3D Printing, Cloud Engine Revolutionize Manufacturing

Ariella Brown
One of the delights of writing for The Enterprise Cloud Site is learning about things that sound unlikely but really do exist, like the Society for Printable Geography. The printable does not refer to traditional maps but to 3D printing, which renders geographical data into iPhone cases, pendants, earrings, and puzzles.
All this is made possible by Sculpteo, a company that combines 3D printing with a cloud engine.
The 3D-printing Cloud Engine enables businesses to incorporate advanced 3D printing into their product lines and actually create products on-demand. Sculpteo says that it offers a choice of 35 different materials and can print one to 500 items a week for a given customer.
3D printing changes many aspects of manufacturing. Projects that once required specialized equipment, weeks of work, and required minimum orders can now be carried out on-demand. Just open a user-friendly interface, upload plans, and get exactly what you want.
In a press statement, Clément Moreau, CEO and cofounder of Sculpteo, called the cloud engine project a bid to become "the PayPal of the 3D printing industry."
Speaking of PayPal, the company that owns it recently partnered with Sculpteo. In July, eBay joined with Sculpteo -- as well as MakerBot and Hot Pop Factory -- to form eBay Exact. Currently in beta, eBay Exact is an iOS app that enables customers to order 3D-printed iPhone cases, figurines, and jewelry from their mobile devices.
Sculpteo introduced its own mobile app last year. Customers can use their Apple devices to browse the company's collection of designs, learn about 3D designers, and upload photos to 3D-print personalized gifts. This allows consumers to order directly through Sculpteo, and its cloud engine is available to resellers, too.
Not just for toys
Sculpteo's cloud engine enables a number of businesses -- like Printable Geography and MWOO -- to offer 3D-printed products. The problem is, whimsical-but-ultimately-useless objects are what most people think of now when they consider 3D printing.
3D printing is not just for hobbyists and collectors, though. It also has many applications in robotics, architecture, scientific research, and education. Sculpteo's testimonial page references professionals in a variety of fields who benefit from 3D printing, particularly those who need key components, prototypes, or models to assemble new structures, tools, or devices.
As 3D printing advances, it's certain that we will see it put to even more practical uses, and perhaps others will turn to the cloud to realize their own 3D visions.
What clever applications of 3D printing have you seen? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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soon design, ‘print’ organisms

James Vincent, The Independent | Oct 8, 2013, 06.10 AM IST
READ MORE print’ organisms|Playing God|biological printers
Scientists will soon be able to design and print simple organisms using biological 3D printers says J Craig Venter, the scientist who led the privatesector's mapping of the human genome. He predicts that new methods of digital design and manufacture will provide the next revolution in genetic with synthetic cells and organism tailor-made to tackle humanity's problems : a toolkit of sequenced genes will be used to create disease-resistant animals; higher yielding crops; and drugs that extend human life and boost our brain power.

These ideas have been outlined in Venter's latest book 'Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life' , in which the geneticists asks the age-old question 'what is life?' before detailing the history — and future — of creating the stuff from scratch. For Venter life can be reduced to "protein robots" and "DNA machines" but he also believes that technology will unlock far more exotic opportunities for creating life.
The title of the publication refers to the idea that we may be able to transmit DNA sequences found on Mars back to Earth (at the speed of light) to be replicated at home by biological printers.

"I am confident that life once thrived on Mars and may well still exist there today ," writes Venter. "The day is not far off when we will be able to send a robotically controlled genome-sequencing unit in a probe to other planets to read the DNA sequence of any alien microbe life that may be there." Venter's ideas may sound like science fiction but he has achieved comparable feats in the past.
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Image Caption: Planetary nebula IC 1295 surrounding a dim and dying star. Credit: ESO
[ Watch the Video: Zooming In On The Planetary Nebula IC 1295 ]
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
A new image released by the European Space Observatory (ESO) shows the glowing green planetary nebula IC 1295.
The new pictures taken by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows the nebula surrounding a dim and dying star located about 3300 light-years away in the constellation of Scutum (The Shield).
“It has the unusual feature of being surrounded by multiple shells that make it resemble a micro-organism seen under a microscope, with many layers corresponding to the membranes of a cell,” according to an ESO statement.
The glowing green bubble seen in the image is made out of gas that used to be the star’s atmosphere. The gas has been expelled by unstable fusion reactions in the star’s core that generated sudden releases of energy. It contains ultraviolet radiation, which gives it its glow.
In the center of the image, you can see the burned-out remnant of the star’s core as a bright blue-white spot at the heart of the nebula. The central star will become a very faint white dwarf and slowly cool down over many billions of years.
Stars that have masses like the Sun and up to eight times that of the Sun will form planetary nebulae as they enter the final phase of their existence.
The name ‘planetary nebula’ has nothing to do with planets. It is actually a descriptive term applied to some early discoveries because of the visual similarity of these objects to the outer planets Uranus and Neptune. Early astronomers using older telescopes saw these far away planets as glowing gas.
ESO released another beautiful image of the bright star cluster NGC 6520 back in February. The image shows NGC 6520 alongside a strange dark cloud known as Barnard 86. These two objects sit inside millions of glowing stars in the brightest part of the Milky Way galaxy. Barnard 86 is a dark nebula known as a Bok globule. Although in the image it appears as if it was a break in the stars, the nebula is actually made up of small dust grains that block out starlight. Astronomers believe this nebula formed from the remnants of a molecular cloud that collapsed to form the nearby star cluster NGC 6520.
ESO’s VLT is the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory. The space observatory continues to provide scientists with unique views of the universe that exists beyond what conventional backyard telescopes pick up.

Source: Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online
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