The University of Maribor in Slovenia is the stage for the latest 3D-printed invention.  After designing a “green” 3D printer in 2013, a group of students worked hard to turn 3D printers into on-demand gardeners through their creation of PrintGREEN.

The slogan that PrintGreen lives by is a twist on the old conservationist motto, “Think before you print,” and tells their audience to, in fact, “Print, because it is green.”

You might be wondering what makes PrintGREEN so environmentally friendly. If you were, we’re here to fill you in. This “green” invention is all about bringing together art, technology and nature into one, unified object.

The printer combines modern technology with an innovative approach by using a special CNC machine as a printing device. Rather than a canvas, PrintGREEN uses Styrodur, which is a print page that’s covered with black felt and reinforced with a sponge.

The “ink” that this printer uses is unlike any other ink. Rather than using and reusing recycled plastics that never fully degrade, PrintGreen’s ink will naturally degrade over time. The ink is actually made of a mixture of soil, water and seeds, the general ingredients that are used in typical gardens everywhere.

Once the organic ink is loaded, the printer then produces living prints of customized objects in a variety of shapes and sizes.

After the drying period, the muddy mixture holds its form and then begins to sprout grass from the organic material.

Check out these pictures straight from PrintGREEN’s website!

The end goal of PrintGREEN, as we mentioned before, is to fuse art and nature to creatively produce living designs through the assistance of modern technology.  PrintGreen is all about creating a “living” design/print as it becomes green on its own!

Copyright Inventionland, 2015

Source:

https://print-green.org/

https://www.zmescience.com/research/technology/3d-printing-green-06082015/s

https://upriser.com/posts/green-3d-printer-prints-living-designs-from-organic-ink

Media:

https://printgreendotorg.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/photo-41.jpg?w=273&h=273&crop=1

https://printgreendotorg.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/photo-2.jpg?w=306&h=408&crop=1

https://printgreendotorg.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/photo20.jpg?w=216&h=287&crop=1

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Gone may be the days of sniffing the milk carton to see if your milk has spoiled, thanks to a collaboration between engineers at UC Berkeley and Taiwan’s National Chiao Tung University.

This 3D-printed smart cap that the group has developed is meant to find a better way to detect whether a liquid has gone sour, thanks to the wireless electrical sensors that are attached to the milk carton’s smart cap.

Polymers combined with wax were used to create the cap. When the wax was removed, it left behind a hollow tube that allowed for the group to inject silver.

From there, the engineers added electronics, which included a capacitor and inductor to create a circuit that would monitor if and when the milk would spoil.

The group flipped over a milk carton so that milk could be captured in the capacitor. From there, they left the carton unopened for 36 hours in a room that was set at around 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

To determine whether or not the milk was spoiled, the engineers tracked the changes in the electrical signals that were associated with the increase of bacteria in the milk.

They continued to monitor the changes wirelessly by way of a radio-frequency probe.

Through their discovery, the group of engineers clearly demonstrated how 3D printing can work for basic electrical components.

Furthermore, this experiment and the invention of the smart cap intimates that 3D-printed smart caps could one day be used for food packaging purposes.

In fact, the group of engineers are currently working on inventing an implantable device with embedded transducers that can monitor blood pressure, muscle strain and drug concentrations through the smart cap technology.

For now, however, this news might only be a whiff of the smart cap’s innovation. We guess only time will smell, oops, we mean tell!

Copyright Inventionland, 2015

Sources:

https://news.berkeley.edu/2015/07/20/3d-printed-electronic-smart-cap/

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/70343/20150720/3d-printed-smart-cap-sense-spoiled-milk.htm

Media: https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/3dsmartcap-milk450.jpg

The post Smart Cap Redefines Spoiler Alert appeared first on Inventionland.

In the spirit of such amazing space news, we weren’t shocked to learn that this monumental journey has already been sent to another dimension- 3D, that is.

Pluto, the farthest (dwarf) planet from Earth within our solar system was explored for the very first time by an interplanetary space probe by the name of New Horizons.

Just a measly 7.5 billion miles (we’re being sarcastic) from Earth, this ongoing journey came to a close last week after about 10 years.

So, to celebrate this remarkable feat in space history, Brian Allan, an engineer at Formlabs, decided to create a 3D-printed replica of New Horizons.

This venture to 3D print the Pluto space probe began with Blender 3D, which is free software. From there, he used a Formlabs Form 1+ SLA printer that doesn’t need calibration and can be set up and ready to print in as little as 15 minutes.

Allan used the 3D printer to fabricate the probe at 50-micron (a unit of length that’s equal to one millionth of a meter) accuracy.

As opposed to the nearly 10 years that it took to actually get New Horizons to its destination, it only took Allan about eight hours to print its replica.

The size of the completed print was around 4.75 inches from the base to the top of the power supply.

To finish the model of New Horizons, Allan sanded the main dish and began to paint, using a coat of Krylon spray paint and markers to draw an American flag.

Once the layers of paint dried, Allan began to take pictures. In order to make it look realistic, he pulled up an image of Pluto onto his TV screen. He then tied a string to the model and proceeded to dangle it in front of the screen to take some pictures as seen below from 3dprint.com.

After this exploration in the 3D-printing space, we’re certain that many “New Horizons” are ahead!

Copyright Inventionland, 2015

Sources:

https://formlabs.com/products/form-1-plus/

https://3dprint.com/81478/pluto-3d-print-new-horizons/

Images:

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/image_card_4x3_ratio/public/thumbnails/image/tn-p_lorri_fullframe_color.jpg?itok=gTWhgkIA

https://3dprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ne3-1024×576.jpgv

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