The personal computer and printing giant said on Tuesday that it plans to sell two 3D printers for business customers to create prototypes and larger batches of items like small clamps for controlling the amount of liquid flowing through hoses.

Unlike many of the 3D printers available from startups like Formlabs and MakerBot, HP is not targeting consumers. Instead it is betting on the industrial market that it hopes has a bigger appetite for pricy 3D printing equipment.

The company’s lower end HP Jet Fusion 3D 3200 printer will sell for $130,000, or $155,000 if customers want extra post-processing software and other tools. The HP Jet Fusion 3D 4200 model, which can be used to print 3D objects in bulk, will retail for over $200,000 depending on configuration, HP said.

HP’s sales have been steadily declining over the years as the market for its core products—personal computers and standard printers—has shrunk. The company has been banking on 3D printing reviving the company, which last year split from its data center and business software specialist sibling.

Source: Fortune.com

You’ll mostly be limited to printing tiny trinkets and the such, but its creators promise a level of detail, 328 micron pixel size to be exact, that’s on-par with extrusion 3D printers. And you can of course either print 3D models downloaded from the internet, or upload your own creations. Besides size, there don’t seem to be any limitations to the iBox Nano’s capabilities.

Source: Uncrate.com

As we walk through our daily lives, we use visual cues to navigate and understand the world around us. We observe the size and shape of objects and rooms, and we learn their position and layout almost effortlessly over time. This awareness of space and motion is fundamental to the way we interact with our environment and each other. We are physical beings that live in a 3D world. Yet, our mobile devices assume that physical world ends at the boundaries of the screen.

The goal of Project Tango is to give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion.

The Google team has been working with universities, research labs, and industrial partners spanning nine countries around the world to build on the last decade of research in robotics and computer vision, concentrating that technology into a unique mobile device. They are putting early prototypes into the hands of developers that can imagine the possibilities and help bring those ideas into reality.

3D motion and depth sensing

Project Tango devices contain customized hardware and software designed to track the full 3D motion of the device, while simultaneously creating a map of the environment. These sensors allow the device to make over a quarter million 3D measurements every second, updating its position and orientation in real-time, combining that data into a single 3D model of the space around you.

They run Android and include development APIs to provide position, orientation, and depth data to standard Android applications written in Java, C/C++, as well as the Unity Game Engine. These early prototypes, algorithms, and APIs are still in active development. So, these experimental devices are intended only for the adventurous and are not a final shipping product.

What could we do with it?

You could capture the dimensions of your home simply by walking around with your phone before you went furniture shopping. What if you never again found yourself lost in a new building? You could also search for a product and see where the exact shelf is located in a super-store.

Google is already working with LG to put the technology in a consumer device sometime later this year, and taking it out of Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP). It’s Google’s way of saying that it’s serious about Tango, and that it’s one step closer to being in your next phone or tablet.

Source: Www.google.com

A challenger approaches! Arduino, the company best known for building and shipping the absurd number of microcontrollers that power many a DIY electronics project, is about to enter the 3D printing market.

Arduino made the news official today, announcing a partnership with Italy’s up-and-coming printer manufacturer, Sharebot. Their first printer will be called the Materia 101, and is built to print in PLA.

While they’re holding off on announcing the exact price for now, they’ve ballparked two different models: a pre-built package that will sell for “less than 1000 USD”, and a DIY kit that will go for “less than 800 USD”.

Is it the prettiest printer in all the lands? Nah — it looks a bit like the super early MakerBot Cupcake machines, albeit white. Does it have the biggest print bed? Nah — see below for the specs there. But it’s exciting to see a company like Arduino, with its damned impressive ability to scale and its tendency to opensource everything it does, get into the space.

The Specs:

Printing technology: Fused Filament Fabrication Printing area: 140 x 100 x 100 mm (5.5 x 3.93 x 3.93 inches) X and Y theorical resolution position: 0.06 mm (60 microns) Z resolution: 0.0025 mm Extrusion diameter: 0.35 mm Filament diameter: 1.75 mm Optimal temperatures with PLA: 200-230° Tested and supported filaments: PLA Unsupported but tested filaments: Cristal Flex, PLA Thermosense, Thermoplastic Polyuretane (TPU), PET, PLA Sand, PLA Flex External dimensions: 310 x 330 x 350 mm Weight: 10 kg Usage: 65 watt Electronical board: Official Arduino Mega 2560 with Open Source Marlin Firmware LCD display 20 x 4 with encoder menu Preloaded with PLA printing presets Extruder block with filament pressure regulation

Source: Techcrunch.com

Created by Columbus, Ohio, natives Todd Linthicum and Slade Simpson, this 3D printer reduces the cost of 3D printing by allowing users to use cheap pellets instead of expensive custom filament. This means you could feasibly use all sorts of materials, from nylon to plastic to wood-based pellets, to print.

“We have been using 3D printers for some time now, and have realized how powerful the technology is/can be. But both the printers and materials themselves have insanely inflated prices – six figures for some printers, and hundreds of dollars for a couple kilograms of material,” said Simpson. “Our main philosophy at Sculptify is that for 3D printing to become a truly useful and viable technology, material options have to expand, and material costs have to decrease – not every plastic product in your life is made out of PLA, especially at $48/.9kg.”

The team will launch the project on August 20 but they’re planning on selling early bird units for $2,745, a pretty penny but still within the range of standard 3D printers. They’ve created a pre-sale page where users can sign up to be notified when the product is for sale.

Why pellets? Simpson explains:

Pellets offer many distinct advantages, with more material options, higher material quality, and reduced material cost, being the most primary. Basically every plastic product in the world starts out in pellet form, so they are widely available in hundreds of different grades, materials, and colors. Also,since David eliminates the need for spools of filament, materials no longer need to be optimized for a spool – just poured into our system.

You could feasibly use any color plastic in the machine and even use multiple kinds of plastic. The print bed is heated so you can print ABS and other chemical plastics, as well as starch-based PLA and other composites. Does this make it better than any other 3D printer on the market? Potentially, if it means you can print more materials more easily.

The founders were Mechanical Engineering majors who worked at major automotive companies in the past. They’ve been working on David for most of the year and are ready to start mass producing in Ohio.

“We want to start a business, not make quick money off of a project, and we are dedicated to making that happen. We plan to offer sales of production units after our Kickstarter units have shipped,” said Simpson.

Source: Techcrunch.com

Named aptly for its creator, Gregory Mark, who also owns Aeromotions, this desktop printer debuted at SolidWorks World 2014 in San Diego. After seeing the expense and time currently associated with carbon fiber manufacturing, Mark started down a path that eventually ended up at the Mark One.

“We took the idea of 3D printing, that process of laying things down strand by strand, and we used it as a manufacturing process to make composite parts,” he told Popular Mechanics. “We say it’s like regular 3D printers do the form — we do form and function.”

The printer can not only lay down carbon fiber, but also fiberglass, nylon and PLA. Of course, only one at a time. The printer employees some pretty nifty advancements, too, including a self-leveling printing bed that clicks into position before each print.

For a few dollars more, the company also offers a Mark One Developer Kit Pre-order that puts your order at the front of the line and includes a few extras, including more Kevlar and two extra beds.

Source: Techcrunch.com