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Saturday, December 24, 2016

Year 2016 in review - 11 years of blogging - Am I too blind to blog?

Selfie taken taken by Thomas Kraemer on Christmas Eve in 2016

PHOTO: Selfie taken taken by Thomas Kraemer on Christmas Eve in 2016. Please excuse me if my selfie is poorly lit and composed, but I have been slowly going low vision blind over the last few years and I can no longer recognize faces, even of people I have known for years, due to my brain's neurological disorder, called prosopagnosia (i.e. face blindness), related to an ischemic stroke in the posterior cerebral artery area of of brain that has caused a diffuse area of brain death typical of an impact injury and not due to the more typical reason of fat cells breaking off the walls of the arteries. I was barely able to take this picture and upload it to Google Blogger and Photos thanks to the accessibility features built-in to Microsoft's operating system and Internet Explorer Browser for people with various disabilities. Of course, it has been much easier to adapt to using these accessibility features given my previous familiarity with the software commands needed, but as my symptoms worsen over time, I have been forced to adapt more and more, with a tradeoff of not being able to read or do as many things fast as I did them before. For example, if I lose the ability of using a graphical window and mouse interface and I am forced to use a text and command line interface like what was the only computer interface available when I first used a computer in 1964, then even using a modern accessibility feature of a voice and speech interface will not be quick and easy to use as the decades old computer command line interface.

As I said last year, I don't know how long I will be able to continue blogging given my worsening low vision blindness and muscle paralysis, but I am grateful to still have the ability required for posting my favorite links and posts from last year 2016:

Also, my previous post HP 3-D printers praised by Jim Cramer CNBC Wall Street reporter (7/24/16) preceded two related newspaper articles of interest by Staff, "Future of 3-D printing is topic of forum," Gazette-Times, Nov. 1, 2016, p. A2 and a follow-up article by Anthony Rimel, "HP Plans 3-D printers for manufacturing," Gazette-Times, Nov. 3, 2016, p. A2, online as, "HP exec says company's 3-D printers will lead to new industrial revolution," posted Nov. 3, 2016 that mentions Tim Weber, global head of 3-D materials and advanced applications for HP Inc. talking about. Clearly, he has adopted the HP founder's strategy that avoided dependence on the retail market, like inkjet printers ended up in, by focusing on 3-D printers and materials for manufacturers. Tim's PhD in Mechanical Engineering makes this a perfect cap to his career.

. . . the company's new Multi Jet Fusion 3-D printers at a Chamber lunch, saying that while the printers were designed in Spain, they use printhead technology that was developed in Corvallis. . . . Weber said typically 3-D printers make things by extruding material from a single point, which he likened to a hot glue gun. According to Weber though, HP's 3-D printers use printheads based on their ink printers to spray a reacting agent from multiple points onto a nylon based powder and cause the two to fuse into a solid piece by using ultraviolet light to power the reaction.

Weber said this process is faster and allows for manufacturers to customize the material they work with and make parts that are comparable to what could be made through injection molding. Manufacturers interested in customizing the material used in their printer could work with HP in Corvallis to develop a powder that meets their needs. . . .

He said the machines will run from around $100,000 to $250,000, and are not intended as a consumer product. "Right now we're really going after manufacturing," he said. According to Weber, for runs of parts up to about 55,000 units, their 3-D printers would be cheaper than injection molding, which require expensive molds be cast.

(Quoted from Anthony Rimel, "HP Plans 3-D printers for manufacturing," Gazette-Times, Nov. 3, 2016, p. A2, online as, "HP exec says company's 3-D printers will lead to new industrial revolution," posted Nov. 3, 2016)

See my previous ten annual reviews of my blog posts: