Modding News - Page 8

As traditional mail is becoming a less needed service, Royal Mail has stepped up in a bid to stay ahead of the 'rat race' - offering consumers the ability to 3D print and ship various objects from their local offices.

Paired up with 3D-printing company iMakr, Royal Mail using their services to install brand new printers in their New Cavendish Street delivery office in London, set to enable both custom designs and pre-made product designs to be ordered by consumers. These products can be ordered online by any end-user and have them shipped directly to their address or picked up directly from the office.

Mike Newnham is Royal Mail's Chief Customer Officer, sharing his thoughts on this business advancement he commented: "3D printing is an emerging technology that has many applications and offers an innovative way to create unique or personalized objects. It can be prohibitively expensive for consumers or small businesses to invest in a 3D printer, so we are launching a pilot to gauge interest in 3D printing".

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho-based startup Rohinni has an interesting project to share with the world: LightPaper. LightPaper is something the startup took to their Twitter account to tease, writing: "We print light".

The goal of the startup is to be the leading lighting application for, well, everything. LightPaper is the world's thinnest LED lighting, which can be applied to, stuck on, and placed onto virtually any surface. LightPaper, if you've already guessed, is super-thin, and is made by mixing ink and tiny LEDs together, and then printing out a mixture onto a conductive layer.

This layer is then "sealed between two additional layers. The tiny diodes are about the size of a red blood cell. When a current runs through the paper, the tiny, randomly-dispersed diodes will light up", reports 3ders.org. OLED is currently one of the thinner technologies out there, but LightPaper is set to break that record. LightPaper is being aimed at the automotive industry, where it could allow for better tail lights, or super-impressive looking branding.

Since the introduction of the Arduino, we have seen a wealth of self-dispensing, self-mixing, and self-concocting barbots hit the scene, but never have we seen one quite so refined as the new Barobot. The Barobot is a cocktail slinging robot that is aimed at making your socializing events more about socializing than about mixing drinks.

Recently launched on Kickstarter, the Barobot is a $1600 (self assembly) to $2500 (fully assembled) alcoholic drink mixing machine that utilizes a 7-inch android screen, and some custom electronics to mix the perfect cocktail every time, without the need for a bartender. The team behind Barobot is looking to raise $151,500 to mass produce the Barobot and make it a retail success.

The Barobot is capable of holding 12 bottles of your favorite spirits, and can perfectly dispense the correct proportions for any drink in its library, making for a more accurate drink with less wasted boose. "Mixing drinks at home parties might prove a challenge if you are not a trained bartender with professional equipment. It requires remembering many recipes and accurate measures which could be disastrous if you forget, more importantly, it distracts you from interacting with your guests. Barobot takes care of your bar tending needs allowing you to focus on your friends," Barobot said in its Kickstarter Campaign.

Printrbot has long been known for creating and selling affordable 3D Printer kits that enable almost anyone to begin 3D printing in their home, but that changed at this week's MakerCon in San Francisco. Earlier this week the company unveiled its first CNC Router that is targeted at beginner CNC users. The new Printerbot CNC Router is capable of machining wood, plastic and aluminum, albeit at different speeds.

The machine features a Wi-Fi enabled Raspberry Pi that runs a web-based control software suite enabling users to connect to the device wirelessly. The control board is based on the TinyG board, and movement is accomplished via NEMA 23 stepper motors. A Makita Router is utilized as the tool head, and the entire thing looks to be able to accept stock up to 24-inches square. No word on pricing has been released, but I have reached out to Printrbot for more information.

Yesterday, Arduino announced the launch of its latest edition to its user-friendly development boards. The new Arduino Zero is a powerful 32-bit version of the Arduino Uno, and is designed to empower creative individuals with the power to create something truly amazing. The board features an Atmel SAMD21 MCU which is comprised of a 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ Core.

The new Arduino Zero is based on a 3.3v standards, has 14 digital I/O pins of which 12 are PWM and 2 are reserved for UART. Analog I/O is handled by 5 pins featuring 12bits ADC and 1 pin with 10bits DAC. Flash memory is set at 256KB, SRAM at 32KB, and up to 16KB of EEPROM is available via emulation. Unlike its AVR siblings, the Arduino Zero is clocked at 48MHz.

"The Zero board expands the Arduino family by providing increased performance to fuel the creativity of the maker community," said Massimo Banzi, Arduino co-founder and CEO. "The flexible feature set enables endless project opportunities for devices and acts as a great educational tool for learning about 32-bit application development."

Every DIYer in the world has at one point or another owned a cordless drill. Since their inception, cordless drills have made life much easier, but they have also resulted in many more stripped screw heads and "oversunken" screws. Black+Decker has just released a new cordless drill / driver with some innovative technology designed to prevent both of these forever.

The new Autosense Drill has been designed to automatically stop when a screw has become flush with the working surface. In the past, the utilization of a clutch system also prevented this, but it relied heavily on the operator knowing the perfect clutch setting for the type of screw and wood that was being used. The new Autosense drill is intuitive and all the user needs to do is select drive mode. This will tell the drill to begin sensing the required torque levels needed and when a rise in torque is sensed, the drill slows down and stops just as the head of the screw reaches the surface of the wood.

In the event that the screw needs to be sunken a little below the surface, the operator can simply pull the trigger again, and the Autosense Drill / Driver will sink the screw further into the wood 1/4 turn at a time. The new Black+Decker Autosense Drill / Driver is set to retail at $80 and will release to the public in Early June. I hope to get my hands-on one before then and will post a full review if I do.

As the maker and DIY movement continues to grow, so does the availability of less expensive, high-precision CNC machines. We have seen this trend already prove itself in the 3D printer market, and today desktop machining is cheaper than ever thanks to a company called Carbide 3D who launched its first Kickstarter campaign last week. The new Nomad 883 CNC Mill is designed be as easy to use as a 3D Printer, and will fit on most desktop surfaces, or to fit on top of any workbench in your shop.

"We designed the machine from the ground up to address the complaints we've heard about CNC machines - from designing our own spindle to adding automation like tool length probing and custom fixtures to simplify common job setups," said Grzesek, co-founder of Carbide 3D. "We think this is the next step in the recent Digital Manufacturing trend started by low-cost 3D printers."

Carbide 3D says that the Nomad 883 is designed to fill in the gap between huge milling machines that cost upwards of $100,000 and the more affordable desktop 3D Printers which range between $300 and $3000. The CNC Milling Machine is built with a rigid aluminum frame, and is capable of milling parts from wood, plastic, metal, foam, and wax thanks to its custom designed, brush-less spindle head. Getting your hands-on one of these awesome milling machines is as easy as a $1500 pledge on Kickstarter.

Over the past seven years or so, I have been around my fair share of 3D Printers and robots, and while all of them have been extremely cool, the ones that still fascinate me the most are the delta bots. Delta bots use vertical shafts to articulate a trio of arms to position a head anywhere on a circular platform below, more efficiently than a standard linear X,Y and Z Cartesian robot. Today a new multifunction delta bot hit the internet and I just had to share it with everyone.

The ZEGO is a multifunctional delta bot that is capable of not only 3D printing, but can be used to do a wealth of other task thanks to its easy change tool-head. The ZEGO can function as a plotter that draws in pen, pencil, or marker, or even hold a pen-style hobby cutter if one felt like modifying a few things. ZEGO also offers additional tool-heads that allow for CNC wood burning, engraving and PCB milling, and even pick & place PCB population. A pledge of $549 is all it takes to get a ZEGO classic kit, but if you really want all of the tool heads, you will need to shell out $2,499.

Airwolf 3D has just announced the launch of its first hot-end for 3D printers that allows customers to print in engineering-grade materials such as polycarbonate, Bridge Nylon and Nylon 645. The new JRx Hot-End is patent pending and not only allows users to print in the hotter temperature range of Nylon and PC, but also retains printing capabilities in the ABS and PLA ranges as well.

"Printing polycarbonate is the holy grail for prosumer 3D printers," stated Erick Wolf, president and founder of Airwolf 3D. "Personally, however, I think printing nylon is going to explode because it is incredibly strong and has almost unlimited applications. You can even dye different layers to get multi-colored products. Bridge nylon, for example, has been reformulated to meet the growing demand for the material. At 270 degrees Celsius (518 degrees Fahrenheit) we find the layer-to-layer adhesion is superb and the prints stick uniformly to our heated bed. When dealing with nylon at lower temperatures there tends to be trial and error to achieve ideal layer strength. That won't happen with our new JRx hot end."

Airwolf 3D says that it utilizes Teflon and a proprietary thermal barrier to prevent thermal creep from happening between the heater element and the PTFE liner. This allows the hot-end to reach temperatures as high as 270C and printing of Nylon and Polycarbonate. Airwolf 3D says that the JRx hotend is featured in 2 models with compatibility for the AW3D Xl and 5.5 3D printers for $195, while the JRx for the AW3D HD will cost consumers $295.

Many of you reading this will know my fondness for the popular BeagleBone Black development board, and how much I love new accessories for it. Today I caught wind of a new Kickstarter campaign that is looking to bring high-quality analogue and Bluetooth audio to the BeagleBone and BeagleBone Black development boards. The all new SoundsCape is a "cape" add-on board for the BeagleBone system that allows users to add an analogue and Bluetooth audio solution to their projects easily, and from a single board.

The SoundsCape is being developed by Simple Media Networks, and is designed for developers using the BeagleBone for systems that need an easy solution for high quality audio performance and/or Bluetooth connectivity in their project. The SoundsCape is also for Makers who like hacking Audio platforms, or anyone who would like to wirelessly stream internet radio to their wireless speakers.

Features of the SoundsCape include: