3D printers are ready for prime time

The rapidly growing DIY Maker Movement has used Atmel-powered 3D printers such as MakerBot and RepRap for quite some time now, but it is clear that 3D printing has entered an important new stage in recent months.

Although it may take some time for 3D printers to find a home in every residence, one Michigan Technological University researcher believes that personal manufacturing, much like personal computing before it, is about to enter the mainstream in a big way.

“For the average American consumer, 3D printing is ready for showtime,” explained Associate Professor Joshua Pearce. “3D printers [may] have been the purview of a relative few aficionados, but that is changing fast. The reason is financial: the typical family can already save a great deal of money by making things with a 3D printer instead of buying them off the shelf.”

As Pearce notes, open-source 3D printers for home use typically have price tags ranging from about $350 to $2,000.

“[Plus], you don’t need to be an engineer or a professional technician to set up a 3D printer,” said Pearce. “Some can be set up in under half an hour, and even the RepRap can be built in a weekend by a reasonably handy do-it-yourselfer.”

Pearce also emphasized that 3D printing likely heralds a new world in which consumers have many more choices – where nearly everything can be customized.

“With the exponential growth of free designs and expansion of 3D printing, we are creating enormous potential wealth for everyone,” Pearce added. “It would be a different kind of capitalism, where you don’t need a lot of money to create wealth for yourself or even start a business.”

Interested in learning more about 3D printers from an academic perspective? Be sure to check out “Life-Cycle Economic Analysis of Distributed Manufacturing with Open-Source 3-D Printers,” by Joshua Pearce here.

Yes, the hardware revolution is upon us

The current hardware revolution is characterized by ubiquitous wireless broadband (Internet of Things) and reasonably priced equipment including processors, memory and sensors.

As the folks at True Ventures point out, it is a great time for Makers and the DIY community to tinker with hardware, since building factories is no longer a prerequisite for building products.

“Add to the mix emergent technologies such as 3D printing and inexpensive laser cutters that put prototyping capabilities onto a kitchen table and we suddenly are facing an extraordinary revolution in hardware-based innovation,” explained Jon, a True Ventures exec.

“This is a tectonic shift that is going to drive the next wave of industrialization — one that is more nimble, adaptable and rapidly evolving. One that is as much based in software as it is in assembly lines.”

According to True Ventures, the past 150 years were about the economics of labor and mass production. The present? Information flow, data and analytic platforms are the new tools augmenting the lathes, pneumatic hammers and assembly lines of yesteryear.

“Investors have historically shied away from hardware, but we have long believed these enormous forces will change the industry and the world,”  Jon continued. “True Ventures has been early and big investors in the burgeoning hardware and device wave.”

Indeed, True Ventures was an early investor in [the Atmel-powered] MakerBot back in 2010 and have since helped fund a number of hardware start-ups.

Jon also noted that True Ventures believes we are only at the very beginning of the hardware revolution, with the world eagerly awaiting new devices and new platforms.

“We need a large scale device control and management platform that enables configuration, addressability, access, registration, tracking. We are still in desperate need for advance control plane software that will enable features in robotics like sense and avoid, swarm coordination, traffic management, ideally across device types,” he added.

“Some of the platforms we’ve seen will literally blow you mind at first glance. New devices will create a entirely new view into our world, from the nano to the galactic, from the human body out into the oceans, the atmosphere, space and beyond. We expect brilliant things to come in the years ahead. Welcome to the hardware revolution.”

The full text of “The Hardware Revolution is Upon Us and Why it Matters” is available here on the True Ventures blog.

3D-printed splint saves an infant’s life

The Maker Movement has used 3D printers like MakerBot and RepRap for quite some time now, but it is abundantly clear that 3D printing is quickly entering a new and important stage.

Indeed, just half a millennium after Johannes Gutenberg printed the bible, researchers designed and printed a 3D splint that saved the life of an infant born with severe tracheobronchomalacia – a serious birth defect that causes the airway to collapse.

And while similar surgeries have been performed with tissue donations and windpipes created from stem cells, this is the very first time 3D printing has been used to treat tracheobronchomalacia – at least in a live human. Previously, researchers tested 3D-printed, bioresorbable airway splints in porcine, or pig, animal models with severe, life-threatening tracheobronchomalacia.

“All of our work is physician inspired. Babies suffering from tracheobronchomalacia were brought to ear, nose and throat surgeons, but they didn’t have any treatment options,” said Matthew Wheeler, a University of Illinois Professor of Animal Sciences and member of the Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering research theme at the Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB). “They turned to us to engineer a cure.”

According to Wheeler, Kaiba (KEYE’-buh) Gionfriddo was six weeks old when he suddenly stopped breathing and turned blue at a restaurant with his parents. As a result of severe tracheobronchomalacia, his heart would often stop beating, and despite the aid of a mechanical ventilator, he had to be resuscitated daily by doctors.

April and Bryan Gionfriddo believed their son’s chance of survival was slim until Marc Nelson, a doctor at Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio, told them researchers at the University of Michigan were testing airway splints similar to those used in Wheeler’s study. After obtaining emergency clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Scott Hollister, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan, and U-M associate professor of pediatric otolaryngology Glenn Green, used computer-guided lasers to print, stack, and fuse thin layers of plastic to make up Kaiba’s splint.

Ultimately, the splint was sewn around Kaiba’s airway to expand his collapsed bronchus and provide support for tissue growth. A slit in the side of the splint allows it to expand as Kaiba’s airway grows. In about three years, after Kaiba’s trachea has reconstructed itself, his body will reabsorb the splint as the PCL naturally degrades. His success story provides hope for other children born with this disorder, an estimated 1 in 2,100 births.

“It’s not very rare. It’s really not. I think it’s very rewarding to all of us to know that we are contributing to helping treat or even cure this disease,” Wheeler added.

“We have a reputation for being excellent in this area. We would like to capitalize on the expertise and the facilities that we have here to continue to conduct life-saving research. I’m hoping that this story will encourage more people come to us and say ‘Hey, we’d like to develop this model.’”

Atmel is everywhere at the 2013 Maker Faire, episode 6

So after seeing Atmel in the parking lot, and a hexapod 3-D printer, a Geiger counter, a bike lite, and an art installation powered by Atmel, I should mention some of the cool Atmel technology that we had at the booth.

The Internet of Things will create a network effect of gizmos making our life better.

Michael Koster brought a whole slew of Atmel devices all supporting the coming wave of connected gizmos that will comprise the Internet of things (IoT) [here, here, and here].

Michael Koster (right) helps a curious visitor at the Atmel Booth at Maker Faire 2013.

Atmel also had some commercial hardware you can buy, including a Kickstarter project that got fully funded and a gorgeous electric bicycle.

Steve from Puzzlebox shows how you can control a helicopter with your brain waves.

Another cool company at the Atmel booth was Puzzlebox. They brought their brain-controlled helicopter. Using an available Nerosky headset, Faire-goers were amazed to see that they could concentrate and make it fly. In the foreground is a nerf crossbow, where you can just think about it—and it will launch. The ever-playful Puzzlebox folks had you put on a safely face shield and pointed the launcher at you, and you could think about it and it would fire the nerf bullet into your face shield.

The Faraday is an ebike that uses Atmel chips.

The back of the Faraday eBike has a charging port and tail tight.

When I saw the Faraday bike, I was impressed by its quality and retro design. I thought the only cool thing was the LED tail light. It took a while, but I finally grokked that Faraday is a complete electric bycicle. The two frame tubes are stuffed with those same good-ol’ 18650 Li-ion batteries used in laptops and Teslas.

Clever Atmel employees hacked this HEXBUG Spider toy so it would follow an IR (infrared) source.

We also has a stack of HEXBUG Spider toys which we were giving away. The really cool thing was a hack one of Atmel’s FAEs (field application engineers) did so that it would follow the heat from your hand.

Andy Turudic at the Atmel Booth, Maker Faire 2013.

And here is a picture of fellow Croatian Andy Turudic at the Atmel booth. We were right next to the Arduino booth and we had some Arduino hardware to show off, as well as our own, and an Atmel powered 3-D printer by MakerBot.

Dan, an Atmel FAE, shows off the MakerBot 3-D printer powered by an Atmel chip.

Maker was a great time. I encourage all of you to attend. There is another big one in New York, and franchised ones in Detroit and Kansas City.  And for you continental engineers— there is even a Maker Faire in Rome.

Atmel @ Maker Faire in Silicon Valley

The 2013 Silicon Valley Maker Faire kicked off today, with hackers, modders, makers and veteran DIYs showcasing their creations, many of which are powered by Atmel microcontrollers.

Atmel’s booth – #625 – is drawing large crowds, with entire families clustering around to see the MakerBot: Replicator 2 desktop 3D printer, the Open Source Internet of Things (OSIOT) exhibit, the Puzzlebox Pyramid, Marshmallow Crossbow, Hexbugs and Faraday bikes.

There are literally thousands of cool creations here at the show so stay tuned for more. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures below!

Arduino making a mark at Maker Faire

I don’t usually make a big deal of my upcoming weekends, but when I get the chance to hang out in a human-size mouse trap, buzz around a giant Hand of Man robot, or get my code on competitively in a variety of hacker races, it’s worth talking up a bit.

Before you wonder whether I’ve managed to contract an unhealthy dose of hallucinogenic corporate cube fever, don’t panic! I’m referring to the upcoming Maker Faire, to be held at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds on the 18/19 of May.

Maker Faire, created by Make magazine back in 2006, stitches together the arts and crafts with engineering and science.

It’s a huge science fair for the general public, where Do-It-Yourselfers are free to roam around unleashed (usually on their segways) wearing propeller beanies and flashy LED pins without anybody judging them. Much.

Tinkerers little and large take center stage at Maker Faire, showing the world their zany contraptions and electrifying experiments, while trading tips and tricks for others who want to follow in their low power footsteps.

And Atmel, I’m proud to say, is all over it.

Why? Because in many ways, Atmel powers the maker movement, with its tech at the heart of so many maker designs. It helps, of course, that Atmel microprocessors are the chips of choice for the Arduino platform, both in their AVR flavor and ARM varieties.

Arduino has democratized hardware in a way that allows anyone – young or old, engineer or not, rich or poor – to scratch their own itch and create anything they can imagine.

As Arduino’s founder, Massimo Banzi, puts it, “You don’t need anyone’s permission to create something great.”

Indeed, with Arduino even finding its way into every single MakerBot 3D printer, creativity now really knows no bounds.

At Maker Faire, Atmel will be right across from our friends and partners at Arduino (Booth #625 and #619 for the location sticklers) and along with a pretty slick booth design made up entirely of cardboard furniture (Chairigami!!), we’ll have quite a bit going on.

For starters, we’ll have some MakerBot demos and an “IoTorium” (which I’m assuming is an emporium of awesome Internet of Things devices).

Speaking of awesome “things”, the folks from PuzzleBox will be pitching up in Atmel’s booth with their brain-controlled helicopters, alongside the cool riders from Faraday Bikes who will be peddling their electric bicycle wares.

We’ll also have some cute hackable Hexbugs crawling around and for those keeping an eye on the time, some smart watches from Secret Labs (shhhh!).

The Maker movement is a passionate one, and Atmel’s pretty passionate about being a part of it. If you can’t make it to Maker Faire, no sweat. You can follow all the goings on via Twitter. Just look for the hashtags @makerfaire, @atmel, @arduino.

Hope to see you there!