3D printing, or additive manufacturing, has advanced rapidly in recent years, allowing companies to quickly produce working prototypes and home hobbyists to produce various bits and bobs for the home. While plastic remains the dominant printing material, additive manufacturing with materials including metal, cement and even glass, enables the production of everything from tiny screws to engine components to entire houses ... and it's only just getting started.
Back in 2015, we heard about how Dutch 3D-printing firm MX3D was planning on printing a steel footbridge that would go across Amsterdam's Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal. Well, construction of that bridge is now complete – although it still has to be placed over the water.
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A new technique developed at Berkeley Lab allows liquid 3D structures to be printed within other liquids. This new form of 3D printing could give rise to flexible and stretchable liquid electronics, aid chemical synthesis, or serve as a transport and delivery system for nanoscale particles.
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When Dr. Tarek Loubani travelled to Gaza to work as an ER physician, stethoscopes were in short supply. Later, he noticed that a toy stethoscope worked quite well. This prompted him and a team from Western University to design a plastic stethoscope that can be made anywhere, using a 3D printer.
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DediBot has created quite a buzz in Shanghai this week with the launch of something it's calling the Fly Elephant. The prototype is no ordinary multi-rotor drone, but features an extruder that can be used for rapid prototyping of large structures.
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Boeing and Oerlikon have signed a partnership to advance 3D printing processes. The five-year partnership will first focus on powder bed additive manufacturing of structural titanium components for the aerospace industry.
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Imagine if you could recolor your smartphone case, to match what you were wearing. Well, it may eventually be possible, thanks to research being conducted at MIT. Scientists there have created a system that allows the color of 3D-printed objects to be changed repeatedly, after they've been created.
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Student Sean Riley needed a violin to play a particular piece of music, but not one with the customary four strings. The piece called for an instrument with six strings. Instead of heading to the local music store, he opted to design and 3D-print a custom violin of his very own.
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The name Bugatti is associated with bleeding edge motor cars rather than 3D printing, but the company has announced that it has produced a new brake caliper that is not only the largest in the motor industry but is the largest component to be printed from titanium alloy.
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Harvard engineers have demonstrated a new 3D printing technique called “rotational 3D printing,” which lets users arrange the fibers in the ink in different orientations at different parts of the printed object, boosting its strength, stiffness and resistance to damage.
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3D printing has been finding a foothold in architecture over the last few years, with an office going up in Dubai, a tiny house printed in Russia and a cheap shelter layered from clay and straw by WASP's Big Delta. Now WinSun Construction has revealed the world's first 3D-printed bus shelter.
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