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.
In a move that could one day lead to artificial transplant organs, a UCLA team has developed a new technique for printing complex bio-tissues using multiple materials. Using a specially modified 3D printer, it promises to one day create complex therapeutic biomaterials on demand.
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Australian company Titomic has unveiled what it claims is the world's largest metal 3D printer. Utilizing a patented process co-developed with Australian federal scientific research agency the CSIRO, the 3D metal printer boasts a build area 9 m long, 3 m wide and 1.5 m high (29.5 x 9.8 x 4.9 ft).
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As we discovered for ourselves during CES 2014, raising objects up from a flat surface using a 3D printing pen is not as easy as seasoned 3Doodlers make it look. Clearly, the earlier you start, the better. So WobbleWorks has launched educational creativity kits designed for use in schools.
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Inexpensive 3D printers often have a problem called "warpage," in which objects printed by them tend to curl up as they harden. Now, however, scientists have harnessed the power of warpage to create flat items that self-fold into predetermined 3D shapes when heated.
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Various research institutes have already developed skin-applied electronics, that are simply adhered to the user's body. Researchers at the University of Minnesota, however, have taken a different approach. They've developed a method of 3D-printing custom electronics directly onto the skin.
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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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