Hack a Day » dlp

3D printing with visible light

Mike Szczys — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:00:52 +0000

This 3D printer manages some pretty fantastic resolution, and these are just the early results of [Junior Veloso's] build. He put together a machine that prints objects in resin that cures in visible light. To print, a thin layer of raw liquid resin self-levels across a printing surface and a DLP-based projector shines light from below, onto the portion to be hardened. The z-axis then pulls that layer up and the next to be printed will become the newest bottom layer. Horizontally the printer yields 1024×768 resolution with a layer thickness as small as 0.01 mm. No wonder he’s turning out this kind of quality.

The model above took 5 hours to print, with eight-second exposure for each layer, and 0.1mm layer thickness. There is lots of good information on his blog, from the early planning, to the finished hardware so take some time to learn about this fascinating project.

Update: Thanks to reader [Nave.notnilc] for pointing out that we’ve seen a chemical 3D printing technique before.

Filed under: tool hacks

Bug Labs introduces new BUGmodules

Strom Carlson — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:00:06 +0000

Bug Labs, the company that makes modular electronics that allow you to build your own tech doohickeys quickly and easily, has announced five new modules: BUGprojector, a mini DLP projector developed in conjunction with Texas Instruments, which sounds very much like the tiny DLP projector we posted about last week; BUGsound, an audio processing module with four stereo input/output jacks, a microphone, a speaker, and builtin hardware codecs; BUGbee (802.15.4) and BUGwifi (802.11 and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR), which will let you connect wirelessly with your PAN and WLAN, respectively; and BUG3g GSM, for connecting to (you guessed it) 3G GSM networks. In conjunction with Bug Labs’ existing series of modules, especially the highly versatile BUGvonHippel universal module, you’ll be able to create some pretty kickass gadgets. No word yet on pricing, although Bug Labs expects to ship by the end of Q1 2009.

Posted in handhelds hacks, portable video hacks, wireless hacks

Finding sensitive data with freeware

Juan Aguilar — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:45:00 +0000

When an organization’s network grows to a certain size, its difficult to keep track of every single piece of sensitive information like credit card numbers or social security numbers. In order to find and secure this data, companies often turn to data loss prevention (DLP) services. This is not a viable option for many organizations, though, as DLP services can often be expensive and time-consuming to deploy.

Such organizations are not entirely without options: a recent article on Dark Reading lists several DLP tools authored by teams from various universities, all free to download and use. Programs like The University of Texas at Austin’s Sensitive Number Finder and Virginia Tech’s Find_SSN were designed to find pieces of data on computers and servers formatted in ways typical to sensitive information (xxx-xx-xxxx for SSNs, for example). This approach can often lead to false positives, so some measure of human control is required. They are also incapable of scanning application servers or other forms of data in transit. Cornell’s Spider can scan various application server types using different protocols. When used in conjunction, all of these apps can help secure your data without the expense of outsourcing the job.