In this edition, we slice news involving: Renault 3D printing an engine, Titan Robotic’s new 3D printer, ZMorph at CES, announcement of the winners of the RobotArt competition and a 3D printed bagpipe-playing robot.
Titan Robotics introduces Cronus
Colorado’s Titan Robotics, creators of the Atlas printer, have just announced their new Cronus 3D printer which features a multi-gantry capable of using five toolheads at once. Cronus is an “FFF style 3D printer that can be fitted with multiple tool heads for faster fabrication of large, complex parts.” Although not for the hobbyist, this titan of a printer is impressive as it utilizes Autodesk Netfabb software to use the multiple toolheads in unison. Though customizable, the standard print volume for the Cronus is 72″x 30″ x 20″.
Renault 3D printed engine
The Renault Trucks Lyon Powertrain Engineering department have created a prototype 3D printed engine. Showcasing the capabilities of 3D printed metal, the team of engineers and designers have created a DTI 5 4-cylinder Euro 6 step C engine.
Damien Lemasson, Project Manager at Renault Trucks explained motivation behind the creation,
The aim of this project is to demonstrate the positive impact of metal additive manufacturing on the size and weight of an engine. This process has enabled us to reduce the weight of a 4-cylinder engine by 120 kg or 25%. The tests we have carried out prove the durability of engine components made using 3D printing. It’s not just cosmetic.
Lemasson also explains how “additive manufacturing releases us from constraints and unlocks the creativity of engineers.” This is shown as they have reduced the number of components in the DTI 5 engine by 25%, a total of 200 fewer parts. Renault suggest they will be increasing their use of 3D printing in the future having been pleased with this ‘initial test‘.
ZMorph at CES
Polish 3D printing company ZMorph enjoyed their first trip to CES in Las Vegas this month. Showing off their ZMorph 2.0 SX 3D printer they were invited to present for TechCrunch’s Hardware Battlefield competition as a wildcard. One of the judges even likened the company’s 3D printer to the classic design of Apple’s iMac. In addition to the design visitors were impressed by ZMorph’s color blending and image mapping technology.
RobotArt Winners announced
The first annual RobotArt competition winners were announced recently with TAIDA, National Taiwan University coming away with first prize for their artwork of Albert Einstein. All the artworks were to be made using robots and therefore involved a digital file for the works in order to programme them. The designs created were impressive and it would be interesting to see how robots could create 3D printed artwork in a similar fashion. Winning the competition meant the Taiwanese winners received $30,000 in prize money.
Here at 3DPI, we’re hosting our own award show this year and our receiving nominations now.
3D printed bagpipe
To finish this edition of Sliced is a 3D printed bagpipe-playing robot. The bagpipes being a particularly tricky instrument to play, I can imagine the difficulty is heightened when attempting to programme a robot to play them. The creator XenonJohn has uploaded his creation to Instructables and is ‘Planning to bring it to Newcastle Maker Faire April 2017 UK.’
Featured image shows sliced logo over an image of the 3D printed bagpipe-playing robot. Image via XenonJohn on Youtube.
