14 DAY TRIAL // 3D printing has come a long way. Many objects can be created by those box-like machines, and it finally seems as though the technology is good enough to create other gadgets.
A group led by Simon Leigh, at the University of Warwick in England, succeeded in using the Bits from Bytes BFB3000 3D printer to create a motion-sensing glove.
One head used polylactic acid (PLA) to print the main body, while the other head made the embedded sensing strips in each finger, with carbomorph.
Carbomorph is both piezoresistive and conductive. The latter is a sufficiently self-explanatory term. The former means that the electrical resistance changes when it is stretched or bent.
Leigh's group wanted their work freely available, so they published their findings in the PLoS ONE open access journal. More information can be found here.
