Essentially, they examined the type of spider silk found in spider webs, noted the periodic bulges in it, and created a print head that could produce corrugated ABS filaments.

As far as I could tell from the article, they haven't yet done anything with the corrugated ABS filaments other than string them up around the room where they exhibit the robotic printer/extruder. I imagine the next step is to perform tensile strength tests and flexing strength tests against an ABS monofilament with a round cross section of equal area to the corrugated multifilament.

I wish they had showed another example of what you can print with this. They made the entire video and only printed one pattern/model. How else can you apply this technology?

All they have done here is produce a head that can produce a new support structure pattern, but I don't see the advantage of this pattern. The build layers are isolated by the support so you are left with only thin spider web type filament designs. Furthermore these designs can already be accomplished with other styles of support structures in filament style 3D printers. I think what they have done is a cool innovation but I don't see any novel application for it.

I will say that putting a print head on a robotic arm could lead to more industrialized FDM machines though.

We often can't see the uses of new innovations, but that rarely means they have no use. What I noticed that was interesting was that the machine can print structures in mid air. Though they're only demonstrating the basic capabilities right now, I'd be surprised if we didn't see something very useful come out of their lab in the next few months.

Beautiful and creative concept, beautiful in motion, and beautiful output.

Note that this is meant primarily as a design tool, not as a production method. Think of it as a 3-D sketching tool for architects/designers...

"In this project what I am aiming to figure out is the way of integrating digital fabrication into designing as well as producing. It is more like the revival of craftsmanship in digital age." (From "About Project")

Made in 3 weeks. Wow.

Well, they already had the robot arm.

Given a highend robotic arm like that and a 3d printing hotend, I could make a standard FDM 3d printer in like 5 hours.....

Speaking of robotic arms, does anyone know where I could buy a good (if possible cheap) robotic arm which I could program? I'm interested in something similar to "Dummy" in Iron Man.

This was on kickstarter a while back:

http://www.fluxintegration.com/pages/flx-arm

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/535786699/flxarm-low-co...

Yeah, this one could be used for 3d printing and electronics assembly, I'm interested in something which could have the capability to manipulate objects, say a tennis ball, etc, or allow a camera to be mounted on it.

I'm planning on making an open source 3D printable robot arm in the next year or so. I've made a good 3D printed remote control car that uses few external parts (no screws). Working on custom printable motors now and then I'll probably do an arm. Nothing to share yet, but if you want you can google my company (Flutter Wireless) and join our mailing list. I have a bunch of circuit board to deliver first but I will be focusing a lot on robotics as time permits.

Can it be better called 3D plotting?

Talking about overkills... hehehe really cool project indeed

Fancy string