Future Links June 30th 2015
Here are our daily links with the most important news from the printing industry. Today they feature print shops using less material thanks to Heidelberg, printing meat on-demand, resin solving problem with 3D printing, Ricoh encouraging printers to expand Web-to-Print, 3D printed graphene for international audience and a printed office.
Print shops use less material thanks to Heidelberg
When it comes to costs, every single millimeter of board counts for packaging printers. The new software version of the Prinect Image Control color measurement system by Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG promises new standards. According to the company, the development engineers have succeeded in controlling coloring on the press using nothing but full tones and CMYK images on the print sheet.
More at What They Think
Printing meat on-demand
There have been multiple efforts towards creating lab-grown meat from hamburgers to “steak chips” but none of these technologies have actually been introduced for consumers yet. Students from the University of Applied Sciences Schwäbisch Gmünd wanted to change this and created an open source prototype 3D printer for kitchen countertops. One feature of this so-called Cultivator will be the ability to be programmed around a user’s daily dietary requirements and taste preferences with built-in nutritional data sets.
More at 3Ders
Resin solves problem with 3D printing
Until now you had to choose between getting a 3D printer that creates durable, colorful pieces with ridges and pockmarks or a stereolithography printer which produces seamless parts that fracture easily. Now Formlabs promises a third choice with Tough Resin. It is supposed to create smooth cyan chains strong enough to hoist cinder blocks by binding each layer chemically.
More at Wired
Ricoh encourages printers to expand Web-to-Print
“Web-to-print is a business necessity for production printing operations, but many are basically using web-to-print solely as a job submission tool, and there are so many more benefits” says Graham Moore, Director Business Development at Ricoh Europe. To gain the most advantage from web-to-print, solutions must for example be easy to use from mobile devices. The new white paper “Making the Most of Mobile: What a ‘Mobile-First’ Strategy Means for Your Business” sponsored by the company can be downloaded for free.
More at What They Think
3D printed graphene for international audience
Earlier this year, Graphene 3D Lab from Canada released one of the first graphene-PLA 3D printing composites that could be used for low-power conductive 3D printing projects. So far, the material was only distributed through the company’s own retail site. A new partnership with Polymaker LLC, brings it to a wider audience. Not only will the Chinese company provide supplementary manufacturing, but also sell the materials through its own site and its offices in Shanghai, New York, Utrecht, and Tokyo.
More at 3D Printing Industry
Print your office
We have heard from a lot of different projects working on printing housing structures. But most of them only use 3D printers for their exterior wall. Now, United Arab Emirates National Innovation Committee revealed a project which will take things further and create an entire office building complete with printed furniture.
More at 3D Print