4 Useful Gadgets that are Manufactured Using Advanced 3D Printers
3D printing is no longer restricted to real estate and medical industries. It has outreached its conventional boundaries and has been used to manufacture cool gadgets and even weapons.
You love gadgets. And you love 3D. I am sure you’ll love 3D printed gadgets too. In this article, I’ll inform you about some trendy gadgets, which look like any run-of-the-mill appliance, but they stand different from the crowd because of being manufactured by a 3D printer.
The list begins with
Lawn mower
It’s one of a kind. Its manufacturer, Hans Fouche is an engineer living in South Africa. He calls the lawn mower Cheetah. What’s amazing is it took only nine hours for him to manufacture the lawn mower.
Some parts of the device are not 3D printed. Those parts are the blades, safety switch, the motor, the handle and wheel shafts. Fouche 3D printed the individual pieces and then assembled them.
The entire manufacturing was done with a shoestring budget. Fouche needed only 5.6 kilograms of materials, which cost him around $14 or R194. The video here shows how the 3D printed lawn mower works.
Strati car
Local Motors is the manufacturer of this car. Strati is a fancy name given to the car. The company hosted a contest in which several designers submitted their plans. Among the submitted designs, one was selected to build the car.
It’s hard to believe that a car, along with its technical intricacies could be built by a 3D printer. But believe it or not, it’s the reality. The car was printed at the 2014 International Manufacturing Technology Show, which took place in Chicago; the total time taken by the manufacturing process was 44 hours. The printer, used to manufacture the the car was way larger than regular 3D printers.
After the Strati car, Local Motors now wants to help customers upgrade their cars. It’d be a trade off leading to a win-win situation for both car buyers and the company. The buyers would get to upgrade their cars, and the company would manufacture recycled products, which would lower their operating cost.
3D Printed Camera
It’s now possible to manufacture a camera using a 3D printer. You can manufacture a regular camera and even transform an analog camera into a digital camera. The only component of a camera, which cannot be 3D printed is the lens. All other parts such as the mounting-knob, the shutter, the viewfinder and the mount-ring can be 3D printed.
The only catch is the quality of the 3D printer. Not all 3D printers are suitable for this job. Léo Marius, who 3D printed a digital camera in 2013 said he used an ABS 3D printer, and the printing process took nearly 15 hours in total. The film receiver of the camera accepts 35-mm print format and renders a shutter speed of 16.66 milliseconds. The estimated price of all the materials, needed to manufacture the camera is $32.
3D Printed Footwear
3D printing can benefit the footwear industry. Footwear designers are harnessing 3D printing to highlight decorative as well as usability aspects of shoes. Electric light shoes arrived long back in 2008. The shoe doesn’t come with a pair. It has a complex design, and it emits light.
The only thing about the shoe, which you may not like is its high-cost. It costs around €5880. Shelling out this money to purchase a shoe is difficult for the majority of us. A Japanese shoe company called Onitsuka Tiger has featured this shoe in a commercial.
A company called New Balance has launched a 3D-printed running shoe. It’s a midsole sneaker, and it’s made of Form®Flex TPU and elastomeric powder. The midsole is 3D-printed, and it doesn’t make any compromise with the quality. The highlight of the shoe is its bottom cushion, which blends strength and flexibility. The shoe is quite durable too.
In 2016
As 2016 is approaching, there’s a noticeable increase in the manufacturing and production of 3D printed gadgets. 3D printing is platform-independent and it promises to foster innovation at a considerably moderate budget.
Hence, the 3D-printed gadgets would be more intricate and more sophisticated.
They’d also be cost-effective so all of us could buy them.
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