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News: NASA is developing an orbiting factory that will use 3D printing and robots to fabricate giant structures such as antennas and solar arrays of up to a kilometre in length, as part of its ongoing search for extra-terrestrial life.

The US space agency this week announced it was awarding technology firm Tethers Unlimited Inc (TUI) a $500,000 contract to develop the facility.

The NASA funding – a second-phase contract that follows an initial contract issued earlier this year – will allow TUI to continue work on its SpiderFab technology, which allows large-scale spacecraft components to be built in space, avoiding the expense of building the components on earth and transporting them into space using rockets.

“On-orbit fabrication allows the material for these critical components to be launched in a very compact and durable form, such as spools of fiber or blocks of polymer, so they can fit into a smaller, less expensive launch vehicle.” Said TUI CEO and chief scientist Dr Rob Hoyt. “Once on-orbit, the SpiderFab robotic fabrication systems will process the material to create extremely large structures that are optimized for the space environment.

Currently spacecraft components are designed to be built on the ground and folded up to fit inside a rocket shroud. The process is complicated, expensive and limited by the availability and size of existing rockets.

Hoyt added: “This radically different approach to building space systems will enable us to create antennas and arrays that are tens-to-hundreds of  times larger than are possible now, providing higher power, higher bandwidth, higher resolution, and higher sensitivity for a wide range of space missions.”

The technology would allow NASA to use far smaller rockets to deliver components to the orbiting factory, which could be used to manufacture trusses to hold solar arrays and solar sails, antennas and masts of almost unlimited size. TUI’s website suggests that kilometre-long trusses or football-field sized sails could be produced.

Space factories would also significantly reduce the risk involved in launching delicate equipment on rockets, where the chance of failure is high. Instead, relatively inexpensive raw materials would be launched into orbit.

TUI will now develop a “Trusselator” capable of using additive manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing to fabricate truss structures in space. TUI’s website describes the Trusselator as a system “for on-orbit fabrication and integration of solar arrays using a combination of 3D printing and automated composite layup techniques”.

“The Trusselator is the key first step in implementing the SpiderFab architecture,” said Hoyt. “Once we’ve demonstrated that it works, we will be well on our way towards creating football-field sized antennas and telescopes to help search for Earth-like exoplanets and evidence of extraterrestrial life.”

The announcement is the latest in a string of projects exploring how additive manufacturing could be used in space. Last month NASA certified the first 3D printer for use on space stations, while at the start of the year architects Foster + Partners revealed that it was working on techniques to print habitable structures on the moon.

Via GigaOm.

Here’s a press release from TUI:

Spacecraft that Build Themselves…  in Space! – Tethers Unlimited Wins NIAC Phase II Contract to Develop “Self-Fabricating” Spacecraft

Bothell, WA, 29 August 2013 – NASA announced today that the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program has selected Tethers Unlimited, Inc. (TUI) for award of a $500,000 Phase II contract to continue development of its “SpiderFab™ technologies for in-space fabrication of spacecraft components.

The SpiderFab architecture adapts additive manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing and robotic assembly technologies to enable space systems to fabricate and integrate large components such as antennas, solar arrays, sensor masts, and shrouds on-orbit. Currently, large spacecraft components are built on the ground, and are designed to fold up to fit within a rocket shroud and then deploy on orbit.

This approach is very expensive, and the size of these components is limited by the volume of available shrouds. “On-orbit fabrication allows the material for these critical components to be launched in a very compact and durable form, such as spools of fiber or blocks of polymer, so they can fit into a smaller, less expensive launch vehicle.” Said Dr. Rob Hoyt, TUI’s CEO and Chief Scientist. “Once on-orbit, the SpiderFab robotic fabrication systems will process the material to create extremely large structures that are optimized for the space environment. This radically different approach to building space systems will enable us to create antennas and arrays that are tens-to-hundreds of  times larger than are possible now, providing higher power, higher bandwidth, higher resolution, and higher sensitivity for a wide range of space missions.”

In the Phase II effort, TUI will develop and demonstrate methods to enable additive manufacturing of high-performance support structures and integration of functional elements such as reflectors and antennas. In parallel with the NIAC effort, TUI is working under a NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to  develop a “Trusselator” device that will fabricate truss structures to enable in-space construction of large solar arrays.

“The Trusselator is the key first step in implementing the SpiderFab architecture, said Dr. Hoyt. “Once we’ve demonstrated that it works, we will be well on our way towards creating football-field sized antennas and telescopes to help search for Earth-like exoplanets and evidence of extraterrestrial life.”

About Tethers Unlimited, Inc.

Tethers Unlimited, Inc. develops innovative technologies to enable transformative capabilities and dramatic cost savings for missions in Space, Sea, Earth, and Air. Its technology portfolio includes advanced space propulsion systems, high-performance radios for small satellites, and methods for additive manufacturing of multifunctional spacecraft structures. To learn more about TUI and its products, please visit www.tethers.com.

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News: California studio Smith|Allen has completed the world’s first architectural structure using standard 3D printers (+ movie + interview).

Called Echoviren, the 10 x 10 x 8 foot pavilion was completed last weekend. It consists of 585 individually printed components produced on seven Series 1 desktop printers made by Type A Machines.

It took the printers two months and 10,800 hours to print the components, but just four days to assemble them on site.

The components, each measuring up to 10 x 10 inches, were snapped together to create a perforated structure resembling an igloo with an opening at the top.

Each component is made of a plant-based PLA bio-plastic, meaning the structure will decompose over time, disappearing within 30-50 years. “As it weathers it will become a micro-habitat for insects, moss, and birds,” the architects write.

Artist Stephanie Smith and architect Bryan Allen of Smith|Allen built the structure in a redwood forest at Project 387, an arts residency programme in Mendocino County north of San Francisco.

“The texture [of the structure] is based on a study of the cellular forms of sequoia cells,” Allen told Dezeen (see full interview below). “Their structure allows the trees to maintain huge amounts of strength with a minimum volume.”

Allen added: “The overall form is driven by the structural requirements of building in PLA. The section is pyramidal so each of the walls is self supporting. As the structure is completed it becomes a compression structure with the top most layer forming a compression ring.”

Architects have this year been racing to complete the first 3D-printed house, as we reported earlier this year. Projects in the pipeline include a looping two-storey dwelling by Dutch architects Universe Architecture and a fibrous single-story dwelling by UK studio Softkill. Meanwhile Amsterdam studio DUS Architects plan to create a canal-side house room by room.

However Italian engineer Enrico Dini is credited with creating the first 3D-printed inhabitable structure using a D-Shape printer – a huge machine he invented himself that prints using a type of synthetic stone.

In 2009 Dini teamed up with designer Andrea Morgante to print a 3 metre-high prototype structure and the following year he worked with architect Marco Ferreri to print a single-room house modelled on a mountain dwelling. See our feature about 3D-printed architecture for more details.

We conducted an email interview with Bryan Allen of Smith|Allen about the project:

Marcus Fairs: Tell us about the type of printers you used.

Bryan Allen: We used 7 of the Type A Machines Series 1 printers. We’ve been working with some other types for a few years. I worked with Ron Rael at Emerging Objects and at Berkeley where we used ZCorp printers to develop new materials. The idea to make something huge has been around for a while but despite our efforts to use the ZCorp, the BFBs, or the Makerbots, it just wasn’t possible or it was prohibitively expensive. The Series 1 made it possible to build large prints reliably and with the price drop in PLA, building something big became a reality.

Marcus Fairs: What does Echoviren mean?

Bryan Allen: The name Echoviren comes from a reference to the coastal redwood, it’s Latin name is sequoia sempervirens. Translated roughly that’s ‘always alive’ or ‘always growing’. The Echoviren is a technological echo, a reflection, and specter of life and of the forest. It evokes the essence of its site in the forest and mirrors it in a deliberately artificial method. Although we consider this forest primeval and natural, in reality its a highly controlled and modified environment, the forest has been logged and even before recorded history it was cultivated. Echoviren highlights that palimpsest, a forest landscape that has been written over many times, continually changed and grafted onto.

Marcus Fairs: What are the form and texture of the structure based on?

Bryan Allen: The texture is based on a study of the cellular forms of sequoia cells. Their structure allows the trees to maintain huge amounts of strength with a minimum volume.  This form also naturally works well on FDM-style printers. Their ability to print cellular infill structures on the interior of parts fits in with a macro scale cellular tessellation scheme. The perforations form a gradient of size drawing the viewers vision up and through the occulus.

The overall form is driven by the structural requirements of building in PLA. The section is pyramidal so each of the walls is self supporting. As the structure is completed it becomes a compression structure with the top most layer forming a compression ring. The PLA components are strong in compression and the pyramidal section coupled with a compression ring makes the structure tend towards stability. In the XY the components are connected via a dovetail joint, in the Z the layers fit together with a pin and socket.

Marcus Fairs: How did you get started with 3D printing?

Bryan Allen: When my partner and I graduated from School we lost our access to the tools that had allowed us to make,design, and to create things. We were faced with a choice: go into an office and slave over CAD drawings for a couple years working on someone else’s projects until I could get licensed, or to go it on our own. Getting the printers made it possible for us to actually make a go of doing what we really wanted to do: creating large scale installations, sculpture, and architecture.

We first attempted to make a small scale aggregation called Xylem at the end of 2012. That piece was 4x4x3′ and after we completed it we thought well, what if we go bigger? We bought more printers, put them in our studio and got to work. We applied to Project 387 for funding and for the site, after we were accepted we began construction.

Marcus Fairs: What’s new about this project that hasn’t been done before?

Bryan Allen: I think the fundamental breakthrough in this project is that of aggregation as a construction system. So many of the 3D printed architecture projects that have been proposed are based on building large scale printers which is a huge barrier in and of itself. By utilizing Rhino and grasshopper with consumer-grade, easily available desktop 3D printers we were able to make this thing in (relatively) small, precise, individual components. After all architecture is about assemblage, it’s about how to organize connections, details, and joints. To design a 3D printed architecture requires a fundamental rethinking of how we design: there are new details, systems, and processes that open the door to the huge potential of 3D printed architectures.

Marcus Fairs: What will you work on next?

Bryan Allen: So next we are going to be working on a retail interior in Oakland California. We are hoping to build a large scale urban intervention in San Francisco at the beginning of next year. We are also closely involved with Type A Machines and hope to be designing pavilions and other structures for their office and events in the future. We want to continue to grow the scale and scope of our projects. We want to find the limit of what is possible within the disruption 3D printers have created. We want to incorporate more intensive systems into 3D printed constructions like HVAC, lighting, etc, as well as make spaces for more permanent dwelling.

Marcus Fairs: What’s next for 3D printing?

Bryan Allen: There are some new printers and materials coming out that allow designers who don’t have the resources of a huge institution to begin to realize their creations and push the envelope of architecture in general. To us the 3D printer is right on the cusp of transitioning from a toy to a tool, it can make real things, real design, and real architecture.

Marcus Fairs: What is Project 387?

Bryan Allen: Project 387 (www.project387.com) is a multidisciplinary residency program in its inaugural season. Located in rural Mendocino Country, California Project 387 has offered six artists an opportunity to develop their proposed projects in the quiet of giant redwoods. This year’s selected residents are: Smith|Allen Studio [Bryan Allen and Stephanie Smith] (Oakland CA), Rich Benjamin (Brooklyn NY), Claudia Bicen (San Francisco CA), Sean McFarland (San Francisco CA), and Robert Wechsler (Glendale CA).

Project 387 provides community-based living and working experience to artists in all career stages. The residency is a unique opportunity to dive into the creative process in a focused, exploratory and rigorous manner while removed from the clamor of urban distractions.

Here’s some more info about the project from Smith|Allen:

Echoviren, the worlds first piece of full scale 3D printed inhabitable architecture

Smith|Allen participated in the Project 387 Residency, located in Mendocino County from August 4-18, 2013. In the heart of a 150-acre redwood forest, Smith|Allen has created a site responsive, 3D printed architectural installation (the largest of its kind): Echoviren. The project merges architecture, art and technology to explore the dialectic between man, machine and nature. The Project 387 open house and reception was Saturday, August 17.

Spanning 10 x 10 x 8 feet, Echoviren is a translucent white enclosure, stark and artificial against the natural palette of reds and greens of the forest. Walking around and within the structure, the viewer is immediately consumed by the juxtaposition, as well as uncanny similarity, of natural and unnatural: the large oculus, open floor, and porous surface framing the surrounding coastal landscape.

This artificial frame draws the viewer up from the plane of the forest, through a forced perspective into the canopy.

Echoviren was fabricated, printed, and assembled on site by the designers. Through the use of parametric architectural technologies and a battery of consumer grade Type A Machines desktop 3D printers, Smith|Allen has constructed the world’s first 3D printed, full-scale architectural installation.  Made of over 500 unique individually printed parts, 7 3D Printers ran constantly for 2 months for a total of 10800 hours of machine time.

The structure was assembled though a paneled snap-fit connection, merging individual components into a monolithic aggregation. From breaking ground to finish the prefab 3D printed construction technique required for only 4 days of on site building time.

Entirely composed of 3D printed plant based PLA bio-plastic, the space will decompose naturally back into the forest in 30 to 50 years.   As it weathers it will become a micro-habitat for insects, moss, and birds.

A graft within the space of the forest, Echoviren is a space for contemplation of the landscape, of the natural, and our relationship with these constructs. It focuses on the essence of the forest not as a natural system, but as a palimpsest. The hybridized experience within the piece highlights the accumulated iterations of a site, hidden within contemporary landscapes.

Echoviren exposes an ecosystem of dynamic natural and unnatural interventions: the interplay of man and nature moderated by technology.

Location: Project 387 Gualala, California

Manufactured by: Smith|Allen

Involved companies: Type A Machines

Commissioned by: Project 387

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Next in our series of movies about 3D printing we talk to Bart Van der Scheuren, vice president of Belgian additive manufacturing company Materialise, who explains how the three main 3D printing technologies work.

Based just outside Leuven in Belgium, where we visited while researching our 3D-printing magazine Print Shift, Materialise have been working with 3D printing technologies for over 20 years.

“We offer a broad range of different technologies in different markets,” Van der Schueren says. “We are active in the industrial fields, where we produce parts on demand, and a second field is the medical field where we supply software tools or products, which are 3D-printed and used in all kinds of surgeries.”

Materialise also offers a number of consumer-facing services and products. i.Materialise is an online 3D-printing service, which allows anyone to upload a 3D model via the internet to be printed out and shipped to their front door, while Materialise.MGX makes and sells 3D-printed lights, furniture and accessories.

“We have a growing focus on the consumer, because we noticed that the consumer is also interested in these technologies,” says Van der Schueren.

Van deer Schueren goes on to explain the three main 3D printing technologies used in the industry: fused-deposition modelling, laser sintering and stereolithography.

“We have three basic processes,” says Van der Schueren. “What all these processes have in common is that they print parts layer by layer.”

“The most simple technology is one where we start with a [plastic] filament,” Van der Schueren says. “The filament is fed into a nozzle that heats the filament until it becomes semi-liquid, a bit like toothpaste. And with that nozzle we will extrude the cross-section of the part that we are building. This technology is called FDM, which stands for fused-deposition modelling.”

Invented in the late 1980s, fused-deposition modelling is the same technology used by almost all desktop 3D printers. “If you have a printer at home, that’s exactly the type of technology that you’ll have,” Van der Schueren says.

Next, Van der Schueren describes laser sintering, the most recent of the three processes, which was introduced in the early 1990s and can be used to print plastics, ceramics and even metals.

“The second group of technologies make use of powdered materials,” Van der Schueren explains. “In this case we deposit a layer of powder and write the cross section of the part that we are printing with a laser beam. Where the laser hits the powdered particles they melt together; where we don’t write with the laser the powder stays loose.”

Finally, Van der Schueren discusses stereolithography, the first 3D printing process, which was invented by 3D Systems founder Chuck Hull in 1986.

“The raw material is a liquid [for this process]” explains Van der Schueren. “We cast a liquid layer on a platform in a vessel and then we write with an [ultraviolet] laser into this liquid. The liquid will become solid where it is hit by UV light and everything that is not hit with the laser remains liquid. [Once it has finished printing] we move the platform up, the excess liquid flows back into the machine, and we have our components.”

See all our stories about 3D printing »

Find more information about Print Shift and see additional content here.

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Freedom of Creation co-founder and 3D Systems creative director Janne Kyttanen tells Dezeen that he believes one day everyone will have easy access to 3D printing in the first of our series of video interviews with pioneering figures in the world of additive manufacturing. 

We visited Kyttanen during a road trip across the Netherlands and Belgium, where many of the major players in 3D printing are clustered, as part of our research for Print Shift, the one-off magazine about 3D printing that we launched earlier this year.

In the movie, Kyttanen says that the actual technology behind additive manufacturing hasn’t changed much in recent years, but the interest in it has rocketed.

“When it comes down to the technologies themselves, fundamentally nothing has changed,” he says.

“The biggest change that has happened is the awareness. People know that these things exist; they know the possibilities. Also, the ease of use of software: pretty much everything is getting easier and easier and once that happens the masses start picking it up.”

In 2011, Kyttanen’s design studio Freedom of Creation, which pioneered the use of 3D printing technology to create consumer products, was acquired by American 3D printer manufacturer 3D Systems and he now acts as creative director for the company.

Having been at the forefront of 3D printing since the 1980s when the company’s founder Chuck Hull invented stereolithography (SLA), 3D Systems has recently turned its attention to the consumer market. In 2012 it launched the Cube, an affordable desktop 3D printer promising the kind of plug-and-play simplicity we have come to expect from the electronic products in our home.

“We want to put 3D printing in every home,” says Kyttanen. “A lot of the home machines that came on the market were open-source and people could tinker with them. What we’re trying to do is to make products where you can just open the box, take out the machine, plug it in, send a file and it starts printing. That’s truly what’s happening with the Cube.”

The machine became the first domestic 3D printer to be sold on the shop floor by a US retailer when Staples announced plans to stock it in May.

The Cube is a simple fused-deposition modelling (FDM) machine, which builds up objects layer-by-layer using a plastic filament fed into a heated print nozzle. “The Cube is the most plug-and-play 3D printer on the market at the moment,” Kyttanen claims.

Recently, Kyttanen launched a range of women’s shoes that can be printed out overnight on the larger version of the printer, the CubeX. He strongly believes that as the technology moves into people’s homes, it will transform the way they act as consumers.

“Everyone will get interested in design and making things instead of just being consumers and buying things,” he says. “The designer’s role [will be] merely creating better templates for all these people.”

He continues: “If you want to customise something for yourself, now you have the ability to do that. You can make any shape you want. Now everybody has the power to do whatever they want, with very easy tools.”

It is this ability to customise products, Kyttanen says, which will drive the demand for 3D printing in the home.

“People always ask me what would be the killer product for the technology, what would sell the most,” he says. “I always tell people that I don’t think it’s a product at all, I think it’s the empowerment itself.”

See all our stories about 3D printing »
See all our stories about Janne Kyttanen »

Find more information about Print Shift and see additional content here.

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Spiny translucent 3D-printed collars were paired with magnetic dresses and shoes that looks like tree roots in Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen’s latest haute couture collection.

Iris van Herpen‘s Wilderness Embodied collection included dresses and jewellery that combine 3D-printing technology and natural forms.

“My Wilderness collection explores the wilderness that we as human have inside us as well as the wilderness in nature,” she told Dezeen.

Pieces that wrapped around the length of the neck and extended down the chest were decorated with pointy globules tinted purple, blue and pink colours.

These elements were repeated in symmetrical patterns on the see-through layers worn over neutral dresses.

The collars and spiky elements on the dresses were designed in collaboration with architect Isaie Bloch and 3D-printed with additive manufacturing company Materialise.

This season Van Herpen also worked with designer Jólan van der Wiel to create a pair of dresses grown using magnets – find out more about them in our previous story.

“Natural forces like magnetism that are essential to life inspired me to not only use manmade techniques like 3D printing, but to combine technology with the creativity and power of nature itself,” Van Herpen said.

Shown in Paris last month, the Autumn Winter 2013 collection also featured 3D-printed shoes that look like a tangle of roots designed with United Nude founder Rem D Koolhaas and printed by Stratasys.

We’ve featured a few of Van Herpen’s previous collections that include 3D printing and interviewed the fashion designer for our one-off magazine Print Shift, during which she talked about how these technologies could transform the fashion industry.

Recently we posted a collection of 3D-printed jewellery by Dorry Hsu, inspired by her fear of insects.

See more design by Iris van Herpen »
See more 3D printing »
See more fashion design »

Read on for more information sent to us by van Herpen:

Nature is wild. Generated by powerful forces. It proliferates by creating startling beauty.

For her fifth collection as an invited member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, Iris van Herpen focuses on the forces of nature, with a back and forth between innovation and craftsmanship. Beyond simple visual inspiration, this wonder of the natural world forms the basis of wild experimentation.

With the help of artists, scientists and architects, Iris van Herpen explores the intricacies of these forces trough the medium of fashion, and the sensitive poetics that have long characterised her aesthetic vocabulary.

Through her collaboration with artist Jolan van der Wiel, who has spent several years pondering the possibilities of magnetism, they have created dresses whose very forms are generated by the phenomenon of attraction and repulsion.

Iris van Herpen draws equally upon the life force that pulses through the sculptures of David Altmejd. His wild organic forms derived from the regenerative processes of nature have greatly inspired Wilderness Embodied.

She proposes to reach this wild nature freedom into the human body and soul. The human spirit is forged of this same vital energy, coursing and erupting through the limits of the body in such resplendent displays of extreme tradition or technology as piercings, scarification or surgery.

This wild(er)ness of the human body, as unchecked as it is intimate, is one that the designer has sought to reveal the collection.Balancing respect for the traditions of atelier craftsmanship, with each garment subject to individual handwork, Iris van Herpen has nonetheless broadened the horizons of her domain: materials and processes.

With architect Isaie Bloch and Materialise she continues to develop the innovative 3D-printed dresses, which she was the first to present in both static and flexible forms. On the one hand, her long-term collaboration with Canadian architect Philip Beesley and, on the other had, her partnership with United Nude’s Rem D. Koolhaas and Stratasys which has led to a line of shoes, help to spread the spirit of the collection.

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