3D Printing News & Discussions

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An ink for 3D-printing flexible devices without mechanical joints
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-04-ink ... nical.html
by Celia Luterbacher, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

EPFL researchers are targeting the next generation of soft actuators and robots with an elastomer-based ink for 3D printing objects with locally changing mechanical properties, eliminating the need for cumbersome mechanical joints.

For engineers working on soft robotics or wearable devices, keeping things light is a constant challenge: heavier materials require more energy to move around, and—in the case of wearables or prostheses—cause discomfort.

Elastomers are synthetic polymers that can be manufactured with a range of mechanical properties, from stiff to stretchy, making them a popular material for such applications. But manufacturing elastomers that can be shaped into complex 3D structures that go from rigid to rubbery has been unfeasible until now.

[Time_Traveller]

Optical Microscopy Advancement via Laser-Based 3D Printing

Jun 5 2024



Currently, optical microscopy is one of the most used techniques across numerous interdisciplinary domains for small-scale object, organism, or surface inspection. However, the diffraction of light places a basic restriction on its lateral resolution, which has grown more crucial with the application of conventional lenses as the need for higher resolutions has increased.

Micro-sphere-assisted microscopy is a field of study that integrates a dielectric micro-sphere behind the final imaging lens of an optical microscope. This integration offers a viable way to boost lateral resolution considerably. Nevertheless, there are significant practical restrictions associated with the usage of dielectric microspheres that are sold commercially.

Proper handling of the micro-spheres necessitates laborious procedures, and the sizes of dielectric micro-spheres that are commercially accessible are constrained. These difficulties prevent micro-sphere-assisted microscopy from being widely used as an affordable substitute for expensive microscopy techniques like atomic force or scanning electron microscopy.

Using multi-photon lithography (MPL), this method produces real three-dimensional structures at the micro- and nanoscale without needing a mask. Furthermore, MPL’s nonlinear nature allows for significant improvements in accuracy through localized laser intensity refinement throughout the printing process.

The researchers achieved a remarkable result by combining this intricate method with a cutting-edge hatching and slicing strategy to create a 20 µm-diameter microsphere with outstanding surface smoothness and nearly flawless geometric quality (λ/8).

https://www.azooptics.com/News.aspx?newsID=28786

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3D-printed Czinger 21C zings its way into the record books
By Joe Salas
https://newatlas.com/automotive/czinger ... -goodwood/
July 16, 2024

The 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed felt special this year. For Czinger, it was. The automaker's 21C set the production car class record up the 9-turn, 1.16-mile (1.87-km) hillclimb. Not only did it set the record, but it also achieved the 5th fastest time amongst all competitors.

With driver Chris Ward in the captain's chair, the Czinger 21C clocked in a 48.83-second run with 3rd through 6th place all separated by less than 0.9 of a second. The overall winner was the Ford Supervan 4.2 (you should use the word "van" loosely) with a 43.98-second go.

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Sustainable and reversible 3D printing method uses minimal ingredients and steps
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-sustainab ... nimal.html
by University of California - San Diego

A new 3D printing method developed by engineers at the University of California San Diego is so simple that it uses a polymer ink and salt water solution to create solid structures. The work, published in Nature Communications, has the potential to make materials manufacturing more sustainable and environmentally friendly.

The process uses a liquid polymer solution known as poly(N-isopropylacrylamide), or PNIPAM for short. When this PNIPAM ink is extruded through a needle into a calcium chloride salt solution, it instantly solidifies as it makes contact with the salt water. Researchers used this process to print solid structures with ease.

This rapid solidification is driven by a phenomenon called the salting-out effect, where the salt ions draw water molecules out of the polymer solution due to their strong attraction to water. This removal of water causes the hydrophobic polymer chains in the PNIPAM ink to densely aggregate, creating a solid form.

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Self-improving AI method increases 3D-printing efficiency
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-08-ai- ... iency.html

An artificial intelligence algorithm can allow researchers to more efficiently use 3D printing to manufacture intricate structures.

The Washington State University study, published in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies, could allow for more seamless use of 3D printing for complex designs in everything from artificial organs to flexible electronics and wearable biosensors. As part of the study, the algorithm learned to identify, and then print, the best versions of kidney and prostate organ models, printing out 60 continually improving versions.

"You can optimize the results, saving time, cost and labor," said Kaiyan Qiu, co-corresponding author on the paper and Berry Assistant Professor in the WSU School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering.

[caltrek]

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By mimicking ironing, researchers perfect 3D printing control over color, texture, and shade
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-10-mim ... xture.html
by Adam Zewe, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Multimaterial 3D printing enables makers to fabricate customized devices with multiple colors and varied textures. But the process can be time-consuming and wasteful because existing 3D printers must switch between multiple nozzles, often discarding one material before they can start depositing another.

Researchers from MIT and Delft University of Technology have now introduced a more efficient, less wasteful, and higher-precision technique that leverages heat-responsive materials to print objects that have multiple colors, shades, and textures in one step.

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New tech enables 3D printing electronics without semiconductors
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
October 21, 2024
https://newatlas.com/electronics/3d-pri ... onductors/

Researchers at MIT have unexpectedly stumbled upon a way to 3D print active electronics – meaning transistors and components for controlling electrical signals – without the use of semiconductors or even special fabrication technology.

That goes far beyond what we can currently do with 3D printers. And if perfected, this method could eventually spell the beginning of a new wave in prototyping, experimentation, and even DIY projects for tinkerers at home.

With 3D printing, any of a range of materials including thermoplastic filaments, resin, ceramic, and metal, are laid down in successive thin layers to form a three-dimensional object. That means you can print all kinds of things, from action figures to jewelry to furniture to buildings.

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New solvent-free 3D printing material could enable biodegradable implants
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-solvent-f ... nable.html
by Duke University

Additive manufacturing (AM) has revolutionized many industries and holds the promise to affect many more in the not too distant future. While people are most familiar with the 3D printers that function much like inkjet printers, another type of AM offers advantages using a different approach: building objects with light one layer at a time.

One such technology is digital light processing (DLP). Widely used in both industrial and dental applications, DLP works by converting a liquid resin into a solid part using light, essentially pulling solid objects out of a shallow pool of resin one layer at a time.

A major challenge to using this 3D printing method, however, is that the resins need to have a low viscosity, almost like water, to function properly at high resolution. Plenty of polymers that would otherwise be useful in DLP printing are solids or too viscous, requiring solvents to dilute them to an appropriate consistency.

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Turning 3D printing's biggest flaw into its smartest feature
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-12-3d- ... ature.html
by Danielle McKenna, Johns Hopkins University

Civil and systems engineers at Johns Hopkins University have turned a longstanding problem with 3D printers into a multifunctional feature: The team developed a new printing technique that solves the fundamental weakness between the layers created during 3D printing. This work, which appears in Advanced Materials, has the potential to customize the behavior of 3D-printed objects.

"In 3D printing, interfaces are notorious for creating vulnerabilities," said Jochen Mueller, an assistant professor in Whiting School of Engineering's Department of Civil and Systems Engineering. "The printed material either adheres too much or too little, resulting in structural weaknesses. It's similar to the way spaghetti sticks together after cooking, but easily pulls apart. This creates flaws that limit the functionality of 3D-printed products."

To combat this, the team members developed a new printing technique that allows them to precisely control interfaces between voxels, the three-dimensional counterparts to pixels, and how they function, including properties like adhesion—how well different layers or materials stick together.

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Stretchable, flexible, recyclable: 3D printing method creates fantastic plastic
https://phys.org/news/2024-12-stretchab ... ethod.html
by John Sullivan, Princeton University

Princeton engineers have developed an easily scalable 3D printing technique to manufacture soft plastics with programmed stretchiness and flexibility that are also recyclable and inexpensive—qualities not typically combined in commercially manufactured materials.

In an article in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, a team led by Emily Davidson reported that they used a class of widely available polymers called thermoplastic elastomers to create soft 3D printed structures with tunable stiffness.

Engineers can design the print path used by the 3D printer to program the plastic's physical properties so that a device can stretch and flex repeatedly in one direction while remaining rigid in another. Davidson, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, said this approach to engineering soft architected materials could have many uses, such as soft robots, medical devices and prosthetics, strong lightweight helmets, and custom high-performance shoe soles.

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World's first AI-generated and 3D-printed shoe makes its dubious debut
By Joe Salas
January 11, 2025

https://newatlas.com/lifestyle/syntilay ... nted-shoe/
First was the Croc, a rubber one-piece shoe best suited as a doorstop – that is until you tried one on and realized it might be the most comfortable thing you've ever put on your foot, despite the scornful looks from your peers. Then came the Kanye/Adidas collaboration-abomination called the Yeezy, with a history so tumultuous we hesitate to even bring it up.
Cue the new Syntilay, the world's first entirely AI-designed and 3D-printed piece of thermoplastic polyurethane to call itself a shoe. The exact composition of the slide-type sandal hasn't been made public, but there's a pretty high chance it's TPU.

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World’s first fully 3D-printed microscope made in under 3 hours

The microscope cost less than £50 to build using an open-source design and a common 3D printer

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
10 January 2025

The world’s first fully 3D-printed microscope can be made in a few hours and for a fraction of the cost of traditional ones.

“It’s not just enabling, it’s empowering,” says Gail McConnell at the University of Strathclyde in the UK. She and her colleagues previously worked out how to 3D-print lenses like those used in microscopes, which led to the breakthrough.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/24 ... r-3-hours/



Credit: Dr Liam M. Rooney/University of Strathclyde

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3D-printed battery made from fungi feeds on sugars
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
January 18, 2025
https://newatlas.com/energy/3d-printed- ... gars-empa/

Swiss researchers claim to have devised a functional living battery powered by the combined efforts of two types of fungi – all in a biodegradable, non-toxic 3D-printed package. I'll give you a second to wrap your head around that outrageous statement before diving into the details.

That's from a team at Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA), a Dübendorf-based research institute whose innovations have found their way into Omega watches, quick-drying sports bras, and top British soccer team Arsenal's artificial turf.

While we've seen work on bacteria-powered batteries before, the researchers note this is the first time two types of fungi have been brought together to create a working fuel cell. And to be clear, this is indeed more of a fuel cell than a battery, as it's utilizing the fungal metabolism to convert nutrients from microbes into energy.

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3D Printed Hydrogel Could Protect Astronauts From Radiation Exposure
Water is a fairly effective radiation shield, but it sloshes around too easily on its own.
By Adrianna Nine February 14, 2025

Ever since scientists figured out how to put humans in space, they've been working to protect those humans from exposure to excessive radiation. High-energy particles from the Sun and from cosmic rays threaten anyone who exits Earth's protective magnetosphere, leading to tissue deterioration, increased risk of cancer, acute radiation sickness, and other undesirable health effects. While spacecraft can shield astronauts from non-ionizing radiation, ionizing radiation—the kind with enough energy to break an electron away from its atom—punches through most protective material.

A fairly simple substance could be the secret to protecting astronauts from harmful rays. Researchers at Belgium's Ghent University have developed a water-based gel that deflects ionizing radiation, protecting the material (or skin) beneath from high-energy particles. Though the hydrogel hasn't yet been outside of Earth, it offers a promising path toward safer space travel.

https://www.extremetech.com/science/3d- ... n-exposure

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eufyMake E1: the world's first personal 3D-Texture UV printer
By Joe Salas
May 10, 2025

https://newatlas.com/consumer-tech/eufy ... v-printer/
So this is a weird but ridiculously cool one. Anker Innovations – a well-known worldwide brand with a solid reputation in power banks, chargers, and cables – has a sub-brand called Eufy – and it's built the very first desktop-sized 3D texture printer for home projects.

This isn't a typical 3D printer where you load up some PLA and fire out enough 3DBenchys to fill a bathtub. No, the EufyMake E1 uses Amass3D technology to take your flat drawings or pictures or whatever your creative mind desires to print layers of ink into tactile textures up to 5mm thick on over 300 materials, including wood, glass, metal, leather, acrylic ... the list goes on.

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Gadget brands: Follow Philips' lead and let us 3D print our own spares
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
May 19, 2025

https://newatlas.com/consumer-tech/phil ... are-parts/
I've lost count of the number of things I use around the house that I've replaced, simply because I lost or broke a small piece of them. They were otherwise perfectly usable and could easily be kept around for years more if I could just find a spare part – like the handle for my manual food processor, the nose pads for my eyeglasses, and the trigger buttons on my game controller.

I also recently had to get a new trimmer because I lost the length guide – the comb-like attachment that slots in atop the blade that keeps me from trimming my beard too short. As it turns out, Philips just came up with a solution for that: free 3D-printing files to print my own spare parts for trimmers!

The company is teaming up with Prusa Research, a Czech firm that makes 3D printers, to create these files that anyone can download. There are just a few parts for trimmers available right now and in the pipeline, and Philips says it's currently piloting this in the Czech Republic before expanding the program to other countries – but you can also access the files on Printables from elsewhere in the world.

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Robot is 3D-printed upside-down in one piece, then walks out of the printer
By Ben Coxworth
May 28, 2025

https://newatlas.com/robotics/3d-printe ... bot-walks/
While there are many potential uses for soft-bodied robots, the things are still typically only built in small experimental batches. Scottish scientists are out to change that, with a mass-production-capable soft bot that is 3D-printed in a single piece which then walks off of the print bed.

Before we go any further, this isn't the first time we've heard about a soft robot that was printed in one piece.

It was just this March that we told you about a hexapod bot created at UC San Diego, which was 3D-printed in one continuous 58-hour step. That robot was powered not by a motor but by compressed air, which sequentially moves its legs forward.

The new quadruped robot, designed by scientists at The University of Edinburgh, is likewise air-driven.

Unlike the UC San Diego bot, however, it "only" takes nine hours to print. What's more, whereas the San Diego robot was made using a US$1,000 printer, the Edinburgh bot is made by a ~$500 open-source platform called the Flex Printer, which is constructed from off-the-shelf components.

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Novel 3D printing tech gets two solid materials out of a single resin
By Ben Coxworth
June 04, 2025

While 3D printing is indeed a burgeoning technology, it's limited by the fact that items can typically only be printed from a single material. A new system still uses just one print resin, but that substance can form into two different solid materials as needed.

When most of us think of 3D printing, we picture a technique known as fused deposition modeling (FDM). In a nutshell, FDM printers produce objects via a nozzle that moves back and forth over a print bed, depositing a filament of molten thermoplastic in successive layers.

When speed and/or fine detailing are particularly important, however, a process called vat photopolymerization (VP) may be used instead.

It involves shining focused patterns of light through the transparent sides of a vat of photosensitive resin. Doing so causes select areas of the resin within to polymerize into layers of solid material. The finished solid item is raised out of the vat, leaving the rest of the still-liquid resin behind.

https://newatlas.com/3d-printing/3d-pri ... one-resin/

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Scientists Use 3D Printed Steel to Repair Corroded Bridge
The technology is already used to extend the lives of planes, ships, and submarines.
By Adrianna Nine June 25, 2025

Hundreds of thousands of bridges are deteriorating across the United States, and only some of them will benefit from conventional repair methods. In an effort to bolster bridge safety and avoid critical disruptions to transportation, scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and MIT are collaborating with state and federal government agencies to try something new: 3D printed steel reinforcements.

The technology involves using compressed gas to heat tiny, spherical particles of 316L stainless steel, which, thanks to its limited carbon, is particularly corrosion-resistant. Using an applicator, a technician sprays the heated steel particles at a compromised beam. Layer by layer, the steel creates a coat over the cracked or corroded beam, lending it strength.

https://www.extremetech.com/science/sci ... ded-bridge