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3-D Printer Creates Buildings From Dust and Glue
An anonymous reader writes "D-Shape, an innovative new 3-D printer, builds solid structures like sculptures, furniture, even buildings from the ground up. The device relies on sand and magnesium glue to actually build structures layer by layer from solid stone. The designer, Enrico Dini, is even talking with various organizations about making the printer compatible with moon dust, paving the way for an instant moonbase!"
And then 3 more before we print
I wonder what the power consumption of a monster like this is.
I want a Fred Flintstone house.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
There are concerns that the dust found on the lunar surface could cause harmful effects on any manned outpost technology and crew members:
Abrasive nature of the dust particles may rub and wear down surfaces through friction;
Negative effect on coatings used on gaskets to seal equipment from space, optical lenses that include solar panels and windows as well as wiring;
Possible damage to an astronaut's lungs, nervous, and cardiovascular systems.
The principles of astronautical hygiene should be used to assess the risks of exposure to lunar dust during exploration on the Moon's surface and thereby determine the most appropriate measures to control exposure. These would include for example, removing the spacesuit in a three stage airlock, vacuuming the suit before removal, using local exhaust ventilation with a high efficiency particulate filter to remove any dust in the space craft's atmosphere etc (Ref: Dr J R Cain presentation "The application of astronautical hygiene to protect the health of astronauts", UK Space Biomedicine Association Conference 2009, Downing College, University of Cambridge).
The harmful properties of the lunar dust are not well known. However, based on studies of dust found on Earth, it is expected that exposure to lunar dust will result in greater risks to health both from direct exposure (acute) and if exposure is over time (chronic). This is because lunar dust is more chemically reactive and has larger surface areas composed of sharper jagged edges than Earth dust (Ref: Dr John R Cain, "Moon dust - a danger to lunar explorers" , Spaceflight, Vol 52, February 2010, pp60 - 65).
Can you say bad Idea?
music lover since 1969
I, for one, say "neato!".
I remember the tv show, beyond 2000, back in the early 90s. One of the items they talked about was being able to fax someone objects. So you would scan it, and it would send (over the phone lines) a fax to someone who had a similar machine and the machine would create the object.
Is this step 1 to that?
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
A friend of mine worked at a place that had a machine that did this with a laser and plastic powder, and he had some amazing little prototype bits; Very art-like.
[CITATION NEEDED]
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
...sounds like a great choice as resources to use. As Sand is basically silicon and readily available, magnesium is also the 7th most abundant in th earths crust. It seems like this thing could go a long way towards very cheap mass production of all sorts of solid things very cheaply. There is also the RepRap project but they use plastics which I'm afraid are quite expensive as resource, although they kind of target a different area. I'm excited by this, I've been following these ideas for a while and it seems to be going somewhere, I guess we're getting closer to general purpose building machines.
...I'll finally be able to get that 10 foot statue of my butt that I've always wanted.
I know zilch about materials science, but I have to wonder how these structures would hold up as they get large. Will they be like concrete, or like sandstone? or like particle board...
The designer, Enrico Dini, is even talking with various organizations about making the printer compatible with moon dust, paying the way for an instant moonbase!"
He's paying for it? Is Mr. Dini some sort of James Bond villain? (I think it could of meant paving the way.)
Otherwise the reprap is already better.
n/t.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
while this is certainly super-sized, this technology has been around for over a decade.
z-corp comes to mind (www.zcorp.com)
I saw them print out a rubber ball from elastic particles and flexible glue that actually bounced.
They kept the cost down early by using HP Deskjet hardware for the printing (just glue instead of ink).
cool stuff, but not new.
I'm curious as to what sort of limitations the building mechanism puts on the structures. There wouldn't be any supporting superstructure holding everything in place until the building is structurally sound. Every stage would have to be able to stand up on its own power. I wonder what the impact would be on design? Would buildings that are stable at every stage of their construction be more stable upon completion? Regardless, this seems pretty damn cool.
Dust is cheap, why scale down?
I always thought that we need robots to build a moonbase before we bother sending people up there again. Here's one robot that might help get the job done. Then again, it seems like a major piece of hardware that will be difficult to transport. But the idea of making stone from dust is a good one. Maybe we should half-inflate a giant balloon so its top is dome-shaped, cover it with layers of moon dirt which would be hardened with this magnesium fixative. Once the stone is thick enough, the dome will be self-supporting and a good radiation shield. The whole process might be done by a single remote-controlled backhoe with a spray-nozzle. This is the kind of cool shit that NASA should be doing.
Oh and I for one welcome our cancer causing moon dust overlords.
Wanna bet that those building will start to fall apart just when you realize you got a deadly disease from sniffing glue and breathing dust all the time? ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The original story is longer, with more pictures...
Not paying, PAVING.
God do you people even think about what you're typing or saying when you use phrases like this? Did it ever once occur to you to think about what you're saying and how much sense it makes?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Hey. Has anyone noticed that building there before?
Get to the choppah! Naow!!
Of course, I was six at the time, and the buildings were only suitable for ants, grasshoppers and spider and snails. Admittedly I also had significant compatibility and upgrade problems which were quickly fixed with a "light spanking" patch.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Here:
http://www.contourcrafting.org/
"Contour Crafting", which is being developed by a Dr. Koshnevis at USC. His approach is to have a robot lay a line of concrete and trowel it smooth as it's placed. I guess you could say that TFA describes a raster-type 3D printer, where Koshnevis has a vector-type 3D plotter.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
this is fucking awesome. imagine now cory doctrow writing a book about printing cities. that's kinda cool, not? supply the masses with suburbia at will.
The page you linked to contains the Trojan:JS/Gamburl.E. MSFT Security Essentials just flagged it and removed it from my browser cache.
Cool tech, but before I'd live in a printed building, I'd want to know how its strength compares to reinforced concrete, particularly when subjected to a seismic event.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's not really about the money right now, it's about finding something that works. Reprap and similar projects are mostly just trying to find materials that can be put down at high res, and will hold form even when "painting" curves etc. that have little support underneath. This would let people essentially build any object they can model in a 3d program. Otherwise, you're limited to fairly basic solid blocks and things you print, but then cut or work into smaller shapes.
n/t
right...
If damage can occur in just a matter of hours, does this mean that the moon landing hoax theories were actually true?
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