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Next, The Copier Will Reproduce Popsicles
4/3PI*R^3 writes "At my fellow UM System University, the University of Missouri Rolla Dr. Ming Leu, Wei Zhang, and their fellow mechanical engineers invented a device that constructs a 3-D model out of ice in a matter of hours, using a technique they call rapid-freeze prototyping. Article in Discover. At last we can finally make strawberry-banana swirl popsicles!!!!"
1) popsicles
2) MRI scan models (presumably colored with different flavors of popsicle base)
The result? Finally, an anatomically correct model of a diseased bowel that you can eat!
I suspect physicians would abuse their scanner privileges if they got to eat it themselves, so the hospitals will have to feed it to someone else. So that's one more category of surgical waste to add to cafeteria menus.
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Perfect for the computer industry - create an ice replica of your latest innovation and leave it in a visible place. When it's melted, you know your product is obsolete and you can go back to the drawing board. Repeat as necessary. - Idle hands are the Devil's workshop. Idle minds are God's.
- Bachelorhood is the father of necessity.
Sigh.. if only I were in a different department, I could claim this..
Acutally, I've seen some of the BASIC stuff for this, it's quite cool. But, I must protest, the article has it wrong, the work was NOT done in the mechanical engineering building. And actually, no, the ink isn't completely reusable.. just mostly- evaporation, contamination, and other things have to be taken into account.
Here is the official link from UMR. Nothing too detailed in there, I'll warn you. Basically what you read at Discover.
Sigh again. If I were in a different department, I'd know enough to provide quite a bit insight.
(PS- UMR's other claims to fame is the National Champion Solar Car, and a huge arse St. Pat's festival that can only be described as... Animal House.)
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
Posted by Hemos (alias: The Copier) on Tuesday October 17, @06:45PM
from the fun-with-cut-and-paste-utilities dept.
4/3PI*R^3 writes "At my fellow UM System University, the University of Missouri Rolla Dr. Ming Leu, Wei Zhang, and their fellow mechanical engineers invented a device that constructs a 3-D model out of previous Slashdot posts in a matter of hours, using a technique they call "parametric self-plagiarism". Article in Discover. At last we can finally make the assumption that Hemos' brain is actually a strawberry-banana swirl popsicle!!!!"
...is that water is free.
Plastic isn't. Rubber isn't. Most materials aren't. But at least in industrialized nations, water, particularly in the quantities required for a sculpture, is essentially free. That means, with mere application of a moderate amount of electricity *any* reasonably large object can be synthesized at minimal per unit cost.
This is extraordinarily significant. One-offs that might not justify the cost of materials can now be made for the cost of electricity. Energy-only weaponry has been a long term goal of the US Army--the supply lines that feed mechanized operations have long been a problematic weakness. While this obviously doesn't have much of a lethal aspect(ice-daggers aside), using these temporary models as the sources for cheaper and more permanent molds could be moderately viable. More importantly, it allows more "experimentation" with shape, allowing possibly better final products.
Make no mistake--the fact that the per-unit cost of each mold is near-zero *is* the most significant part of this system, though the transparency of the material is a close second.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Create the reverse of what you want in ice, with drain paths designed in. Fill the ice mold with plastic resin and let harden. Heat up, ice melts, water pours out of drain holes. Whole new way of making things. Very cool indeed.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
find quite some info on Smokedot.org. Also uses slashcode.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Were we not able to make them before?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Hmm... this could lead to an underground "yellow market" in fraudulent artwork. We better be careful.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
Here's the scoop.
This is the department's real page on the project.
This is the Virtual Reality and Prototyping Lab's page, with other links of interest..
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
"AS it says in the bible, ' there shall be no ice cube wide enough, and no ice cube tall enough to shut up a nerd. And there was much rejoicing' "
:)
Amen, Brother!
Even if slashdot keeps posting crap like this, and even though these posts are at -1, it's good to still see that MEEPT!! is still around.
...but now it's time to go to kuro5hin, and see what the news is.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Followed the link to Google for "strawberry-banana" and I found this!!! And because of the way Google ranks results, doesn't that mean it's popular?? The horror!
Curried Carrot Soup and Strawberry-Banana Tofu
I was just doing a search on all of /. to see if anyone had mentioned ToyBuilders yet, ooleary wins the prize (the only hit in the last 30k posts). Its not just custom toys, it is *anything* you can submit a 3d CAD file for, file formats are listed in their FAQ. Tres cool. They have a backlog of orders after the NS article but they really deserve some more attention from the /. crowd, 3d models of ourselves, our latest fusion driven car design, and a new case for our laptop/mp3player/lunch is exactly what us geeks need.
Real hackers will still just use a chainsaw.
:)
Let me know when use this technique on something a little more permanent, like plastic.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
For only $39.95, you too can download a perfect copy of Nathalie Portman's breasts,
Personally, I'd kind of like the popsicle version.
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Now we're onto the next great thing. 3D solid modeling printers. Spraying water droplets could be replaced with polymers that set when exposed to air, producing soft or hard objects in the privacy of your own home.
This could give the online sex industry that next boost in revenues the whole world's economies need.
For only $39.95, you too can download a perfect copy of Nathalie Portman's breasts, to fondle as much as your immature slashdot desires can handle. For the ladies, we have a lifesize reproduction of CmdrTaco's, errr, reproduction. Also comes in 2x and 4x sizes, so you'll never be disappointed.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Won't someone please think of the ice sculptors!
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I feel like this story has been posted 20 or 30 times, each with slightly different details. When are these fantastic new machines going to stop being invented?
3prong
I was getting bored playing human chess. Now I can create my very own SubZero and play real life Mortal Kombat.
Now all I have to do is find my very own Pricess Kitana.
Here's the scoop.
This is the department's real page on the project.
This is the Virtual Reality and Prototyping Lab's page, with other links of interest..
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
This is very interesting. One can envision an inexpensive desktop unit that consists of a clear, heavy plastic or glass dome settled upon a flat base containing the coolant and other freezer innards, and through which clear, heavy plastic or glass dome, can be seen a solid mass of ice containing within itself an intricately layered ice sculpture, all carefully constructed from very pure water and dense colorants to maximize clarity and sharpness, and in which are delicate, often beautiful figurines and other three-dimensional features, such as entire miniature forests or seascapes, as well as highly-detailed clouds and flocks of birds.
This combination of a relative ease of manufacture of such internally complex but quite durable ice sculptures and the availability of quiet, inexpensive freezer mechanisms, might very well prove to be a popular art form, much in the way of those old "Lava Lamps" from the 1960's, but not nearly as tacky ... uh, I meant to say, "but even groovier" 8^].
(No, I will not speculate upon what the pornography industry would do with this, nor will I remark upon what might be done with a Beowulf cluster of such devices).
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
... we won't have to settle for grainy two-dimensional reproductions of our asses. Nope - we'll have our asses in glorious 3D.
Well, it might make a nice conversation piece...
Perhaps an actual production scenario will help.
Picture making a window crank handle for a prototype car. Make an ice sculpture, and let the designer see it. He doesn't like it, so you drop it in the sink while he goes back and changes his design. You make another ice sculpture, and he likes it. Take the ice version and pack it in plaster (or some other molding compound.) The block of plaster is then warmed slightly and the water drained out. Now, you have a hole in a block of plaster the exact shape of the original window crank. Fill this block of plaster with molten plastic to make a more durable duplicate of your original window handle. Hand the plastic crank to your designer, who then approves it. So far, you've spent about $100 dollars, and your designer has seen the finished part already.
OK, you're with me so far, right?
Now, make another copy of your window crank, only this time make it out of metal. Slice it in two and nail both halves to the opposite sides of a board. Put the board in a box and pack both top and bottom with plaster. Lift off the top, remove the board, and carefully place the top back over the bottom. Fill the cavity with your production plastic. Repeat this step thousands of times and you can make thousands of duplicate parts.
You just made a temporary production mold (probably good for about 10,000 parts or so) for a total cost of maybe $500. A tool-and-die shop would charge about $20,000 for a real mold to do the same thing. And you did it in about two days, instead of two months.
I've seen this done with a 3D stereo lithography machine, and it was used to make a temporary mold for a plastic fan shroud. (The original design didn't fit in the car.) They were able to run 5000 parts from the temporary mold before the production mold was returned from the tool and die shop. The novel part of this equipment is their use of water and ice, instead of a tank of toxic plastic resins and UV lasers.
There is real value to this research. It's worth a LOT of money in the manufacturing world.
John
John
These machines are now in fairly common use. The "dangling" problem was easily resolved by building everything on a common sprue, and cutting it free after the piece was cured.
John
John
Actually, Discover also ran an article about something kind of similar a few months ago... it was a 3-D printer that used melted plastic beads, instead of water, so that the objects might be useful and not melt. Sure, you couldn't eat it, but... seems to be a similar concept, just a different approach. Still... it would be pretty expensive.
The obvious follow-up (with this too) is to make a mold from latex, wax, plaster, or the other molding materials used in your manufacturing process.
There was a guy (I don't know what ever happened to him), named Don Lancaster, that worked for the old Electronics Now magazine, and did a number of books on this (8+ years ago) and even sold kits with postcript source, to make your own by welding, etc. a dremel or an old dentists burr to an obsolete plotter.
Now, we just need some cool stuff to prototype/cast! UMR Rulez!!! - nimitz
The creators claim it's faster than other methods because an exterior shell can be formed in ice, then filled with water, which then freezes. Wouldn't the freezing water expand and crack the exterior?
Very cool stuff though. How long 'till I can order an ice klein bottle?
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
This kind of thing's been around for a while, except using plastic.
:-P
Lasers are beamed into a special plastic whilst it's liquid, and the affected volume solidifies, giving you a solid 3D plastic model of whatever it was you 'printed'.
A bit more permanent than making an ice model...
Engineer turns up to presentation to demonstrate his new Miracle Widget, with a big wet patch in his pocket... "Um, hi. I did have a model, but it kinda melted. Honest."
Anyway, a quick link to the 3D laser printer.
I didn't bash the liberal media. I said I suspect that there may be ultra-liberal elements involved in the media that are giving Nader attention. I didn't say whether I thought that was negative or positive per se. I only offered that as one explanation of Nader's media exposure, which is totally unwarranted, based on polls.
In the 1996 election, (If I counted right) Browne beat Nader in 16 of the 37 states where Nader was on the ballot. Browne was on the ballot in all 50 states also. Nader got .71% at large, and Browne got .50% Now you tell me if Nader deserves so much more attention than Browne after reading these numbers.
1996 election results.
Totals
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
There's some resort out there which is made entirely of ice; it melts during the summer months and they recarve it come winter. Right now it's pretty expensive; maybe they could make it cheaper with one of these?
The resort seems pretty neat (I'm avoiding the use of "cool" here); it's all hand-carved and extremely intricate.
# debian/rules
This came up in new scientist a while back - the article mentioned a company,
toybuilders, who do this kind of thing to create "custom toys" (action figures that look like you, etc..)
I wonder if this could lead to the first home solid printers. All the other systems require expensive parts & chemicals to create a model. Water is about the cheapest thing you can buy. A refregeration unit with 3 motors, a microcontroller, and some tubing - $400 or so for a home unit.
:) Heck, you could make ice-plates, forks, knives, and spoons. Not that they would be good for real use, but at least doing the dishes can be reduced to placing them in the sink and waiting a few hours. A lazy man's dream!
If nothing else, you could have fanastic looking ice scupltures for every meal...
-- Virtual Windows Project