size.

Authors of the paper include I. Hussain and P. Nath.

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below.