There are several signs like the one above hanging in my local shopping street in Amsterdam. They signify that the surrounding area is protected by DNA spray.  Stores such as my supermarket the Albert Heijn have installed sprayers so that when a robbery occurs the robbers will be sprayed by synthetic DNA.

The DNA is invisible to the naked eye but lights up under UV light (leading to subsequent exposure under the backlight of  the Amsterdam club scene I expect). The DNA can not be removed but instead degrades around a week after the spraying. Robbers can easily be found and identified and by comparing the DNA evidence it can be established that you were at the robbery.

Powerful and scary stuff. Dutch company SelectaDNA makes the technology and says it costs around 1700 Euro for a store to implement the technology. You can see a video (in Dutch) below.

Around a minute in  you can see the effects of the DNA spray under UV light.

If you’re looking for an exciting job in the 3D printing industry, I’ve got something for you. Bathsheba Grossman is looking for a new business manager.

Bathsheba is one of the first artists to use the 3D printing medium. Her work is exciting, fun and caters to geeks, tech people and mathematicians. She is established, gets press including Boing Boing and other large blogs and has been selling 3D printed work for years. But, she wants to step things up a notch and she’s looking for you…

Are you the person that can organize, streamline and pull her business into its next phase? Are you a strategy and execution person? Are you a online whiz that will improve her sales? Or are you a PR & marketing whiz  that will spread Batheba’s name wider around the world? Or best of all are you someone that combines these skills?

The job pays nothing but you will get a revenue share. So this is for people that are ambitious and confident. Bathsheba is respected in the industry and her work has a large following.  She is also a wonderful person. This is a huge opportunity for the right someone. This is one of those kick yourself repeatedly if  missed opportunities. Please pass this opportunity on to people you know!

I’m convinced that the future of manufacturing will lie in digital materials and rapid assembly (or VoxelFab as I’m completely self-servingly calling it from time to time).  The work of  Jon Hiller and Hod Lipson of Cornell inspired me to create this blog and I currently believe that they are well on their way to showing us a glimpse of the future of  manufacturing .  A good overview is this concept video of theirs showing you how a rapid assembler  will work.

On the one hand you will have Voxels, the building blocks for making things. A rapid assembler will select and organize these Voxels and build them layer by layer into an object. Because you can select  different Voxels you can give your object lots of different material properties, even properties that have been impossible. Voxels will then be true digital materials.

You could for example make a plastic casing that is weakly magnetic only in certain areas, has different softness and hardness throughout is water permeable only when upside down. Or even develop completely new properties.  Hod & Jon have a page outlining their research here and it mentions creating materials with a negative Poisson ratio.  This would mean making an elastic material that widens as it stretches.

Since a Voxel acts as a basic building block for fabrication billions can be made in series and so the costs of the build material can be kept low while making varieties possible.  Like basic ingredients to a recipe the variety will lie in the unique combinations of these blocks. Because the Voxels have predefined accurate measurements and because they are designed to align the overall accuracy of the process is very high and scalable.  Hod & Jon use the example of a child who might not be very accurate but whose creations are accurate because she is constructing using LEGO bricks.

Currently their experiments have even shown that they can build simple objects from the Voxels. They can then dissolve the binder that holds the Voxels together and then re-use them.

This technology has so much promise that I’m compelled to follow its every move and I hope you do to!

A lot of you have probably already heard of Chinese B2B e-commerce site Alibaba, but just in case any of you have not I’d like to introduce you to one of the most insane & useful websites in the world.

Alibaba is a site where you can source goods from Chinese companies. On Alibaba and Alibaba Express you can get things as diverse as Marine Diesel Engines, RC Airplane Engines,  motherboards, solar plastic flowers, GPS tracking devices, mushrooms, children’s socks & full sized electric cars.

Crazyest thing I’ve found so far is Europium, “is very valuable material in control rods for nuclear reactors due to that it can absorb more neutrons than any other elements. Europium, atomic no.: 63, symbol as Eu, weight at 151.96, is utilized primarily for its unique luminescent behavior.” $686 per Kilo, knock yourself out.

The breadth of offering on Alibaba is unprecedented. It will make you fundamentally reconsider the price of everything around you. I never understood the name until I realized that the site is indeed a treasure trove and the prices make you feel like a thief.

If you need anything at all, check Alibaba first.  A few pointers:

1. A lot of times you will be negotiating via Google Translate with people. Keep your sentences unambiguous.
2. Check the history and any information you can find about the companies. Use Alibaba’s TrustPass feature to also check out companies. Alibaba Gold Suppliers have been verified.
3. Always use escrow.
4. Shipping is a large cost component for a lot of items.
5. The wholesale site Alibaba Express is easier to use as a consumer.
6. The site isn’t intended for consumers so you might want to get together with some friends and split a large order of something.
7. The site isn’t intended for consumers so some kind of LLC, SA or any kind of company are handy.

SMT (Surface Mount technology) Pick & Place Machines are machines that take a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) that has been screen printed with glue-ey gooey solder and add components to it. The machines basically put the the right stuff on the right place on series of PCBs.  They put the little LED light right where it needs to be for example.

These machines have been a mainstay of PCB production for many years.  Some SMT Machines such as Assembléon’s A-Series can place 111,000 components an hour to an accuracy of 25 micron.

Swiss Essemtec has just introduced the Cobra, notable not only for combining speed with flexibility but also the industry’s first real foray into design. The Cobra can be filled with the next job while the current run is in progress.

The first video gives you a good look at how an SMT Pick & Place machine works. The second video is a slick one outlining the Essemtec Cobra.

So, why am I so interested with SMT pick and place machines? If we are to use combinatorial manufacturing and combine 3D printing with mass production technologies, some process has to put it all together.

In combinatorial manufacturing the main virtue of mass production is combined with the main virtue of 3D printing. Mass production can produce many identical components cost effectively. 3D printing can produce one unique item cost effectively. By combining the two you get an item that packs a lot of functionality but is unique.  And the magical technology that can string the two together is pick  & place.

TechCrunch had a great video showing off Autodesk Fluid FX on the IPad. The video is very trippy by Autodesk standards and I think the music gets ridiculously annoying after a few minutes, but  Fluid FX is very impressive. Also at $1.99 you should get it just because its four decimal places to the right of other stuff you can get from Autodesk.

This marks another move by Autodesk into the mainstream.  If they’re successful in this space then they’re going to look more and more like a wannabe  “Adobe for 3D.” These moves put them up against Dassault and in my mind make them an a very tempting acquisition target for Adobe.

A year ago Cathal Garvey & Brian Degger introduced me to DIY Bio.

Basically, as I see it, DIY bio is currently a bunch of people sitting at home experimenting with biological processes. Right now a lot of people are at the “make my own yogurt” stage.  But, the ambition, scope & skills  of the people involved stretches way beyond this.

People are already making recombinant DNA, playing with enzymes, experimenting with E.coli, developing tools and sending cultures of bacteria around the world with UPS.  The bacteria+UPS element does tell us that DIY Bio is probably on its way to becoming one of the FBI’s favorite hobbies.

I’m personally most interested in the development of tools for DIY Bio. Cathal for example made a cheap centrifuge using 3D printers that people can buy or make at home. This kind of development has the potential to be a real force multiplier for the community. See a video of Cathal showing you his DremelFuge here. There is also a team working on an open PCR machine!

Going forward regulatory issues & terror fears will probably hurt DIY Bio.  It also has a strong icky-ness factor for some. But, the potential of the democratization of medical technology and biology in the home is both a scary and amazing one.

If you’re interested in more information here is a great post by Cathal detailing the state of DIY Bio at the moment.

Photograph is Creative Commons Attribution, JeabBapstiseParis

Hopefully at one point we can construct actual physical objects using voxels. We could select different Voxels based on their properties and characteristics and unique selections would lead to hereto unknown material properties.

What I would hope would be possible then is to 3D model on the level of the individual voxel. My 3D modeling app would display all the types of Voxels and I could simply select and place one or an entire field of Voxels on the app. I could paint with voxels if you will, just like some 3D modeling apps such as Zbrush let you do it now.

Only these voxels on my screen would behave like the physical Voxels that would be made with the VoxelFab process. The physics in the 3D modeling app would help you simulate and combine different Voxel combinations so you could “pre-cook” your designs and print out the promising ones. The screen would be an exact one on one representation of the final object. No conversion, no different formats:  what you see is  what you print.

The future of design, its actually a lot like MS Paint.

You know why it sucks to own a 3D printer? You no longer have any excuses.

• Don’t like your remote control?
• Think your TV is ugly?
• Don’t like your cutlery?
• Can’t find a nice present?
• Not happy with the grip of your golf clubs?
• Not enjoying the feel of your mobile?
• things in stores too boring for you?
• “they” don’t make that one thing any more?
• “they” don’t understand design
• “they” don’t cater to you
• “they” don’t care about functionality
• “they” don’t get it

Go make it. Design is no longer a spectator sport, so shut up and get printing. You no longer have any excuses.
Image is Creative Commons Attribution by Tony Buser

I coined the word VoxelFab in response to work by Hod Lipson & Jon Hiller on an idea by Neil Gerhshenfeld.

The basic concept is to have a rapid assembly machine. This machine would scoop up and  millions of individual “Voxels” and then deposit them in an organized fashion in a layer. The machine would add layer upon layer of voxels and in so doing build up an object.

A voxel is currently used as a term for a 3 dimensional pixel. The term is used in 3D modeling and gaming for a virtual pixel with volume. I use it here for a actual 3D dimensional object.  I’m going to try and capitalize Voxel when it refers to the physical Voxel. The dream would be for a voxel on a screen to be an accurate and direct representation of a Voxel in real life. This would seamlessly intertwine design and manufacturing.  Voxels would be universal LEGO blocks for constructing any object.

Since they would be rather small (100 micron) you would need billions of them to build anything. They could then be mass produced on a hereto unprecedented scale. If the basic specifications could be agreed upon many companies could develop ever cheaper ways of manufacturing Voxels making them inexpensive.

The great advantage VoxelFab technology would have over any other manufacturing technology would lie both in the widespread availability of these Voxels and the fact that you could develop different Voxels with different characteristics. You could have a magnetic Voxel for example, a conductive one, a soft one, a hard one etc. The ability for the VoxelFab machine to select and pick up different distributions of these different Voxels and organise them would give you hereto impossible material properties. Hod gave the example of a rubber band that would widen if pulled.You could imagine objects that were magnetic only in some areas or had varying degrees of magnetism, smoothness, hardness, flexibility etc.

A working VoxelFab is still years away, but the exciting possibilities of true digital materials will revolutionize design and manufacturing.

I’m currently involved with 3D printing, a precursor technology for VoxelFab. I think both technologies will bring about a world where anyone can make anything and where anyone can design anything. This is why I follow developments in the field of 3D printing, manufacturing technology, iterative design, generative design, “make”, networked manufacturing and personal production. This blog and the the coining of the term VoxelFab is my attempt at tracking developments leading up to a world where anyone making anything becomes a reality.

Join me on this journey.