openMaterials

D-Shape, whose 3d printers are capable of fabricating amazing mega scale free-form building size models, are now working with the European Space Agency to create a 3d printer that can extrude within the moon’s vacuum environment using lunar dust. They are currently experimenting with ’simulant’ lunar dust, and hope to conduct trials in a vacuum environment [...]

Tito Ingenieri, from Quilmes - Argentina, built his house out of six million empty bottles over a period of 19 years. His main motivation was the accessibility of scrap materials: “I didn’t have any other way to make my house and this was easy enough to do… Scrap iron and the remnants of other materials [...]

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin has available on its site a highly experimental, but apparently feasible, tutorial for producing DIY OLEDs using conductive glass and a polyvinyl alcohol solution. It presents two alternatives for the application method: a 2500rpm fan or an aluminum foil + duct tape mask. [...]

The OpenStructures project is an open and modular construction system where everyone designs for everyone on the basis of one shared geometrical grid: It is an ongoing experiment that wants to find out what happens if people design objects according to a shared modular grid, a common open standard that stimulates the exchange of parts, components, [...]

Open3DP’s Recipes are a really nice resource for those interested in experimenting with different materials for 3D printing. There’s a little bit of everything in there, from glass to porcelain to sugar. Open3dp is a website hosted by the Solheim Rapid Prototyping Laboratory in the Mechanical Engineering Department on the University of Washington campus. [...]

Unfold has started printing with ceramics on a modified rapman. First results look amazing: We took some time to play around and get used to the dynamics of the clay print process. It was also time to step up (or down?) the resolution from 1.9 to 0.8 mm using screw-on luer lock tips. We are also [...]