An awesome walk-in kaleidoscope!

From Kobe (I needed to translate the blog page), this is built as a giant origami, made of folded mirrors, inside a shipping container.  The folds are fabricated by laser cutting perforations into mirrors.

(I don't think the Epilog has sufficient power to replicate this, but I'm not sure.)

Google translate says "awesome" translates to: 素晴らしい

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-b-broadcom-pinout,27248.html

Yet more awesomeness out of UIUC Bioengineering.  Tiny Robots!  Powered by muscle tissue! 

Fabbers will be interested that the structures were made using 3D printing techniques, to print out "hydrogel".

See the paper for details.

Well done, all.

UI Press release

Publication:

C. Cvetkovic*, R. Raman*, V. Chan, B. J. Williams, M. Tolish, P. Bajaj, M. L. Sakar, H. H. Asada, M. T. A. Saif, R. Bashir, "Three-dimensionally printed biological machines powered by skeletal muscle" PNAS, 2014. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1401577111. - (download PDF)

A piece last week aggregated some recent art works that use 3D printing. These projects may be inspirational for Fabbers.

14 Ways 3D Printing Has Changed The Art World by Katherine Brook.

Possibly of interest: Autodesk Labs is investigating 4D printing among other things

http://www.autodeskresearch.com/groups/nano

Wild and crazy stuff and totally for real.

(And I'm glad to see software people deeply involved: it'll never fly until there are good tools to do it.)

At our soldering and sewing workshops, Judy Lee teaches kids how to move from concept to finished product in the design of a plushie, made with felt. They learn how to thread a sewing machine, as well as finishing off with a pillow stitch, all in the span of about 90 minutes.

Printable circuit fans:  IEEE Spectrum reports on progress--non volatile RAM printed on paper!

The report by Rachel Courtland has pointers to details and some background information.

Really cool!

An interesting 'wearable scupture' from NYU graduate project.  This uses technology familiar to Fabbers, and could be recreated in the CUCFL: 3D printing, smart fabric, an arduino, and data feeds from mobile devices were employed to create a provocative garment that amplifies the wearer's "exposure":

as she eimits metadata that reveals her personal activities, the garmet becomes transparent to reveal more of her personal person.

See also:

X.pose by Xuedi Chen and Pedro G.C. Oliveira

"Description

Drone fans:  here's a remarkable performance. Really cool.

elevenplay dance performance with drones at Spiral Hall

In the current location, CUCFL has all the ingredients to create such a performance, incuding dancers.

Yet another kind of "printing"--print your own makeup.

From the presentation, this seems to be pretty far along toward reality.

One thing that is interesting is that they will have to solve the problem of supplying the input materials (which in this case are strictly regulated by the FDA, for good measure).

If successful, this could be a paradigm example that inspires print-it-yourself consumer goods.

OK, here's something I've always wanted, but never could have:  an atomic force microscope!  What would I do with it?  Who knows? It's been academic, anyway, up to now.

Instructables has posted a low cost project for a DIY ATM.  Wow!

Any Fabbers interested in such a project?

Welcome in the spring with us at our annual community BBQ. This next Sunday, May 4th, the lab will be hosting a celebration of volunteers, graduating students, new staff, grants and continued good times. We'll have an open grill with some meat and some kind of vegetarian option, but please feel free to bring your own dish. We'll kick the fire off around noon and continue on in to open hours.

Volunteers are highly encouraged to attend so that they can meet some of our new student staff helping us with workshops this summer!

IEEE students are putting on a Touch Synthesizer workshop this week:

6-8pm WED Apr 23 SIEBL 1105
3-5pm SAT Apr 26 DCL 1310

See the picture/flyer for more details.

Jeff, Virginia and Bob will be presenting a short workshop on some neat things you can do with Inkscape and associated tools at the main Fab Lab this next Sunday the 27th, from 3-4p. It's free and open to anyone and will be part of the training for our new staff. Just show up to join in, we will put any notes and tutorials online.