What do you get when you mix rigid and elastic polymers with a laser-scanning 3D printing technique? If you are researchers at ETH Zurich, you get robot hands with bones, ligaments, and tendons. In conjunction with a startup company, the process uses both fast-curing and slow-curing plastics, allowing parts with different structural properties to print. Of course, you could always assemble things from multiple kinds of plastics, but this new technique — vision-controlled jetting — allows the hands to print as one part. You can read the full paper from Nature or see the video below.
Wax with a low melting point encases the entire structure, acting as a support. The researchers remove the wax after the plastics cure.
The technique isn’t just for hands. The paper shows a functional heart pump, for example. The printer uses an inkjet arrangement to deposit material and a UV LED curing system. A laser scanner generates a high-resolution map of the build surface, allowing the controller to adapt the print layers.
This might not be a technique for every day although, honestly, we want to hear more about the wax support systems. However, for the right print job, the ability to mix differing kinds of polymer may allow for unique and cost-effective designs.
We’d like to see how this hand compares to the Clone Hand. Don’t want to 3D print? Stop by the hardware store.
These folks deserve a hand!
Can you Westworld?
For both previous posts I’ve tried to put a link to the Howard’s robotic hand episode of The Big Bang Theory but it didn’t work for me.
So who’s going to be the first to DIY one of these printers?
Someone who will keep it to themselves for 20 years or be sued.
Sadly the patent system stifles us all.
Many people who encountered Xerox solid ink printers in the 90s realized that a flatbed conversion would result in a multimaterial 3d printer. Many of them got cease and desist letters or worse when they showed theirs, or even discussed the possibility openly. 3d systems kept us locked in or locked out for 2 decades. Even now, several years after the core patent expiry, only 2 companies produce a slightly reduced price Projet knockoff.
VCJ, like heated chambers for FDM, is a second layer tech. They improved the expired 3d systems patent by adding an optical sensor that monitors the deposition field and adjusts jet position and drop volume dynamically to ensure smoothness before moving to the next layer, whereas the original system relied on overdeposition and flat milling the field between layers. They coupled CM/YK to support/build to keep the speed acceptable given the necessary losses. You could Homebrew a 3 or 4 material printer from an old xerox printer, but it would be proportionally slower than 3dsystems as a result unless you do the necessary intellectual yoga to slip free from the VCJ patent claims, but youd better have the legal fund in place to prove it.
Actually, making a copy of a patented technology is fully legal (for personal use, not profit).
Actually,
35 U.S. Code § 271 whoever without authority MAKES, USES, offers to sell, OR sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.
Feel free to cite the “free to play” clause if you can find one.
Are you an attorney who enjoys going to court as much as you enjoy hacking? Because even if a “free to play” clause exists, PATENT HOLDERS CAN SUE YOU, Bring you to court, and burden you with proving that you are legal in your efforts and actions. AND THEY CAN CERTAINLY AFFORD TO BURN LEGAL FEES. Can you?
According to this patent attorney,
You not only could be held liable for your own hacking, but if you were to post a HAD article outlining your work you could be held liable for the resulting infringements of others as well. You might want to speak with a lawyer of your own before you proceed. We dont work on new projects without FTO.
https://www.richardspatentlaw.com/faq/can-we-be-liable-for-patent-infringement-for-using-a-patented-product-that-we-did-not-make-or-sell/
>Can we be liable for patent infringement for using a patented product that we did not make or sell?
>Yes. The United States Patent Act states that “whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent[.]” Therefore, simply using a patented product without a license from the patent holder creates legal liability.
>Further, inducing others to infringe a patent can create liability. For example, supplying a kit of components, with instructions and the intent that the end users use it for assembling an infringing product, constitutes a violation of the Patent Act.
So as I originally stated,
Someone who will keep it to themselves for 20 years or be sued.
Sadly the patent system stifles us all.