Our review of the year continues with a look at some of the 3D printing news from earlier this year. Let us know if any of these stories are your favorites and make a nomination in the 1st Annual 3D Printing Industry Awards.
With close to 200 news items published in February by 3D Printing Industry, rumors of the death of 3D printing were surely greatly exaggerated.
Nikolai Nelles and Nora Al-Badri, undertook the now well known Nefertiti hack at the Neues Museum in Berlin, reportedly, with a Kinect. We’ll be taking a detailed look at the intersection of digital art and cultural heritage with one of the pioneers in this area, the founder of Scan the World, soon.
TNO’s Hyproline machine was reported by 3DPI during the month. The system uses 100 build platforms, a 3D scanner, metal deposition, and laser machining to produce 100 separate parts at speeds of 1-2 m/s. As we saw later in the year the TNO PrintValley project gained the support of Germany’s BigRep, we are looking forward to more news about this in the new year. In February we also reported how TNO were planning to 3D print pharmaceuticals.
3D printing in the dental market
In other news, the German company EnvisionTEC received FDA approval for 3D printing materials aimed at the dental market. In 2017 it will be interesting to see how EnvisionTEC respond to the growing number of companies targeting this segment.
We also reported on the their newest large-scale 3D printer from 3D Platform, the 3DP Workbench. The large format 3D printer has a build area of 1m x 1m x 0.5m, and also utilizes industrial-grade mechatronics, which enables precision prints with a 70-micron layer resolution.
We also looking at 3D printing at the other end of the scale and covered the news that large-scale production of nanoparticles suitable for conductive inks was progressing. One 3D printing company making use of conductive inks in 2016, who began to ship units of their DragonFly 2020 machine towards the end of the year, 3DPI took a look at the technology here.
The “best” joke of 2016
Meanwhile, 3D hubs were celebrating 20 years of Pokemon with the help of Flowalistik who released all nine of his designed Pokemon creatures on the 3D file sharing platform. Pokemon gripped the world momentarily during 2016, allowing me to recycle one of my “best” jokes:
Q: How do you get Pikachu on a bus?
A: You poke him on.
Let us know which of these stories you found most interesting, you can nominate for 3D Printing Industry Award here. The awards ceremony will be held next year, and hopefully free of Pokemon jokes.
