Live Like A Cat

You wouldn't download a car?

Well in fact you already can, Honda have released free downloadable models of miniature versions of their cars to print out at home. A company made a full sized car that can be printed in less that 2 days 3D Printed Car - It is made from ABS plastic that has been reinforced with carbon fiber. Everything on the car that could be integrated into a single material piece has been printed. The mechanical components of the vehicle, are sourced from Renault’s Twizy, an electric powered city car. and should be drivable on US roads in 2015 and recently a Chinese company 3D printed a full-size Working Car 3D Printed Car - “The density of the material is much lighter than that of the metal, only one-seventh or one-eighth,” explains Chief Designer Chen Mingqiao. “Lighter weight will help save energy in the future.” for just $1770.

3D printer technology is improving quickly and is set to disrupt manufacturing even further, products will not have to be transported thousand of miles to reach you, 3D printer allows items to be manufactured locally. 3D printing of food is now possible such as pizza 3D Printed Pizza - Founded in 2013, XYZprinting is a global company with the goal of bringing affordable 3D printing to businesses as well as individual consumers. They had a ton of different models of printers on display at CES, but the one that got us all riled up was their Food Printer. , cookies 3D Printed Cookies - The Food Printer turns ingredients into uncooked food. The ingredients can be chocolate or dough or a combination of solid items and the results, for now, will be cookies, or decorations for cakes. You then do need to bake the printed items before you can consume them, however. and chocolate 3D Printed Chocolate - “We are now using 3D technology to bring Hershey goodness to consumers in unanticipated and exciting ways. 3D printing gives consumers nearly endless possibilities for personalizing their chocolate, and we look forward to continued development of this amazing technology.” Imagine a future where we have robot personal robot chefs or robot bartenders Robot Bartenders - The two robots are perfectly efficient, fast bartenders. They always select the perfect amounts of Bulleit borboun, ice, and lime, and shake it just so before dumping it carefully into my plastic cup. They move in fluid, full gestures, almost as if they're human. making whatever we desire on demand, and even feeding us if we get to Wall-E levels of slothfulness. Clothes can be printed, Nike has made 3D printable trainers, a fashion company designs 3D printed dresses which flow like fabric and even leather Lab Grown Leather - The project is early in development, she said, and right now they are just testing as many materials as possible, such as silk, pearls, and nylon to see how the cells interact with them, as well as experimenting with growing two different materials concurrently on one scaffold with the aim of creating unique hybrids. She said this has important implications for the future of animal products. is trying to be grown in labs. The Voxel8 Embedded Electronics - Voxel8, a printer presented at CES that makes it much easier to blend plastic, conductive ink and other electronic components in the same object to manufacture highly customizable devices, such as your very own quadcopter. 3D printer can blend plastics and electronics in the same printed object. Solar panels Solar panels - A printer has been able to make prototypes of the solar cells in order to improve their efficiency. The technology consists of a type of “solar ink” which is designed to capture sunlight and turn it into electricity.
A fine layer of this ink is then deposited onto a material, such as plastic. This allows for cells to be embedded into windows to generate electricity or to be used to charge devices such as smartphones and laptops. can even be printed and many, many other objects including even 3D printers. 3D printers - RepRap takes the form of a free desktop 3D printer capable of printing plastic objects. Since many parts of RepRap are made from plastic and RepRap prints those parts, RepRap self-replicates by making a kit of itself

3D printers, modelling and 3D scanning tools facilitate the process to design and manufacture whatever you can imagine, this will lead to many new useful and artistic creations for the world as more people gain access to modelling tools and gain the ability to design, create and share their ideas for free. Prices of 3D printers are falling fast, printer Prices - It is possible today to get low-end, relatively basic printers for several hundred dollars, where in the past they started in the thousands-of-dollars range.
Canalys expects the 3D printer market to grow rapidly in the coming years, with sales of printers, materials and services reaching $3.8 billion this year, compared to $2.5 billion last year, and hitting $16.2 billion by 2018. allowing more people to be able to afford them. It took the 3D printing industry 20 years to reach $1 billion in size. In five additional years, the industry generated its second $1 billion. It is expected to double again, to $4 billion, in 2015. With 2D printer ink being incredibly overpriced, people have the right to weary of the cost of the “ink” for the 3D printers. The plastic that lot’s of household 3d printer use could be extracted by recycling Recycling Plastic - Three engineering physics students at the University of British Columbia have developed a desktop plastic recycler and extruder that turns plastic waste into the material needed for 3D printing plastic bottles. As Mining starts to use more automation Automated Mining - Robots may hold the key to preventing an industrial crisis in a country whose geography makes many key jobs undesirable. The company is working to automate its drilling and crushing as well as the dozens of mile-long trains that ship nearly a million tonnes of iron ore to the coast each day. for safety and cutting on labour costs then the price to extract metals and minerals from the ground could becomes cheaper.

There is lots of research going into 3D printing to make the process better, cheaper and faster. A recently unveiled 3D printer using technology called CLIP CLIP - Continuous Liquid Interface Production is a breakthrough technology that grows parts instead of printing them layer by layer. CLIP allows businesses to produce commercial quality parts at game-changing speeds, creating a clear path to 3D manufacturing. which offers 25 to 100 times speed improvements over traditional 3D printing, which can takes hours or even days to finish. Other new innovations are coming out such as being able to print using the incredibly strong and conductive material Graphene, Graphene Printing - Graphene 3D is excited to begin offering Conductive Graphene Filament directly to customers and opening new avenues of creation for 3D printer users and techniques known as 4D printing, where researchers can print out dynamic 3D structures capable of changing their shapes over time are improving, they could one day be used in everything from medical implants to home appliances.

Cheap as Chips

Robots are getting cheaper, the total cost of owning and operating an advanced robotic spot welder has plunged 27 percent, Cheaper Robots - Robots presently perform only 10% of manufacturing tasks, but that is expected to rise to 25% by 2025 as robots become more affordable and able to perform more tasks. “Within five to 10 years, the business case for robots in most industries will be compelling, even for many small and midsized manufacturers,” from an average of $182,000 in 2005 to $133,000 in 2014, the price is forecast to drop by a further 22 percent by 2025. By 2025, the widespread adoption of advanced industrial robots will boost manufacturing More Productivity and Less Labour Cost's - BGC estimates that this widespread adoption of robots could cut manufacturing labour costs in the world’s 25 largest goods-exporting nations by an average of 16% more than would otherwise be the case. Output per worker could rise by 10–30% above productivity gains generated by other measures. productivity by up to 30% in many industries, and cut labour costs by 18% or more. As robots get cheaper and better they can be used to build other robots, even themselves, cutting down the future manufacturing costs substantially.

Robots are getting so much cheaper that they are even replacing workers in China. Robots to Power New Wave of Productivity - “In China, one of the world’s largest markets for robots, greater use of automation could compensate for a significant part of the loss in cost competitiveness that is expected to result from rapidly rising factory wages and the growing challenge of finding manufacturing workers”. Many Chinese manufactories are looking to replace their workers with robots, Robots Leave Behind Chinese Workers - The government of Guangdong Province, the heart of China's manufacturing behemoth, announced a three-year program to subsidize the purchase of robots at nearly 2,000 of the province’s -- and thus, the world’s -- largest manufacturers. Guangzhou, the provincial capital, aims to have 80 percent of its factories automated by 2020.. Foxconn the manufacturing giant employs over 1 million workers in mainland China and in Feb 2015 the company CEO expressed his desire to use robots and automation to complete 70 percent of its assembly line work in 3 years time. The largest market for robotic technology is now China, with wages increasing and labour force decreasing lots of manufacturing companies in China are planning to replace Cheaper Robots, Fewer Workers - Faced with an acute and worsening shortage of blue-collar workers, China is rushing to develop and deploy a wide variety of robots for use in thousands of factories.
So although building robots to replace workers is seldom cheap, a growing number of companies are finding it less costly than either paying ever-higher wages in China or moving to another country. workers with robots, China will have more robots operating in its production plants by 2017 than any other country.

The growth of robot sales is increasing, More Productivity and Less Labour Cost's - Between 2008 and 2013 during the financial crisis the average robot sales increase was at 9.5% per year, in 2013 about 70% of the total robot sales in 2013 were in Japan, China, the United States, Korea and Germany. from 2015 to 2017, robot installations are estimated to increase by 12% on average per year. It’s not just industry and manufacturing robots that are becoming more accessible to purchase, The market for consumer and office robots will grow Robot Growth - The consumer/office robot market is currently led by three distinct categories: home cleaning and maintenance, “telepresence” (i.e., telecommuting to events or remote offices), and advanced robots for home entertainment. There will be a $1.5 billion market for consumer and business robots by 2019. the most at a rate of 17% a year between 2014 and 2019.
Computer technology has been following Morse Law , this has meant that computers have been getting exponentially more powerful as well as continually shrinking in price and size, this is helping to drive the ever increasing advance in robots capabilities and affordability.

Smart Robots

Robots are getting easier to operate, one example is Rethink Robotics smart collaborative robot Baxter. Baxter - Baxter is a proven solution for a wide range of tasks – from line loading and machine tending, to packaging and material handling. If you walk the floor of your facility and see lightweight parts being handled near people, you’ve likely just found a great job for Baxter.

• Baxter is safe to operate next to in production environments. The sensors around its head give Baxter the ability to adapt to its environment. It is smart enough to know that it cannot continue with its job if it drops a tool.
• Baxter is flexible for a range of applications and re-trainable across lines and tasks, It’s manually trainable by in-house staff, no traditional programming is required.
• Baxter’s $25,000 base price is affordable, and its performance keeps improving through regular software releases. In 2014 it completed the same task almost 3 times faster versus the 2013 version of the software.

Rethink Robotics recently released a new Robot called Sawyer Sawyer - “Together, Baxter and Sawyer can address many of the estimated 90 percent of manufacturing tasks that cannot be feasibly automated with traditional solutions today,” which is a smaller, lighter Baxter with a higher-precision hand. Microsoft researchers claim that they have developed the first computer system capable of outperforming humans on a popular benchmark. Many companies are researching and competing to have the best Computer Vision, this means is only going to get better and computers are even beginning to understand Understanding Vision - Computer vision expert Fei-Fei Li describes the state of the art — including the database of 15 million photos her team built to "teach" a computer to understand pictures — and the key insights yet to come. images, Sawyer Sawyer Vision - Sawyer offers an embedded vision system, with a head camera for wide view applications and a Cognex camera in its wrist that will eventually support many complex vision tasks. and other smart robots will be getting better all the time thanks to improvements in Artificial Intelligence.

Smart Factories

Companies are incorporating many new advanced digital technologies into their factories Smart Factories - 'Smart factories' where products 'talk' to each stage of the production process are the next big thing in automation. In Germany, engineers and academics working to create this "fourth industrial revolution" call it Industry 4.0; in the US, it's referred to as "the industrial internet" to improve efficiency, enhance their workers skills and to stay ahead in business. This is being pushed as Industry 4.0 Industry 4.0 - Almost all industrial companies have recognized this and want to digitize their entire value chain by 2020. German industrial companies alone are investing EUR 40 billion for this transformation. Those who already produce digitalized products have a clear competitive advantage. in Germany where factories become much more integrated and digital. Airbus is one example with it’s Factory of the Future which allows it to produce 1.5 planes a day. The employees use digital tools to track all elements of the production process, they can use the virtual reality software MiRA Mixed Reality Application - It is a smart, time-saving and easy-to-use tool that integrates the digital mock-up into the production environment by providing access to the 3D model to the people who directly work with the aircraft. to explore new aircraft. With the use of MiRA, inspection time for the 60,000-80,000 brackets in the A380 fuselage dropped from 3 weeks to just 3 days.

The factory has smart workshops that has features like finger or eye-tracking, voice control and projecting Augmented Reality - While augmented reality has already begun taken a firm hold in logistics, data glasses etc. are now starting to reach the factory floor. Potential application simple prototyping, which allows developers to see whether the new component fits as precisely as the CAD plans suggest before the product is even manufactured. work-instruction images in 3D over a structure enables workers to operate efficiently without being encumbered. Airbus also equips some assembly workers with Exoskeletons to help them lift heavy loads or work in difficult spaces.

Airbus aims to develop industrial collaborative assistant robots Airbus Robots - Airbus also plans to introduce a new generation of humanoid robots into the factory that can safely interact with humans where the robot is able to imitate things they have seen, been taught or learned via demonstrations capable of safely interacting with humans and evolving in dynamic environments. They are developing adaptable smart robots that can reconfigure their task if they encounter an unexpected situation. Airbus Group are accelerating the development of 3D printing Airbus 3D Printing - 3D printing can also be of great help in assembly lines to avoid outstanding work and achieve greater efficiency in production and only 5% waste material is produced from Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM) on average to produce prototypes and series components, potentially delivering cheaper and lighter parts.

Smart Delivery

Next day delivery is a huge level of convenience with Amazon Prime, they have gone even further, customers in Manhattan can now pay to get their order in just 60 minutes, Amazon’s Prime Now Prime Now - The Prime Now offering is available initially to Manhattan residents and will be rolled out to additional cities next year. If two hours is simply too long to wait, customers can pay $7.99 to get their order in just 60 minutes. offering is available initially to Manhattan residents and will be rolled out to additional cities in 2015. Amazon are currently testing delivery drones to have your parcels delivered to you through the sky, they aim to use it to deliver packages to customers around the world in 30 minutes or less.

Amazon may also be working on 3D printing while delivering Print and Drive - In a continued effort to improve the speed of its deliveries, Amazon has a new plan – it wants to send out delivery trucks that can 3D-print objects on-demand while on the go, in order for them to reach customers faster. technology so your item can be created while it’s on its way to you, speeding up the time it takes to receive your item. Amazon is bringing the highstreet right to your front door. It’s likely in the future Amazon will incorporate driverless delivery cars too as they are heavily invested in trying to automate all aspects of their business. In 2012, Amazon purchased Kiva robots for $775 million to speed up time from ordering to dispatch. They are special robots which autonomously bring items to the human picker to save them from walking to each item. They are also trying to automate the human picker and packer job by having a competition Robot Pickers - Robots will use the latest computer-vision and machine-learning algorithms to try to perform the work done by humans in vast fulfillment centers. Amazon is organizing the event to spur the development of more nimble-fingered product-packing machines. where teams can compete to win $25,000. Participating robots will earn points by locating products sitting somewhere on a stack of shelves, retrieving them safely, and then packing them into cardboard shipping boxes.

As production increases and labour cost's reduce due to cheaper, better robots, and as factories keep incorporating more technology to improve efficiency, combined with the option of localised manufacturing using 3D printing, will result in the reduction in the price of items and allow us to keep up with our consumption demands.