We’ve seen quite a few interesting uses for 3D printers, such as creating smartphone cases, cups and mugs and even moon colonies. It seems that NASA is now funding yet another unique potential use for 3D printing – food printing.

Mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor recently received a $125,000 grant to build a prototype 3D printer that could automate food creation, hopefully providing astronauts food during long-distance travel, and theoretically helping with food shortages globally by cutting down on food waste.

The idea is to use basic building blocks of food in replaceable powder cartridges, combining each block would allow a wide range of food – at least that’s the idea. Each cartridge would also have a lifespan of 30 years, making it great for long-distance space travel, emergency prep kits and other uses we probably haven’t even began to think about yet.

Contractor has already printed chocolate, and will soon be working his way up to pizza. With pizza, the printer will first create a layer of dough which will be cooked while being printed, then it will mix tomato powder with water and oil to create the sauce. Finally, it will be topped with a “protein layer”.

Remember, the goal is to create food: they didn’t say anything about it being tasty, though.

Considering the concept uses food material, you might wonder how 3D food printing could help with solving/helping the world food shortages. The idea is that it would be a more efficient way to make food with less material. Additionally, it is a stepping stone that could lead to synthetic food powders and more.

Certainly an interesting concept. Can you imagine an era where our ovens and microwaves have been placed by specialized 3D Food Printers? Kinda crazy.

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3D printing has really started to gain exposure over the past year or two, and prices for a 3D printer are slowly coming into reach of the everyday consumer.

One such consumer has taken 3D printing to a new level and made a kind of art out of the process. Amanda Ghassaei is the first person to print out a fully working record using a 3D printer. The audio quality is off and it’s far from satisfying, but it definitely shows us a little more about the capabilities of 3D printing and data storage.

Amanda took the raw audio data from songs and used that to define the depth of the grooves for the record, and surprisingly the outcome was quite recognizable.

Although the sound quality could be touched up a bit by changing around EQs and the RPM of the record, the 3D print had pretty much reached its highest potential. Another way to improve sound quality is to increase the resolution of the 3D print, but Amanda had already pushed resolution to the limit with the Objet Connex500 printer used for the experiment, and it’s currently hard to find anything that can print at a higher resolution.

As far as 3D printing goes, this is probably one of the most interesting projects I’ve seen from such technology, although the end result is a little impractical for actual listening purposes.

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3D Printing has arguably become one of the latest and greatest technologies to hit the market. Unfortunately, the average person can only sit back and read about these printers because of their high price tags. For example, the Replicator 2 was recently released at $2,000, which was considered reasonable for such a device. Luckily, an affordable solution is at hand.

The Portabee 3D Printer can be yours for only $480, and is designed with portability in mind. Weighing only 2.8kg (6.2lbs) you can bring the Portabee along with you anywhere. For a fraction of the price of the competition, the Portabee offers the following features:

• 120x120x120mm build volume
• T2.5 New! 2GT (GT2) belts and machined pulleys
• Full linear bearings on all axes
• All stainless steel hardware where applicable, hardened steel linear rods (smooth rods)
• Single board solution Gen6.d electronics with integrated fan and SD card support
• Heated platform (printbed) included as standard
• Uses common, tried and tested Ø 3mm* feedstock filament, commonly PLA and ABS materials
• 0.5mm standard nozzle

Due to the fact that the Portabee is designed to be both affordable and more mobile than most other 3D printers  it can only print objects that are around the size of a coffee mug. In addition, unlike the Replicator 2, the Portabee lacks a quality design. Instead, the makers decided to go with the just raw parts as the outer layer. Still, it is hard to complain at such a budget-friendly price.

Interestingly enough, the parts for the Portabee are actually printed by other machines. What do you think of this affordable 3D printer, intrigued or not?

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3D printing is becoming more and more popular these days and the researchers at the Vienna University of Technology have come out with an interesting development. Their new high-precision 3D printer can create nanometer-sized objects and that too in record breaking speeds. As you can see above, they have 3D printed a nanoscale racing car perfectly.

With their nano 3D printer, which is capable of creating objects no bigger than a sand grain, they have precisely created complex structures including a racing car, a model of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, and the London Tower Bridge. That’s impressive considering the size of these objects.

The technique that they are using for making objects at this scale is known as two-photon lithography. Using a series of mirrors, the team directs a laser through a liquid resin. The laser beam hardens the liquid resin at precisely the correct spots. What you get will be a “polymerized line of solid polymer”.

The 3D printer is capable of printing 100 layers (200 lines per layer) in just 4 minutes. That’s about five meters of polymer printed in a second, which is reportedly a world record. Their biggest hurdle in the printing process was controlling the movement of the mirrors for making sure that the laser was directed precisely.

And what’s the future of all this, you ask? The researchers have started to experiment with bio-compatible resins. That means in the future, they might be able to create biological parts, which can be used in human bodies, via a 3D printer. And the technique can be used to create large 3D objects with precision and without spending too much time.

Check out the video to see the nano printing process.

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One is the “HeartGrid,” a customizable titanium pendant where the they can etch a special date on a heart for you. There is also an “OurPlace,” which looks like the shape of the United States with a heart where you and your significant other met. I’m not sure I would wear a piece of titanium around my neck, especially not in the shape of the United States, but it is customizable. You can design anything you like, provided you’re willing to dish out $124 for a part 2 by 2 by 4cm with a volume of 1 cubic centimeter.

You can submit designs and look at some of the interesting completed parts other people have done, like 2cm titanium 3D ball you see in the photo. The 3D printing is done with something called Direct Metal Laser Sintering. This involves using a laser to bind titanium powder together, and the process repeats itself until the part is finished. For many parts, there will be support structures to keep the titanium from breaking. Once printed, the supports will have to be removed manually using powerful tools. Then the part will have to be polished to remove evidence of the supports, which means your part could end up looking a little DIY.

If your part is complex and requires a lot of manual labor to remove the structures and polish the piece, you can’t get it for the set price but will have to get a custom quote for it. i.materialize warns you might still be able to see where some of the supports have been removed. You could go so far as making parts for that indestructible titanium nano-bot you’ve been pondering about building. For now, I’ll stick with the wooden jewelry I carved out in shop class.

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