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3D printing

Photonics, Lidar & 3D printing

August 30, 2016 By Michael Petch Leave a Comment

Work by MIT researchers may make drones, robots and self-driving cars both more affordable and also improve their performance. Successful commercialization of a new lidar-on-a-chip could bring the cost of improved 3D scanning within the range of Makers.

Most of us are fortunate enough to take for granted the ability to automatically absorb information about the world around us and navigate through whatever landscape we find ourselves in. Whether the environment is a crowded city street or an uneven costal path, the combination of our senses and brain ensure we (mainly) avoid objects and stay upright.

Recreating this ability in machines is a challenge that advancements in silicon photonics may help address this.

In an article for IEEE Spectrum’s Tech Talk blog MIT researchers, Christopher V. Poulton and Prof. Mike R. Watts describe silicon photonics as:

“A chip technology that uses silicon waveguides a few hundred nanometers in cross section to create “wires for light,” with properties similar to optical fibers except on a much smaller scale.”

These waveguides can be built into a chip and perform a similar function to the wires and connectors seen in traditional electrical engineering. The difference is that light, rather than electricity, transmits data, switches circuits and performs the other tasks commonly carried out by a chip.

The advantage of using light is the lower power requirement when compared to sending data with electricity via copper connectors. Photonic applications are still emerging and widespread use is increasingly likely now traditional microchip manufacturers are adapting mass production facilities for the technology.

These manufacturers include companies such as Intel and Luxtera who have spent almost 15 years developing silicon photonics. Luxtera were the first to bring a mass-produced product to market and the company refer to the technology as CMOS photonics.

Work done at MIT’s Photonic Microsystems Group by Poulton and Watts, “develops microphotonic elements, circuits, and systems for a variety of applications, including communications, sensing, and coupled microwave-photonic circuits.” Earlier this month the group announced success in a DARPA backed project to use silicon photonics to enable lidar-on-a-chip.

Lidar vs. radar and Google vs. Tesla

Radar uses radio waves to build a picture of the surrounding environment. Solid objects in the path of the radio wave may reflect or disrupt the wave and detection of these events can be used to build up a picture of the environment.

Lidar uses a similar concept, the reflection of a transmitted signal, but rather than a radio wave a lidar unit sends out a light wave. The systems full name is “LIght Detection and Ranging.” The light can be infrared, ultraviolet, laser or from another source.

Both methods can be used to identify the location of an object in a space. Through harnessing the Doppler shift a calculation of the object’s speed and direction of travel can also be performed. The police have used lidar speed guns since 1989 for that very purpose.

“Radio waves are created by the acceleration of electrons in a radio antenna, and light waves are created by the oscillations of the electrons within atoms,” writes Frank Wolfs on the differences between the two. Furthermore, because light waves operate at smaller wavelengths, approximately 100,000 times smaller, a greater level of detail in describing an environment or object is possible.

For this reason Lidar is acknowledged as offering greater precision, but the technology can be disadvantaged by adverse weather conditions such as rain or fog.

Google’s self-driving cars depend upon lidar to understand their surroundings. The lidar unit is mounted in a distinctive beacon on the car’s roof and scans 60 meters in all directions. The equipment in use by Google can cost up to $70,000 per unit according to The Guardian newspaper.

3D printing has grown to another level with 3D food printing which is the future of 3D printing.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 3D printing, Lidar

Novel Materials: 3D Printing with Nano materials and Ceramics

January 13, 2016 By Michael Petch Leave a Comment

Plastics and metals are the dominant materials in the current 3D printing field. This talk looked at lesser publicized materials and related processes. Specifically, ceramics, graphene (and other nano-materials), hydro & aerogels in the context of 3D printing.

The current academic research, commercial applications (and relevant patents), production of materials and the possible future developments will be reviewed with reference to independent research conducted for this presentation.

3D printing has grown its parameters to food too and the future of 3D food printing will give us a complete different vision in 3D Printing.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 3D printing, ceramics, graphene

3D Printing and the Future of Food

January 7, 2016 By Michael Petch Leave a Comment

An extract from “Future Food: How Cutting Edge Technology and 3D Printing will Change the Way You Eat.”

A surefire way to invoke horror and disgust in consumers is to expose one of the numerous stages in the mechanized food chain to a degree of scrutiny it does not commonly receive. Distrust of large companies and a near continuous campaign to discredit food science as either unnatural or potentially harmful has generated many meters of newsprint in recent years alone. McDonalds was forced to reply to claims their chickMichael Petch 3D Printing Future Fooden nuggets were composed of a mysterious pale red slime commonly referred to as “pink goop”. The video footage taken by the company to disprove the presence of slime did not leave consumers feeling much better as it was revealed that a beige, rather than pink, goop is used to produce the nuggets.

For getting the best 3D food printer result, your computer must have a good refresh rate. By this, your monitor will work faster for a better overall experience. You can yourself enhance your 3D printing results by improving your monitor’s refresh rate. Growing environmental awareness and a belief that organic food is better for the consumer might seem to suggest that the introduction of a new form of processed food, possibly the ultimate in processed food, would not be a success. Consumers in Europe and the United States have demonstrated an unwillingness to consume genetically modified organism (GMO) vegetables or fruit[2].

Some commentators have claimed that this stems from the powerful imagery created by Mary Shelly’s cautionary tale of interference with the “natural order” of things in the classic book, Frankenstein. Tellingly, while claims of “Franken-foods” go unchallenged, few care to the recall the alternative title of Shelly’s masterpiece, “The Modern Prometheus”. We might do well to remember how in Ancient Greece, Prometheus was a champion of mankind and through his gift of technology, humanity was said to have flourished. Indeed, public opinion runs counter to the majority of academic studies[3] that show no harm is present due to the use of transgenic crops. However, perception is more important than reality in certain circumstances.

Presented in this light it might seem that 3D printing will face an uphill struggle to achieve mainstream acceptance once the initial novelty has worn off. Furthermore, studies[4] conducted by the market research company Gartner, suggest that 3D printing is preparing to plummet into a “trough of disillusionment” and this is an inevitable step after the inflated expectations created by journalists and commentators keen to write a story about the “next-big thing”. However, as lawyer and technology lobbyist Michael Weinberg points out, “the hype-cycle, while useful for tracking media coverage, is not necessarily the best way to follow the emergence of technology”.

Another voice critical of this – possibly Luddite – perspective comes from Jeff Lipton who is currently finishing his thesis as a PhD candidate at Cornell University. The goal of the thesis is to address five key areas within 3D printing. Lipton is a long-standing member of the Cornell Creative Machines Lab where much of the pioneering research was undertaken during the early days of application of 3DP technology to food. Recognition of food’s core role in human existence[5], not only in the nutrition value but the rituals that surround its preparation and consumption, marks the project’s departure from a strict focus on engineering and a purely mechanical solution to the multi-disciplinary question.

Since inception, the research group has made both great practical and academic contributions to the emerging field of 3D printing and food technology. The aim is to use the technology in three specific ways. The group is working on how the technology can be integrated into the kitchen, its use in providing specific nutrition, and also how and why it can be used to create complex patterns. The latter two ideas are both examples of customization and an area where 3D printing can bring great benefits without an associated increase in cost. Lipton sees five problems which need to be overcome in order for progress to be made. The problem areas are temperature stability, working with traditional foods, the ability to drive the composition of foods through data, producing multiple foods together, and controlling texture.

Speaking with Lipton, he explains, “We focus on several different foundational thoughts. One thought is that 3D printing food needs to be able to integrate into kitchens. Another one is that 3D printing as a whole is good for two things, which is customization and geometric complexity. For food specifically we’re looking at customized nutrition and 3D printing complex patterns.”

To continue reading please follow this link and purchase “Future Food: How Cutting Edge Technology and 3D Printing will Change the Way You Eat.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 3D food Printing, 3D printing

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