A 3D jello printer made out of old CD-ROM drives is the final frontier of 3D printing

The world of 3D printing — while still not particularly viable for consumer use — is rapidly advancing. We’re still far off from a Transmetropolitan-style Maker that can print up almost anything so long as you load in some (actual) garbage for fuel, but the medium has made some major strides. A Harvard scientist was recently able to 3D-print rechargeable batteries, while other researchers were able to 3D-print free-standing structures using liquid metal.

Today the frontier of 3D printing is becoming much more bold and complex, and it all led up to this 3D printer made out of discarded CD-ROM drives that prints little figures inside of jello shots.

Over on SpritesMods, one intrepid party-goer realized jello shots for a 25th birthday party could be spiced up with some food dye and a syringe, but found the process of creating the figures by hand to be a bit tedious. So, a 3D printer was created by breaking down the parts of some old CD-ROM and DVD drives, and mounting the usable parts, such as the stepper motors, to a wood base.

A tube was hooked up to a syringe that held the dye, which in turn was connected to the injection needle. One of the CD-ROM drive’s tray ejector was positioned near the syringe’s plunger and used to inject the dye.

A few different figurines were hard-coded into the printer’s AVR microcontroller by way of specifying different dye injection coordinates. The printer only needed around 10V of power to function, so it was hooked up to a laptop battery, making the rig somewhat portable.

Rather than just using a dye that’s just for looks, it was made out of banana liquor, food coloring, and a bit of corn starch to keep it from running within the jello shot, making it not only visible, but functional. After all, you wouldn’t want to tell people at a party that you displaced alcoholic content from the jello shots, right?


SOURCE: Geek

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Motorola 'Project Ara' modular smartphone prototype nears completion

Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside has confirmed that a Project Ara prototype is nearing completion. Project Ara is a collaboration between Motorola and 3D Systems to produce “Phonebloks” — modular smartphones whose components can be replaced like Legos. The confirmation occurred yesterday in a Google+ Hangout.

Project Ara harnesses the technical expertise of Motorola and the vibrant development community fostered by 3D Systems. The two companies have already collaborated in the form of “make-a-thons” on the MAKEwithMOTO tour, which took the creative process to engineering and design schools. Motorola has also invited feedback and inspiration from potential users of Project Ara phones via its dscout page.

The project was commenced because smartphone components tend to wear out one at a time, and because different components are upgradeable at different times. Normally when a smartphone user wants just one aspect of the phone to be better, faster, shinier, they replace the entire smartphone. This leads to material and monetary waste on the consumer level. With a Project Ara phone, modules can be replaced one at a time. Want a new Bluetooth model? Just snap it in. New battery, camera, processor? Easily done.

If the project becomes a consumer-level reality available to billions of users, the effect on the smartphone industry as a whole could be very interesting indeed to witness. For one, it could affect the rate at which manufacturers release new models. Assuming the prototype functions well enough to continue, and assuming the public launch is received well — which is still a long ways off — this could be a major win for consumers over the long haul.



SOURCE: The Next Web

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