3D Printing
Reinventing metal 3D printing with direct writing process
Metal 3D printing has enormous potential to revolutionise modern manufacturing. However, the most popular metal printing processes, which use lasers to fuse together fine metal powder, have their limitations. Parts produced using selective laser melting (SLM) and other powder-based metal techniques often end up with gaps or defects caused by a variety of factors.
3D printing produces model blood vessels
Creating model blood vessels to aid in the study of diseases, such as strokes, can be complicated, costly and time-consuming. And the results may not always be truly representative of a human vessel. Assistant Professor Pranav Soman and his research team have engineered a new method to create model blood vessels that is more efficient, less expensive and more exact.
3D-printed device changes colour when prodded
In this age of smartphones and tablet computers, touch-sensitive surfaces are everywhere. They’re also brittle, as people with cracked phone screens everywhere can attest. Covering a robot — or an airplane or a bridge — with sensors will require a technology that is both flexible and cost-effective to manufacture in bulk. A team of researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory thinks tha...
3D printing turns nanomachines into life-size workers
Using advanced 3D printing, Dartmouth College researchers have unlocked the key to transforming microscopic nanorings into smart materials that perform work at human-scale. Nanomachines can already deliver medication and serve as computer memories at the tiny nanometer scale. By integrating a 3D printing technique pioneered at Dartmouth's Ke Functional Materials Group, researchers may unlock even greater potential for these mini-machine...
Student 3D printing innovation hits crowdfunding target in 11 hours
If inspiration fuels innovation, you will struggle to find a working environment any more inspirational than that of 3D printing innovator OmniDynamics. The company’s Operations Manager, Stephen Lloyd, talks about how a third-year university placement turned into a product that hit its crowdfunding target in just 11 hours.
UV printing press installed with LED UV to boost reliability
Phenix Label Company’s product range includes innovative labelling and packaging solutions for the food and beverage sector, for beauty and personal products and the pharmaceutical and automotive industries with a strong emphasis on exceptional service and rigorous quality management. In 2016 Phenix Label installed a brand new OMET printing machine with GEW UV curing: an X4 ten colour flexo press with ten 16” wide GEW-designed LW1 LED...
Nano Dimension supplies 3D printer to Syqe Medical
Nano Dimension has announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Nano Dimension Technologies has supplied, in return for payment, its flagship DragonFly 2020 3D Printer to Syqe Medical. Syqe is the Tel Aviv-based developer of the world’s first selective-dose, pharmaceutical grade medical cannabis inhaler. It uses 3D printers to prototype and produce inhalers, which have been used in Israel’s Rambam Hospital for more than a year.
3D-printing improves the development of artificial reefs
Fake reefs may be less vulnerable to climate change and more durable in the changing ocean chemistry than natural reefs. Scientists are using 3D-printing technology that enables them to create fake reefs mimicking the texture and architectural structure of natural reefs in ways that haven’t been achieved in prior restoration efforts. Experimental installations of these 3D-printed reefs are now going on in the Mediterranean, the Caribbe...
Dramatic improvement in 3D printing for home use
Waseda University researchers have developed a process to dramatically improve the quality of 3D printed resin products. The process combines greatly improved surface texture and higher structural rigidity with lower cost, less complexity, safer use of solvent chemicals and elimination of troublesome waste dust.
The sky is the limit for low-cost 3D printer
Sliperiet at Umeå Arts Campus is in the process of making a 3D printed Tower of Babel using a novel hanging printer. This offers a low-cost solution and increased flexibility to print large volumes. A type of 3D printer has been demonstrated at Sliperiet, Umeå Arts Campus. Suspended on thin fishing lines, 'Hangprinter' is currently making a Tower of Babel as part of the +Project innovation initiative.