3-D-printed invisibility cloak

[JohnQPublic]

3-D-printed invisibility cloak (http://www.asminternational.org/portal/site/www/NewsItem/?vgnextoid=237b26aa8ea8e310VgnVCM100000621e010aRCR D)
"Seven years ago, the first working invisibility cloak resulted from complex laboratory experiments. It’s now easier and less expensive to make a simple cloak. “I would argue that essentially anyone who can spend a couple thousand dollars on a non-industry grade 3-D printer can literally make a plastic cloak overnight,” says Yaroslav Urzhumov, assistant research professor in electrical and computer engineering at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering (Durham, N.C.)..."

"...Urzhumov says that producing a cloak in this fashion is inexpensive and easy. He and his team made a small one that looks like a Frisbee made of Swiss cheese. Algorithms determined the location, size, and shape of the holes to deflect microwave beams. The fabrication process takes from three to seven hours.

Just like the 2006 cloak, the newer version deflects microwave beams, but researchers feel confident that in the not-so-distant future, the cloak can work for higher wavelengths, including visible light..."

4896

[JohnQPublic]

http://youtu.be/KWkSWPCT2-M

New Material for Invisibility Cloaks (http://www.asminternational.org/portal/site/www/NewsItemVideo/?vgnextoid=2aa926aa8ea8e310VgnVCM100000621e010aRCR D)"All natural materials have a positive index of refraction -- the degree to which they refract light. The nanoscale artificial "atoms" that constitute the metamaterial prism shown here, however, were designed to exhibit a negative index of refraction, and skew the light to the left. Technology that manipulates light in such unnatural ways could one day lead to invisibility cloaks."

[JohnQPublic]

Make your own invisibility cloak with a 3D printer (http://www.gizmag.com/invisibility-cloak-plastic-3d-printed/27433/)


4897

"...Invisibility cloaks have been around in various forms since 2006, when the first cloak based on optical metamaterials (http://www.gizmag.com/go/6357/) was demonstrated. The design of cloaking devices has come a long way in the past seven years, as illustrated by a simple, yet highly effective, radar cloak developed by Duke University Professor Yaroslav Urzhumov, that can be made using a hobby-level 3D printer..."

"...How a cloak works can be illustrated by an analogy (http://www2.technologyreview.com/article/407474/tr10-invisible-revolution/) offered by Duke University Professor David Smith. Imagine a fabric in which the threads are optical fibers. As seen on the left of the image below, light will travel freely from one edge to the opposite edge of a piece of this fabric. If an opaque object is placed so that it blocks some of the light, it is equivalent to cutting a hole in the optical fiber fabric, as seen in the top right-hand image..."

4898

[How Einsteinian! JQP]

"...The new 3D-printed cloak is designed to make objects invisible to 10 GHz microwaves, which are about 3 cm (1.2 in) in wavelength. Whereas prior cloaks were made of lossy materials which prevented cloaking an object larger than a few wavelengths in size, Urzhumov's cloak is made of ABS plastic, which has very little loss at 10 GHz. In addition, ABS has an index of refraction of 1.56, meaning that similar cloaks that hide their contents from visible light can in principle be made from optical glass and plastics having micron-scale structure rather than centimeter-scale structure..."

"...While the cloak currently only works with microwaves, the researchers believe it will be possible in the not-too-distant future to develop the technology further to work for higher wavelengths, including visible light.

"We believe this approach is a way towards optical cloaking, including visible and infrared," Urzhumov said. "And nanotechnology is available to make these cloaks from transparent polymers or glass. The properties of transparent polymers and glasses are not that different from what we have in our polymer at microwave frequencies.”

[infrared- protection from thermal imagers? JQP]

..."

[Norweger]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zKQe-1BUFQ

Just remembered this.

[Ares]

Could probably use a 3-D printer to print body parts for your car with the sharp angles and dips to lessen your radar signature. No more speeding tickets. :-D LOL

[JohnQPublic]

Could probably use a 3-D printer to print body parts for your car with the sharp angles and dips to lessen your radar signature. No more speeding tickets. :-D LOL

Nah. Just use a 2D printer to print checks drawn on the Fed to pay for the speeding tickets! ;)