3D printing a gun

A ‘printed’ gun is what has grabbed the headlines as this story has started rolling around the internet, but for me that’s just a detail, and certainly not the big story. I suppose it speaks to the current political climate where guns are concerned that this has become the big part of the story. It really shouldn’t be the focus. The gun is interesting for what it says about the technology, not because it is a gun.

3D printing is the future. And this 3D printed gun from Solid Concepts gives the latest shining example of why that is. The 3D printers that are available to consumers currently are interesting. They’re fun, and hint at great things to come. But this… this is amazing. The fact that Solid Concepts made this gun, and fired multiple rounds through it safely, is huge. It would be one thing to make a custom clutch lever for a motorcycle, or some such. But that is just going to have to withstand a few pounds of force in use. The 3D gun withstands 20,000 psi with every shot. That is remarkable.

The important thing to take away from this story is learning about the technology of Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) and Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS). This is the technology that takes us another step closer to the science fiction future of clicking a button on a console and having a finished product come out of the wall. Here’s a look at the Solid Concepts gun in action.

Formula E Championship

Racing, in general, has largely ignored the electric vehicle. You will, on occasion, see something about a really fast drag car that is all electric. And there is the e-bike race at Isle Of Man. For most of your big racing organizations though, it’s less than an afterthought. The one place that has at least dabbled in EV technology is F1. With the KERS systems, they are doing vast amounts of research that is actually paying dividends. A look at the latest supercars from Ferrari, Porsche, and McLaren is testament to that.

That idea is now being expanded into a full fledged racing series, with many of the big F1 players on board. It’s called Formula E, and it has some pretty grand plans. The inaugural season will start in the fall of 2014 with ten teams using the car you see above, the Spark-Renault SRT-01E. Renault will be in charge of integrating everything, with McLaren supplying the powertrain and electronics and Williams supplying the batteries.

Plans for the initial season call for each team to have two drivers and four cars. The extra cars are not there for replacement in the event of a crash though. Instead, each race will require two mandatory pit-stops where the drivers will switch cars, the electric equivalent of a fuel stop. Also interesting is that the cars will not have full power (200kw / 270bhp). That will be available in practice and qualifying, but for the race the cars will be limited to power saving mode (133kw / 180bhp), with full power available as a push-to-pass option for a limited number of uses.

Races will be contested all around the globe, run on street tracks in Los Angeles, Miami, London, Berlin, Monte Carlo, Beijing, Hong Kong, Putra Jaya, Punta Del Este, and Buenos Aires. Also interesting, all races will be run on the same all-weather Michelin tires. The lack of slicks should make for some exciting racing.

Initially all of the cars will be essentially the same, with the long term goal being that the various manufacturer teams will innovate and progress the technology. All of this, or course, while raising awareness of the electric car as a viable option in real-world situations. It remains to be seen how successful any of this will be, but Formula E is certainly off to an interesting start.

Classic LEGO Photography

Here’s a bit of fun for your Tuesday. Mike Stimpson has a fondness for taking photos of LEGO. That might seem an odd hobby, but he is really good at it, and the results are very fun. A recent series finds Stimson recreating classic photographs in the LEGO world. The shot at the top is his version of Charles C. Ebbets’ ‘Lunch Atop A Skyscraper’, as seen below. You can see more from the series in this flickr gallery and at MikeStimpson.com.

Actors playing multiple roles in Bond films

Are you a James Bond fan? Or are you a James Bond FAN? If you chose the latter, this might not be news to you. But even as someone who has seen all the Bond films, most multiple times, a number of things on this list of actors playing multiple roles in the Bond universe held some surprises for me.  Given the length of time that the franchise encompasses, it’s easy to miss when things like this happen. And posts like this are one of the fun things about the internet.

Burnouts on a helipad

Red Bull F1 headed to Dubai, for a little crazy. The picture above shows a Red Bull F1 car, with David Coulthard at the wheel, sitting on the helipad at Burj Al Arab. Yes, the same helipad where Federer and Agassi played tennis. It’s a pretty cool image. But then the crazy happens as Coulthard whips the car into a series of donuts. Please keep in mind that there are no fences on the helipad. If the car gets away, it’s a long way down. Have a look at it in the video below, and don’t try this at home, in Dubai, or anywhere else.

What is the most successful category on Kickstarter?

The answer may surprise you. There have been a number of big stories to come out of Kickstarter over the past couple years. Usually those fall in two categories, movies and tech. Even if you don’t use the service, chances are you heard about the Veronica Mars or Pebble projects. But those are both really outliers. The reality is that Film & Video projects succeed at a rate of 39.87%, while Technology runs at 34.56%. The leader has a success rate of 71.27%, and it’s dance.

Part of that will come down to the fact that the dance projects do have a lower average goal of $4,270. Clearly, that bar is going to be easier to clear than the $75,000 of the technology category. But the numbers don’t entirely track that way. Art, for example, has an average goal of $5,100, but a success rate of just 48.9%. And photography, at $7,220 average is just 36.54%. Clearly there is something about dance and its audience that is making it such a success on kickstarter. sfgate.com has a great breakdown with even more numbers. It’s well worth a look.

And that picture at the top? That is from Spaghetti Co, a dance project that I backed on Kickstarter.

The Building Of The Empire State Building

They don’t build buildings like they used to. Curbed NY has a great post featuring a collection of images by Lewis Hine. Hine shot a lot of different things over his career, but this set of his ‘sky boys’ working on the Empire State Building is amazing. To see workers hanging from cables high above the city is incredible. This one is my favorite, but follow the link to see 18 more.

Lucid Stead in Joshua Tree

Artist Philip K. Smith III has made a remarkable piece in the desert. Using mirrors and lights, he has transformed a 70 year old homesteader shack into something magical. Looking at it during the day, the mirrors fool the eyes and make it look like bits of the shack are just floating in the air. At night, the lights come on, giving the whole thing an other-world presence. You’ll find more info, and more pictures, at Coachella Valley Art Scene. And there are great looks at both scenes, as well as some of Smith’s other work, in this video.

New Big Wave Surfing Record?

Carlos Burle may have ridden the biggest wave of all time. The Cannonball record from Friday was pretty impressive, but this is a whole other level of incredible. Racing your Mercedes across the country puts you in danger of getting arrested. Getting towed in to a 100 foot wave puts you in danger of getting killed.

In fact, one of Burle’s fellow competitors, Maya Gabeira, almost died earlier that day. Burle was able to pull her back to the shore and save her life before heading back out and catching the wave you see in the picture. They were part of a crew that had traveled to Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal in hopes of breaking the world record. Severe storms in the Atlantic made for huge waves.

New Cannonball Record

You remember the Cannonball Run, right? If not the actual event that inspired it (the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash), surely you remember the movies. Well, it’s still a thing, kind of. The official race isn’t run anymore, but there are still people trying to best the coast-to-coast record. And it may have just been broken again.

Jalopnik has a great post on the story of Ed Bolian, who calims to have just made the run in a record time of 28 hours and 50 minutes. In case you aren’t aware, that shatters the existing record of 31 hours and 4 minutes. I use the terms ‘may have been broken’ and ‘claims to have made the run’ because nobody trusts anybody where this record is concerned. Ed did go to the lengths of hiring a company to monitor his location with GPS every minuted of the trip, but others are still skeptical.

Either way, the story is still a great read. And stick around for the comments where the discussion turns to whether or not Ed and his cohorts should be tossed in the clink. Finally, you may also want to have a look at the Wikipedia page for the Cannonball movie. There are some interesting tidbits there, like the fact that the ambulance story was taken directly from the actual run.