Geek Group: A Premier HackerSpace

MARCH 18, 2012 ( SCI-TECH NEWS) There is a vast array of hacker spaces around the globe and many have made unique contributions to the emerging open source paradigm. However, there is one above all others, which is prolific not only locally but online as well - the Geek Group located in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Perhaps the best explanation as to what the Geek Group does can be found on their YouTube channel in a new video titled, "Geek Group & Haas Partnership Announcement."


While the Geek Group has yet to create something as paradigm shifting as NYC Resistor's MakerBot, their educational videos have increased in both quality and utility - that is - amidst a major move and the ongoing  renovation of their Leonard Street location.

For those who have watched Geek Group's videos since before their move to their new location, they will certainly appreciate how far they've come. While visiting them, here in Thailand, poses a bit of a logistical problem, the torrent of videos they produce provide inspiration and assistance in emulating their model of providing a community center for teaching and exploring science and technology.

Printing 3D Body Parts - For Real

FEBRUARY 9, 2012 ( SCI-TECH NEWS) 
first seen on Hack-a-Day...

Need a new mandible (jaw?) Print one. Using layers of titanium powder built up to form a 3D custom mandible for a patient, LayerWise in conjunction with Xilloc Medical as well as medical professionals from a range of disciplines have pushed 3D printing to practical extremes. Unlike previous medical uses of 3D printing, also known as "rapid prototyping," this creation is a fully functioning, permanent implant, not a model conceptualization of one.

Billed as the "very first customised 3D-printed lower jaw" the Xilloc mandibular implant is constructed out of titanium powder layer by layer fused by a high intensity laser. Coated with an artificial bone-like substance and outfitted with everything needed to be successfully implanted into a patient, the replacement-jaw is a living example of science-fiction become reality.

Initially used for prototyping, a growing number of processes are being developed to produce custom products, short run production of real components used in functional objects, and in the case of this latest achievement, high-quality, state-of-the-art permanent medical implants. The process utilized by LayerWise is described on their website. While similar to other additive manufacturing processes in theory, what makes LayerWise's process interesting is the fact that they use metals in their 3D printing process, while most processes today use different forms of plastic. A high-intensity laser traces, layer-by-layer a 3D design broken down into multiple 2D slices - the result is a precision-built 3D object.

X Prize: Star Trek Medical Tricorder

FEBRUARY 2, 2012 ( SCI-TECH NEWS)

Believe it or not, a lot of the technology seen in the original Star Trek series has already become a reality. From personal communicators (the modern mobile phone) to a communication officer's earpiece (bluetooth earpieces). Even the early traces of the replicator introduced later in the franchise can be seen in modern day 3-D printers.

The Star Trek medical tricorder: compact and versatile, it provides users with instant diagnoses for a number of injuries, conditions, and diseases as well as general vital signs and other useful health and health-related environmental metrics.  

 Now, a competition has begun, sponsored by the X Prize Foundation, to develop a Star Trek-style medical tricorder. The X Prize Foundation first began back in the 1990's by challenging private teams to develop a suborbital flight system capable of making two launches within as many weeks for a prize of $10 million USD. The contest ultimately succeeded when Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne completed the requirements on October 4, 2004.

What is a medical tricorder? It is a handheld device used by doctors in the Star Trek universe to quickly and non-invasively diagnosis medical conditions. They've been depicted as capable of identifying ailments and physical damage, reading symptoms such as temperature, hydration, and neural activity, identifying DNA (though detailed sequencing was usually done back in sickbay), and even environmental factors that may pose a health threat.

What are the requirements? From the official prize website: "As envisioned for this competition, the device will be a tool capable of capturing key health metrics and diagnosing a set of 15 diseases. Metrics for health could include such elements as blood pressure, respiratory rate, and temperature. Ultimately, this tool will collect large volumes of data from ongoing measurement of health states through a combination of wireless sensors, imaging technologies, and portable, non-invasive laboratory replacements." More details about guidelines can be found here.

Hackerspaces? While a single hackerspace might not have the resources to produce a single device capable of the full set of requirements, the open source collaborative nature of hackerspaces worldwide could probably each focus on a few solutions and ultimately combine them as success is met.  A visit to Hackaday.com's "Medical Hacks" already shows many innovative solutions that could enhance health, and lower the cost for tools normally out of most people's price range.

The key to lowering helthcare costs in the long run is coming up with cheaper, more capable biomedical technology and increasing access to quality education to both develop and use the technology as well as apply it in a medical context. Quite obviously a single diagnosis tool you can hold in the palm of your hand is a good start. It would be interesting to see what other objects in the typical Starfleet sickbay inventors and hackers could come up with after being inspired by this new competition.

MakerBot: The Apple I of Personal Fabrication

Bre Pettis out of NYC Resistor and co-founder of MakerBot gave a 40+ minute talk at the 2009 Gnomedex not only explaining the MakerBot 3D printer, but his thoughts on collaboration, open source design, distributed manufacturing and possibilities that lay ahead for personal fabrication.

There is a video featured during Bre's talk that can be found here in a better more audible quality. Readers will be happy to know that there is now a new version of the MakerBot, called the Replicator which includes a larger print area and additional features. A video featuring the Replicator can be found below.

Ball Cameras & Flying Robotic Worker Bees

January 10, 2012 (SCI-TECH NEWS) Called the "Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera" it does exactly what it says it does. It's a ball, it gets thrown, and at the height of its vertical ascent, takes a panorama using 36 mobile phone cameras embedded into its structure.

It's more of a prospective product than a hack, but it is still incredibly interesting and has many implications. For one, it gives users a creative and easy way to create an immersive environment. Coupled with RC helicopters and now quadcopters that are beginning to fill the skies we can only imagine the type of images and ideas that are to come.

Speaking of quadcopters, I first saw this ball camera story on BLDG BLOG, which covers the many otherwise untold stories concerning architecture and infrastructure. It also featured a story on semi-autonomous quadcopter robots that assembled an entire structure out of polystyrene foam bricks.

Flight Assembled Architecture/Architectures volantes from FRAC Centre on Vimeo.

What will be really interesting is when these robotic worker bees are teamed up with semi-self-assembling smart-building material. Watching the robotic quadcopters assemble the building is amazing, but the bricks are free standing and the final outcome looks precarious. What if, inside each brick was a system to make minor adjustments in the brick's position and then lock it into place? What if through each brick ran conduits for power and LAN cables? We'll look at this in some depth in our next post - self-assembling modular construction.

Turning Virtual Games into Tabletop Games

January 8, 2012 - (SCI-TECH NEWS) Hack A Day, a website that features technological hacks, builds, projects, and how-to's, recently posted, "3D printing Minecraft worlds." What's Minecraft you might ask? It is a computer game where you inhabit a virtual world and are given building blocks to manipulate and build it as you please. As simple as it sounds, incredible creations have resulted  - from comical monuments to realistic historical and futuristic land and cityscapes.

Why settle for just playing a game on your computer? With computer-controlled manufacturing now in the hands of the average person, 3D models of in-game Minecraft creations become a reality on your desktop. More images can be found on the Mineways flickr collection.

The next step seemed logical. People wanted to build in reality what they were able to create virtually. Many people did so manually with Lego sets or even cardboard, but it got truly intriguing when people started to "print" them in 3D.  Hack A Day really explains this part best here in their post, including the software that bridges the game and the software used to instruct the 3D printers. They also included the below video which explains the "how" of capturing which section of your virtual world you'd like to make a reality, and then printing it out as a physical 3D model.

The 3D printers used aren't always specified but one project featured in their post was a mountain range produced with the open-source RepRap 3D printer. This printer is generally made by hobbyists and one machine can be used to print the connectors and many of the components for additional machines. The machine builds objects by heating a plastic filament and laying down layer upon layer until an entire object is completed.

The Zprinter 650 is a commercial rapid-prototyper (3D printer) and has been used similarly to create impressive  results using the Mineways software to export in-game designs to 3D printers. See the video below for a tour of the above pictured village.

What does this mean for the future of the gaming industry? As personal manufacturing becomes more accessible to the average person it's a good bet that game designers will start thinking ahead of how to help bridge the gap between the virtual world and the real world and perhaps entire games can be created with this sort of "foot-in, foot-out" possibility in mind. The possibilities are exciting and of course, so is the fact that regular people are the ones now pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

Engineering: The 747 Jetliner

January 7, 2012 - (SCI-TECH NEWS) The venerable 747 jetliner is a modern marvel of aerospace engineering - one of the most recognizable aircraft ever built. The story of the 747's development links the dawn of commercial aviation to today's carbon-fiber composite aircraft exhibited by one of the 747's descendents, the 787 Dreamliner. It is also a testament to the value of quality engineering able to stand the test of time.

 747 cutaway. Visit flightGlobal.com for more aerospace graphics. (click image to enlarge)

First introduced in 1970, the 747 has endured for 42 years with numerous variants produced to serve an ever growing number of specialized tasks required by clients around the world. From passenger services to lifting cargo, to even carrying NASA's space shuttles between facilities across the United States, the iconic aircraft's solid design, enormous size, and reliability has allowed it to endure. Below, "Great Planes: Boeing 747" tells the tale of the 747, of the crew of engineers, designers, and workers that raced to finish the first plane, and the trials and tribulations the craft went through during its development.

Great Planes: Boeing 747 - Documentary (53:18) via YouTube

Of course, all good things must come to an end. Engineering skills are just as necessary to disassemble and recycle the 747 when it reaches the end of its service life. National Geographic's 747 "Megastructures Breakdown" features a team of mechanics dismantling the goliath aircraft in order to recycle an amazing 98% out of its 6 million parts and 66 tons of aluminum.

National Geographic's Megastructures Breakdown: Plane (50:18) via YouTube

Of course, reconditioning a 747, even superficially, is also a technical feat all in its own. Here is the repainting of a 747...

Time Lapse: Rebranding a 747 (6:36) via YouTube

While hackerspaces emphasize putting designing, engineering, and technological skills into the hands of the average person, seeing how professional engineers solve problems can serve as both instructive and inspirational for even the weekend hobbyist. The problems and subsequent solutions the engineers behind building the 747, as well as those charged with dismantling and recycling it, are good examples of applying theory to practice and the value of being patient and persistent in the face of an enormous goal.

Meshing Libraries with Hackerspaces

January 3, 2012 - (SCI-TECH NEWS) This following video is probably the best explanation you'll find regarding personal manufacturing, MIT's FabLab, and hackerspaces - about where they are today and where they will bring us tomorrow.

The video was made to support a proposal of creating a FabLab at the Fayetteville Free Library in New York.

The argument to place a FabLab in a library is quite compelling. Libraries are often built to accompany institutions of education, from primary and secondary schools, to universities and vocational colleges. The libraries in this case augment the theoretical and practical education provided, and afford students the resources to carry out their required studies as well as delve deeper into any given subject matter. Why not conversely augment stand-alone libraries with educational facilities, both theoretical and practical?

The Fayetteville Free Library's campaign to raise support and some of the progress they've made can be found in the video above and on their indeigogo page here. They already have a MakerBot 3D printer on hand and construction has begun on the space they plan on converting into a FabLab. It looks like a great project and if you are in central New York area and you are interested in getting involved, pay them a visit.