Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab

Possibly of interest:  An NSF sponsored collection of high quality scanned specimens (skeltons and fossils).  The datasets are availalbe in a number of formats, some of them are available in STL, intended for 3D printing.

The Digital Morphology library is a dynamic archive of information on digital morphology and high-resolution X-ray computed tomography of biological specimens.

Using the method described here - http://cucfablab.org/book/3d-print-your-spore-creature-3d I was able to create a number of monsters in 3D by using Spore, the game. I then later went back to combine parts from monster models with scans from the xBox Kinect.

A little over a year ago, 3D printing was a funky new technology that you might find at modestly sized booths in the basement level of the Las Vegas Convention Center at CES. Recently, President Obama mentioned it in the same breath as Apple and Intel during his State of the Union address, while talking about ways to create new jobs and manufacturing in the United States.

Read more on CNET:

Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis has been doing research into using 3D printing technology to solve world problems, particularly housing in emergency situations and low-income environments. Watch the video and learn where home-construction might be going in the not-too-distant future.

More information:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2187623/Contour-Crafting-builds-house-24-hours.html

An infographic about 3D printing in education and related areas. Click to see the full version.

Have you ever just wished you could lift your pen off the paper and see your drawing become a real three dimensional object? The folks at WobbleWorks have created a 3D printer pen to do just this. Check it out:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1351910088/3doodler-the-worlds-first-3d-printing-pen

As if 3D printers weren't mind-blowing enough, iRobot (yes, the company responsible for the Roomba) has just filed a patent for a robot-assisted all-in-one fabricator that can print, mill, drill, and finish a final product — and all without human intervention. Read more about it at io9.

Possibly of interest -- stop animation studio heavily uses 3D printing.  Pretty cool.

http://www.laika.com/

Here's a strange personal fabrication idea.

The paleontology is somewhat shaky, IMO, but it's an interesting piece of 3D printing.

http://cunicode.com/neopaleo/