Are you reading?

By Andrew Liszewski

With a price tag of $4,995 we’re not going to be seeing one of these in every home in America anytime soon, but the Desktop Factory proves that the cost of owning your own 3D printer continues to drop. One of the reasons the Desktop Factory is so ‘affordable’ is because it uses an inexpensive halogen light source and plastic powder instead of UV and polymers, which also means the cost of the build material is expected to be about $1 per cubic inch. And the parts can be sanded and painted as soon as they’re finished, without the need for a chemical infiltration curing or strengthening process.

Now given the Desktop Factory is roughly the size of an early laser printer (25×20×20 inches) it will easily fit on any desk, but your 3D creations will be limited to 125ci or roughly 2 liters in volume. So while you won’t be printing out body panels for your home-made Enzo, your bootleg action figure business will be booming.

[ Desktop Factory ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

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RFID technology has turned up in plenty of surprising places, but there hasn’t exactly been the explosion of iPhone-related development that you may have expected. The lack of an easily accessible RFID reader may have something to do with that, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped the folks behind the Touch research project, who rigged up a not-so-discreet RFID reader and put it to some fairly inventive tasks. That includes assigning various media to different objects, like a Bob the Builder video clip that’s linked to a Bob the Builder toy, a clip of Chuck Norris kicking a car in the face that’s linked to a Chuck Norris action figure (which doesn’t even have an RFID chip), and a dynamically-updated MAKE podcast that’s linked to a slightly nerdy fellow. Of course, all of this is primarily a proof of concept, and the researchers behind the project see plenty of potential for other applications, including everything from gaming to marketing. Head on past the break to check it out in action.

[Thanks, Thorleif]

Source

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RFID technology has turned up in plenty of surprising places, but there hasn’t exactly been the explosion of iPhone-related development that you may have expected. The lack of an easily accessible RFID reader may have something to do with that, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped the folks behind the Touch research project, who rigged up a not-so-discreet RFID reader and put it to some fairly inventive tasks. That includes assigning various media to different objects, like a Bob the Builder video clip that’s linked to a Bob the Builder toy, a clip of Chuck Norris kicking a car in the face that’s linked to a Chuck Norris action figure (which doesn’t even have an RFID chip), and a dynamically-updated MAKE podcast that’s linked to a slightly nerdy fellow. Of course, all of this is primarily a proof of concept, and the researchers behind the project see plenty of potential for other applications, including everything from gaming to marketing. Head on past the break to check it out in action.

[Thanks, Thorleif]

Source

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By Evan Ackerman

Last week on BotJunkie, we started off with a sorta sexy sorta really really creepy female android fashion model, felt a little safer after watching ABB’s SafeMove system in action, couldn’t help but think of tentacle porn when we saw a design for a robot octopus, wished we were lucky enough to have had a constructable robot toy when we were kids, liked what happens when you give everyday household appliances eyes and arms and friendly personalities, got excited for the next hexapod dance off which is scheduled for later this month, watched iRobot’s beastly new Warrior drag a human to safety, decided we’d be better off buying an ASIMO action figure than the real thing, wished we were cows getting groomed by robot brushes, learned just exactly how ASIMO works, watched a whole bunch of robots building cars without any human help, decided it was better to learn how to solder robots even though you can now glue them, were blown away by an epic robot sword fight of awesomeness, sneezed at an R2-D2 pepper mill, and finished out the week with some weird video of a robot battling alien squid.

After the jump, we’ve got last week’s Bot With Stuff, Goonies edition.

[ BotJunkie ]

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By Luke Anderson

Flashlights are the sort of things that pretty much just sit around on a shelf or in a drawer until they are needed. This is usually inconvenient when the lights go out, but who really wants to stare at a boring old flashlight all the time? Well I think it’s time that we start making flashlights that also function as art. It seems that I’m not the first to come up with such an idea.

This Transformative Robot LED Torch/Nightlight almost looks like some sort of action figure or toy, but don’t let that fool you. While this might look like some sort of vicious creature, it is actually just a flashlight that’s meant to look a little different. I wouldn’t mind having one of these sitting out on my desk, honestly. You can pick one of these up for around $20 (but they’re on sale for $10 until Sunday).

[ MeritLine ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

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