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futurity_sci_tech 00726.txt

#3d printed loudspeaker plays Obama speech The first 3d printed consumer electronic is a loudspeaker that comes out of the printer ready to use. It s an achievement that 3d printing evangelists feel will soon be the norm; rather than assembling consumer products from parts and components complete functioning products could be fabricated at once on demand. verything is 3d printedsays Apoorva Kiran as he launched a demo by connecting the newly printed mini speaker to amplifier wires. For the demo the amplifier played a clip from President Barack Obama s State of the Union speech that mentioned 3d printing. Kiran and Robert Maccurdy graduate students in mechanical engineering at Cornell University led the project. A loudspeaker is a relatively simple object Kiran adds: It consists of plastic for the housing a conductive coil and a magnet. The challenge is coming up with a design and the exact materials that can be fabricated co into a functional shape. Lipson says he hopes this simple demonstration is just the ip of the iceberg. 3d printing technology could be moving from printing passive parts toward printing active integrated systems he adds. But it will be a while before consumers are printing electronics at home Lipson says. Most printers cannot efficiently handle multiple materials. It s also difficult to find mutually compatible materialsâ##for example conductive copper and plastic coming out of the same printer require different temperatures and curing times. In the case of the speaker Kiran used one of the lab s Fab@Homes a customizable research printer originally developed by Lipson and former graduate student and lab member Evan Malone that allows scientists to tinker with different cartridges control software and other parameters. For the conductor Kiran used a silver ink. For the magnet he employed the help of Samanvaya Srivastava graduate student in chemical and biomolecular engineering to come up with a viscous blend of strontium ferrite. It s not the first time a consumer electronic device was printed in Lipson s lab. Back in 2009 Malone and former lab member Matthew Alonso printed a working replica of the Vail Register the famous antique telegraph receiver and recorder that Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail used to send the first Morse code telegraph in 1844. After making a detailed digital model of the telegraph they printed it on a research fabber also developed by Malone that was a predecessor to the Fab@Home . And it worked. As a demo the researchers received and printed the same message Morse and Vail first did in 1844: hat hath God wrought. reating a market for printed electronic devices Lipson says could be like introducing color printers after only black and white had existed. t opens up a whole new space that makes the old look primitive. ource: Cornell Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license 3

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