3D Printing News & Discussions

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wjfox
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3D printed guns: Warnings over growing threat of 3D firearms

1 day ago

Last month police said they made one of the largest seizures of 3D printed firearm components in the UK.

Officers from the Metropolitan Police's Specialist Crime Command had discovered what they alleged was a "suspected makeshift 3D firearms factory" at a home in London on 7 October.

Officers said it demonstrated how "the emerging threat of 3D firearms continues to evolve".

The discovery comes as some experts also warn of a growing threat.

Early versions of 3D printed guns were unreliable, single-shot weapons. Now the National Crime Agency (NCA) tells the BBC the guns are "credible and viable".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63495123


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Major housing development to be 3D-printed

13th November 2022

Work has started on the first large-scale community of 3D-printed homes in the U.S., with reservations to be available in 2023.

Lennar, a leading homebuilder, is collaborating with ICON, a construction technologies company pioneering large-scale 3D printing. Together, they are developing 100 new homes at the master-planned community of Wolf Ranch, by Hillwood Communities, which is located north of Austin, Texas.

[...]

"For the first time in the history of the world, what we're witnessing here is a fleet of robots building an entire community of homes," said Jason Ballard, CEO and co-founder of ICON. "And not just any homes; homes that are better in every way ... better design, higher strength, higher energy performance and comfort, and increased resiliency. In the future, I believe robots and drones will build entire neighbourhoods, towns, and cities, and we'll look back at Lennar's Wolf Ranch community as the place where robotic construction at scale began. We still have a long way to go, but I believe this marks a very exciting and hopeful turn in the way we address housing issues in the world."

Read more: https://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/202 ... nology.htm


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New nanoscale 3D printing material could offer better structural protection for satellites, drones, and microelectronics
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-nanoscale ... rones.html
by Laura Castañón, Stanford University
Science fiction envisions rapid 3D printing processes that can quickly create new objects out of any number of materials. But in reality, 3D printing is still limited in the properties and types of materials that are available for use, especially when printing at very small scales.

Researchers at Stanford have developed a new material for printing at the nanoscale—creating structures that are a fraction of the width of a human hair—and used it to print minuscule lattices that are both strong and light. In a paper published in Science, the researchers demonstrated that the new material is able to absorb twice as much energy than other 3D-printed materials of a comparable density. In the future, their invention could be used to create better lightweight protection for fragile pieces of satellites, drones, and microelectronics.

"There's a lot of interest right now in designing different types of 3D structures for mechanical performance," says Wendy Gu, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and a corresponding author on the paper. "What we've done on top of that is develop a material that is really good at resisting forces, so it's not just the 3D structure, but also the material that provides very good protection."

Introducing metal nanoclusters

To design a better material for 3D printing, Gu and her colleagues incorporated metal nanoclusters—tiny clumps of atoms—into their printing medium. The researchers are printing with a method known as two-photon lithography, where the printing material is hardened through a chemical reaction initiated by laser light. They found that their nanoclusters were very good at jump-starting this reaction and resulted in a material that was a composite of the polymer printing medium and metal.
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3D Printing Market Data Q3 2022: Additive Manufacturing Markets Totaled $3.1B, Representing 20% Growth Year over Year
NEW YORK, NY – December 27, 2022 – Q3 2022 saw continuing year over year growth for the additive manufacturing market, coming in 20% higher compared to the same period in 2021 despite a rising number of entities reporting a challenging macroeconomic environment and changing customer behavior. The third quarter of 2022 was the fourth consecutive quarter that the total AM industry saw revenue exceeding $3B. SmarTech’s market totals include hardware, materials, software, and services.

Scott Dunham, SmarTech Analysis EVP Research, commented, “With the reported conditions in the market, the sequential growth in additive once again declined slightly on a quarter over quarter basis, but still Q3 2022 saw the largest industry activity level for a third quarter in history. We are being cautious about our outlook for AM going forward, but we are still seeing plenty of demand out there for additive technologies. It varies company to company and market to market, but on the whole SmarTech is still optimistic about the AM industry’s potential heading into 2023.”
https://www.smartechanalysis.com/report ... a-q3-2022/
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New research takes step towards laser printed medical electronics
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-laser-med ... onics.html
by Lancaster University

Researchers have taken a major step towards 3D laser-printed materials that could be used in surgical procedures to implant or repair medical devices.

A team of scientists, led by researchers at Lancaster University, has developed a method to 3D-print flexible electronics using the conducting polymer polypyrrole, and they have shown that it is possible to directly print these electrical structures on or in living organisms (roundworms).

Their findings are reported in the paper Creating 3D objects with integrated electronics via multiphoton fabrication in vitro and in vivo, which is published in Advanced Material Technologies.
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People Are 3D Printing Anti-Tank Rocket Launchers Now
https://www.vice.com/en/article/ak3wxa/ ... t-launcher
For those without a national defense budget or security clearance, a knockoff AT4 is poised to enter the market. Developed by hobbyist designers in Texas using a 3D-printer and other homemade parts, the weapon is not yet ready to take out a tank—or even a flimsy plywood target, as a recent test demonstration revealed. But the unveiling of the cloneable launcher and its powerful plastic rockets could have major implications for modern warfare, providing armies and insurgencies with easy access to cheap and disposable anti-armor weapons.

While untraceable “ghost guns” have stirred controversy and complicated efforts at gun control, advances in using 3D-printing technology to make heavier artillery have largely flown under the radar. Law enforcement documents obtained by VICE News show Mexican drug cartels are already developing their own improvised grenade launchers.
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Inverse design method used to improve porous surface texture of 3D printed objects
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-03-inv ... xture.html
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by Bob Yirka , Tech Xplore
A multi-institutional team of mechanical engineers and materials scientists has developed an inverse design method to improve the texture of porous surfaces on 3D printed structures. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes developing micrometer-sized triangles and ribbons to create a lattice upon which to build surface structures.

In the natural world, the arrangement of cells allows for the creation of unique porous surface structures—leaves, flowers and human skin all have a remarkable degree of surface variability with unique visible features and specific characteristics, such as repelling water. Recreating such features using technology as simple as a 3D printer has been impossible.
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Top 10 3-d printers on the market?

Here are the top 10 3D printers on the market as of April 2023:

Formlabs Form 3 - A resin-based 3D printer that delivers high-quality prints with a large build volume.

Ultimaker S5 - A versatile 3D printer that can handle a wide range of materials and has a large build volume.

Prusa i3 MK3S - A reliable and affordable 3D printer with a large community of users and an open-source design.

MakerBot Replicator+ - A popular desktop 3D printer that offers high-quality prints with ease of use.

LulzBot Mini 2 - A compact and reliable 3D printer that can handle a variety of materials and has a large build volume.

Raise3D Pro2 Plus - A large-format 3D printer that can print with a wide range of materials and has advanced features such as automatic bed leveling.

FlashForge Creator Pro - A versatile 3D printer that can print with a variety of materials and has a dual extruder system for multi-color or multi-material prints.

BCN3D Sigma R19 - A reliable and high-performance 3D printer that can handle a wide range of materials and has a large build volume.

Sindoh 3DWOX DP201 - A user-friendly and reliable 3D printer that has automated features such as filament loading and bed leveling.

Anycubic Photon Mono X - A resin-based 3D printer that offers high-resolution prints with a large build volume.

It's worth noting that the 3D printing market is constantly evolving, and new products may be released in the future that could compete with or surpass the ones listed here.
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Shell Wall tech claimed to reduce weight of concrete walls by over 70%
By Ben Coxworth


https://newatlas.com/3d-printing/shell- ... ete-walls/
April 03, 2023


3D concrete printing (3DCP) technology is already known to offer a more efficient approach to constructing buildings. A new type of 3DCP, however, is said to be even better, resulting in walls that are a claimed 72% lighter than their conventional counterparts.

At most 3DCP building sites, a robotically operated extruder nozzle moves in straight lines parallel to the ground, building up molds for walls one horizontal layer at a time. Once the hollow centers of those molds have been filled with rebar and more concrete, the walls are complete.

According to Dr. Mania Aghaei Meibodi and colleagues at the University of Michigan's DART Laboratory (Digital Architecture Research Technologies), such setups use more concrete than is necessary, plus they limit the architectural features of buildings to fairly simple shapes. That's where the university's Shell Wall system is intended to come in.
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3D-printed alloy 600 times as resistant to stress as existing alloys
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-3d-printe ... lloys.html
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org
A team of materials scientists from NASA working with a colleague from The Ohio State University and another from HX5 LLC has developed a 3D printing process that produces an alloy that is much more resistant to stress than others now in use. Their study is reported in Nature.

As scientists develop new ways to produce energy and explore space, a need has arisen for materials that can survive under extreme conditions—those used to make rocket nozzles, for example. To meet that need, materials scientists have been creating alloys that are ever more resistant to heat and other stressful elements. In this new effort, the research team took a big step forward by developing a 3D process to create an alloy that is much more resilient than anything created thus far.

Prior research has shown that adding ceramic to metal alloys gives them more resilience. Unfortunately, adding ceramic has proven to be problematic due to the difference in characteristics of metals and ceramics—the lighter ceramic bits tend to float to the top when added to molten metal. To overcome that problem, the researchers turned to 3D printing.
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