Author: Robert Schouwenburg

Holograms you can feel

Professor Hiroyuki Shinoda of Tokyo University says: “Up until now, holography has been for the eyes only, and if you’d try to touch it, your hand would go right through. But now we have a technology that also adds the sensation of touch to holograms.”

Endless forms of iterative design

Hod Lipson and his team brought the concept of iterative design to the next level with their EndlessForms website. They combine evolutionary algorithms and generative encodings with crowd sourcing of designs. The results are interesting.

Green living with 3D printing

3D printing is not only a new novel production technology from a capability perspective. There are also definite benefits from an environmental perspective. So what are environmental benefits on using 3D printing?

Next technology steps in 3D printing

3D printing still has a few barriers to cross from a technology point of view to become successful. To overcome these limitations a few major breakthroughs are necessary which can take a decade  or more. in this post I am going to talk about what I think are developments which can (should?) happen in the coming decade.

Categorizing 3D printing

3D printing used to be called exclusively rapid prototyping. This fitted with the primary use case of 3D printing at the time. Nowadays we see many uses of 3D printing and the industry is adapting to these new use cases. New machines are introduced focusing on these new categories.

Hyped expectations and what 3D printing really can do

A common theme in the media is to compare 3D printing with Star Trek’s replicator. But that analogy is nowhere near the truth. It is worrisome because it creates unrealistic expectations about 3D printing and with that comes disappoint. It completely fits the Hype Cycle phases of Gartner.

3D printing needs its place In education

There are many important things to educate our kids on but new technologies is definitely one of them. To prepare them for a new future it is essential that they get in touch with new upcoming technologies. I can still remember that my high school had MSX computers where we learned Logo and did our typing lessons. 3D printing is a new upcoming technology and it needs its place in schools.

3D Printing is eaten by software

Marc Andreessen wrote an interesting essay today on Why Software Is Eating The World on WSJ. In the essay he makes a point that software — and the services which rely on it — makes the difference nowadays. I agree with him and I think it also applies to 3D printing as well.

Fan art & 3D printing

Up until now, most fan art was in the form of pictures, writing or video. With 3D printing a whole new type of fan art is emerging. Is this allowed?

Copyright and 3D printing

Copyright does not attach itself to objects under US copyright law. When the 3D model is not a one-to-one copy of the original 3D model file, copyright does not play a role in 3D printing. Though there are two exceptions, which I would like to highlight in this post.