LinkNotes: printing

Showing posts with label printing. Show all posts

2013-05-01

MIT Project Aims to Deliver Printable, Mass-Market Robots | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

Insect printable robot. Photo: Jason Dorfman, CSAIL/MIT

[...] MIT announced a new project, “An Expedition in Computing Printable Programmable Machines,” that aims to give everyone a chance to have his or her own robot.

Source: MIT Project Aims to Deliver Printable, Mass-Market Robots | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

MIT CSAIL Project Could Transform Robotic Design and Production | CSAIL

It currently takes years to produce, program and design a functioning robot, and is an extremely expensive process, involving hardware and software design, machine learning and vision, and advanced programming techniques. The new project would automate the process of producing functional 3-D devices and allow individuals to design and build functional robots from materials as easily accessible as a sheet of paper.

“Our vision is to develop an end-to-end process; specifically, a compiler for building physical machines that starts with a high level of specification of function, and delivers a programmable machine for that function using simple printing processes,” said Rus.

Source: MIT CSAIL Project Could Transform Robotic Design and Production | CSAIL

Science Nation - Printable Robots Designed to be Consumer-friendly, Inexpensive - YouTube

"This research revolutionizes the design and manufacturing of robots, with a profound potential impact on society," says Ralph Wachter, a program director in the NSF Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. "It would remove barriers to manufacturing robots, making it possible for average citizens to customize and manufacture their own robots to meet their needs. This opens the door to great possibilities."

Source: Science Nation - Printable Robots Designed to be Consumer-friendly, Inexpensive - YouTube

2012-11-21

Brother's 'Last Typewriter' sent to Science Museum

The last U.K. typewriter has rolled off the production line - latimes.com

The last typewriter to be made in the U.K. has rolled off the production line -- and straight into London's Science Museum.

Brother has been making typewriters in the U.K. since 1985, the BBC reports, producing 5.9 million typewriters at its Wrexham factory. Since the advent of computers, demand has gone down. Way down.

[...]

The last typewriter will join 200 others in the Science Museum's collection. "This object represents the end of typewriter manufacture in the UK, a technology which has developed over the last 130 years and has been important to so many lives," said Rachel Boon, assistant curator of technologies and engineering. "This model will enable us to tell the story of how technology has evolved in accordance with our communication needs."

Source: The last U.K. typewriter has rolled off the production line - latimes.com

UK's 'last typewriter' produced - YouTube

Source: UK's 'last typewriter' produced - YouTube

LAST EVER British typewriter manufactured in Wales • The Register

The first commercially successful typewriter

Brother stopped making typewriters in Britain because demand had fallen so much in the country, but it still sells Asian-made machines to the US market.

From as early as 1714, inventors were tinkering about with various "writing machines" and patenting their efforts, but none of the early inventions got much interest. It wasn't until Remington, then a manufacturer of sewing machines, signed an agreement with a patent holder in the 1870s that the Sholes and Glidden Type-writer was born, coining the name and the QWERTY layout that would prove so popular.

Brother started manufacturing portable typewriters in the 1960s and produced its first electronic typewriters in 1985.

Source: LAST EVER British typewriter manufactured in Wales • The Register

Oh Brother! Last typewriter comes off production line at company's factory which made five million | Mail Online

The original: This machine dates back to July 1985 and was the first to be made at Brother's Wrexham factory

Made in Britain: Rachel Bloon from the Science Museum is handed the artefact by Craig McCubbin and Phil Jones from Brother UK

Source: Oh Brother! Last typewriter comes off production line at company's factory which made five million | Mail Online

Related

2009-10-30

Xerox Printable Electronics

clipped from hackaday.com

Xerox ink will print circuits

Xerox has announced a breakthrough in printable circuits. They’ve developed a conductive ink called “silver bullet” that can be printed on many different types of substrate to create circuits. The key part of the new ink is its lower melting point. Plastic film substrate melts at 150 degrees Celsius but the ink is liquid when ten degrees cooler to avoid damaging the film. This begs the question: how do you then solder components to the circuit?

clipped from www.xerox.com

Xerox Scientists Develop "Silver Bullet" Needed to Replace Silicon Circuits with Low-Cost, Durable Plastic

Integrated circuits are made up of three components - a semiconductor, a conductor and a dielectric element - and currently are manufactured in costly silicon chip fabricating factories. By creating a breakthrough silver ink to print the conductor, Xerox has developed all three of the materials necessary for printing plastic circuits.

Sources:

Printable OLED Breakthrough

GE Global Research demonstrated the possibility of printing a light-emitting organic film in a newspaper-printing like roll-to-roll process.

clipped from www.businesswire.com

GE Demonstrates World's First ''Roll-to-Roll'' Manufactured Organic
Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs)

NISKAYUNA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GE Global Research, the centralized research organization of General Electric (NYSE: GE), and GE Consumer & Industrial, today announced the successful demonstration of the world’s first roll-to-roll manufactured organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lighting devices. This demonstration is a key step toward making OLEDs and other high performance organic electronics products at dramatically lower costs than what is possible today.

clipped from www.ecogeek.org

why is this important?

Because the OLED (organic light emitting diode) film is extremely efficient.

Because printing roll to roll makes OLEDs far easier to mass produce, and thus cheaper.

Because OLEDs can be used in a huge variety of lighting applications, moving the world beyond lightbulbs and into a whole new paradigm of lighting.

2008-02-10

Kovio, printing intelligence into everyday products and goods

A new technique, replacing conventional chip-making methods with printing techniques promises low-cost class of electronic paper, displays, labels, RFID tags, sensors, smart cards and perhaps even programmable wallpaper.

Kovio, whose backers include widely known venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, says it has developed a kind of silicon ink that can be sprayed on flexible surfaces using commercial printing systems. Where some companies have developed circuit-printing approaches with various organic and inorganic materials, Kovio says it has used its silicon-based process to build unusually fast devices called thin-filmed transistors.
[ The Wall Street Journal ]

Inventing breakthrough printed silicon technologies and complete printed system solutions that build intelligence into everyday products and goods, thereby profoundly improving the productivity and profitability of industries including retail, pharmaceutical, consumer electronics, transportation, manufacturing and energy.

Vinod Khosla:

"Kovio is introducing one of the most disruptive technologies that the electronics and printing markets have seen to date. Its technology offers dramatic cost, resource and energy advantages over traditional silicon. Now for the first time, it is economically feasible to embed intelligence in everyday products thereby transforming the consumer experience."

Technology

Why Print?
Printed silicon electronics combines the intelligence and functionality of silicon semiconductors and the low-cost manufacturing paradigm of graphics printing. Instead of using conventional color inks to print magazines, books and newspapers, this new paradigm uses silicon-based inks to print integrated circuits, sensors and displays. This revolutionary technology brings the value proposition of silicon-based integrated circuits to industries that have until now not been enable to embed integrated circuits in their products.

All Printed Silicon TFT

[ Kovio ]

Blogged with Flock

2007-12-10

3D Printing

via: Tomorrow's Trends: 3D Printing

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