3-D printers alter the speed, cost, complexity, and consistency with which physical architecture models can be crafted. If architects are to harness the unique abilities of this modeling process, it is necessary to find a complementary means of conceptualizing designs and generating the geometric data necessary for 3-D printing. This paper introduces a novel combination of 3-D printing and scri...

In the paper, it makes 3-D (three dimensional) printing rapid prototyping bitmap data compression research based on bytes has been conducted, in the 3-D printing rapid prototyping system, where the bitmap data format is adopted, and related data storage space is very large. It firstly analyzes the bitmap data characteristics in 3-D printing rapid prototyping system and the commonly methods used...

Currently, research on structural health monitoring systems is focused on direct integration of the system into a component or structure. The latter results in a so-called smart structure. One example of a smart structure is a component with integrated strain sensing for continuous load monitoring. Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, now also enables such integration of functions inside com...

The era of affordable 3D printing is clearly underway; indeed, the historical patterns of growth in 3D printing are, in many ways, strikingly similar to those associated with the growth of home computing in the late 1970’s. One of the prominent areas of increased interest in 3Dprinting is in the realmof education: fabrication tools are becoming available to college undergraduates and high schoo...

Although the trend in manufacturing has been towards centralization to leverage economies of scale, the recent rapid technical development of open-source 3-D printers enables low-cost distributed bespoke production. This paper explores the potential advantages of a distributed manufacturing model of high-value products by investigating the application of 3-D printing to self-refraction eyeglass...

Following the rapid rise of distributed additive manufacturing with 3-D printing has come the technical development of filament extruders and recyclebots, which can turn both virgin polymer pellets and post-consumer shredded plastic into 3-D filament. Similar to the solutions proposed for other forms of ethical manufacturing, it is possible to consider a form of ethical 3-D printer filament dis...

In nature, water assembles basic molecules into complex multi-functional structures with nano-to-macro property variation. Such processes generally consume low amounts of energy, produce little to no waste, and take advantage of ambient conditions. In contrast digital manufacturing platforms are generally characterized as uni-functional, wasteful, fuel-based and often toxic. In this paper we ex...