Continuing on from my previous post on the Mcor Matrix 3D printer that uses paper as its raw material, I hope to provide here a review of other recent developments relating to 3D printing hardware.  Not all of these are immediately relevant to the idea of consumers printing objects in their own home, but do [...]

Over the last few months, I’ve noticed that 3D printing technology, and the businesses that are based on it, are receiving a much higher level of attention in the mainstream business and technology media.  Coupled with this is a noticeable expansion in the number of companies that are engaged in the provision of services to [...]

1.  Jeff Howe, author of the Crowdsourcing book, has written an interesting and comprehensive blog post about the possible future online business models that might be adopted by the print media.
2.  RPI, a provider of automated, mass-customized manufacturing and fulfillment for the [...]

Two design software companies this week had significant announcements. Delcam, based in the UK, will later this year launch a new version of its CopyCAD reverse engineering package. CopyCAD Pro will be the first product development system to offer “Tribrid Modelling”, by adding triangle modelling to the combination of surface and solid modelling [...]

A report in issue 264 (January 2008) of UK computer magazine PC Plus details Intel’s current research in various fields (no online version of this article unfortunately).  While many of the areas covered relate to processors, and as such are outside the scope of this website, one project is very interesting from the point of [...]

Wikinomics, or to use its full title “Wikinomics - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” is a chronicle of how traditional collaboration - in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention centre - has been superceeded by collaborations on an astronomical scale.

The book opens by telling the story of Goldcorp Inc., a mining company [...]

The Make Magazine Blog recently carried a short post about a demo page depicting an ‘online digital manufacturing’ service on the site of 3D technology company Digital Reality. The copy on the page says that users can “create and sell custom toys, jewelry, motorcycle accessories, accurate fine scale modeling parts, promotional products, and millions [...]

The Wealth of Networks is Yochai Benkler’s heavyweight analysis of the state of the internet in the early part of the 21st Century. In the book, Benkler argues strongly in favour of what he calls ’social production’, which harnesses impulses, time and resources that, in the industrial information economy, would have been wasted or [...]

Via the P2P Foundation blog, I recently read an article entitled The Tranformation of Manufacturing in the 21st Century, written by Lawerence J. Rhoades of Ex One, a developer and supplier of innovative manufacturing technology and equipment in Pennsylvania, USA.
It is an excellent and comprehensive article detailing the nature of desktop manufacturing and how it [...]

Erick Schonfeld, editor-at-large of Business 2.0 magazine and presenter of The New Disruptors on CNNMoney , recently visited a startup called Desktop Factory. This company is involved in developing 3D printing hardware, and aims to bring their product within financial reach of home users within a few years.
The most interesting aspect of Desktop Factory’s [...]

Back in November 2006, I speculated as to the type of businesses which might emerge using a hybrid of mass customization, crowdsourcing, micro manufacturing and online factory business models. One such hybrid has emerged recently in New Zealand. Ponoko describes itself as the world’s first personal manufacturing platform where anyone can click to [...]

I am a little late in writing about this, but it is worthwhile: Last month The Guardian, a UK newspaper, described how Moshe Einat is developing new inkjet technology that uses thousands of ink drops rather than a small number of nozzles.
Einat is a lecturer and researcher at the College of Judea and Samaria [...]

Materialise NV, which develops software for the rapid prototyping and manufacturing (RP&M) industry, and Dimension, a business unit of Stratasys, Inc., have teamed up to develop ‘Dimension Magics’, a customised version of Materialise’ Magics software specially tuned to the specific requirements of production on Dimension 3D printers.
Dimension desktop 3D printers - which include the Dimension [...]

I have been a little short of time to write posts here recently, but I hope to resume in the next day or so.
In the meantime, I came across a new blog which is very interesting. The ddb NOLA blog  is run by the participants in the Digital Design Build New Orleans LouisianA project, [...]

In a post titled ‘3D Printer Brings Vision to the Poor‘, Mark Proffitt looks at how digital manufacturing technology is being used to provide eyeglasses to people in low-income countries, where the conventional optician service would be far too expensive for those that need it.
Mark Proffitt notes that:
There are two obstacles to providing eye glasses [...]