The debut fellowship season of AMRI included a series of fascinating investigations that directly impact desktop 3D printing’s immediate future. I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight these fellows and their groundbreaking projects in specific:
2013 AMRI Fellowships Wrap-Up and Final Presentations shared at the new AMRI site:
Andreas Bastian, “3D Printing via laser-sintering of thermoplastic powders”
Andreas Bastian’s interests lie in processes and materials, specifically those that manipulate the (traditionally) immutable. He has worked in a variety of crafts and disciplines, ranging from traditional Japanese wood-fired cermics to blacksmithing and foundry work to engineering design of and for 3D printers (and other creative tools). He comes to AMRI from Makerbot where he ran the R&D lab focusing on the fundamentals of additive manufacturing. Andreas is a recent graduate of Swarthmore with a B.S. in Engineering.
Steve Kelly – “Ink-jet printing of genetically modified living bacteria”
Steve Kelly is passionate about open source hardware and software. He is directly involved with distributed manufacturing and CAD software development. Currently he is a student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, studying Mathematics.
Anderson Ta – “Digital light projection (DLP) photolithography of plastics and hydrogels”
Anderson is a digital fabrication expert. By day he oversees the dFab Studio at the Maryland Institute College of Art. By night, he operates Matterfy LLC, promoting and evangelizing 3D printing hardware. Anderson has led some of the very first 3D printer build workshops in the United States.
Ravi Sheth – “Bacterial cellstruder for synthetic biology studies”
Ravi is interested in using engineering principles and open source tools to understand the complexity of biology and to create synthetic biological circuits. A recent recipient of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, Ravi currently conducts research under Dr. Jeff Tabor in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University where he also is a student.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
