3D printers are just amazing but I wasn’t really interested in owning one in the future. However, after exploring this fashion exhibition, I thought it would be one of those things that I need in my life.
The program can print anything which fits you perfect, and I thought it would be great for those who have a lot of idea but never have learned sewing, like me. I always have wanted to make my own clothes as I wished by myself, and it seems like it might be happening in the future where you can create your own clothes all by yourself!!
Biological materials from bonetospider-silk and wood are lightweight fibre composites arranged in a complex hierarchical structure, formed by directed self-assembly to demonstrate outstanding mechanical properties. When such bioinspired stiff and lightweight materials are typically developed for applications in aircraft, automobiles and biomedical implants, their manufacture requires energy and labor-intensive fabrication processes. The manufactured materials also exhibit brittle fracture characteristics with difficulty to shapeandrecycle, in stark contrast to the mechanical properties of nature. Existing polymer-based lightweight structure fabrication is limited to 3-D printing, with poor mechanical strength and orientation, while highly oriented stiff polymers are restricted to construct simple geometries. In an effort to combine the freedom of structural shaping with molecular orientation, 3-D printing of liquid-crystal polymers was recently exploited. Although desirable shape-morphing effects were attained, the Young’s modulus of the soft elastomers were lower than high-performance liquid-crystal synthetic fibers due to their molecular structure.
To fully exploit the shaping freedom of 3-D printing and favorable mechanical properties of molecularly oriented liquid-crystal polymers (LCP), a team of scientists at the Department of Materials, ETH Zürich, proposed a novel approach. The strategy followed two design principles that are used in nature to form tough biological materials. Initially, anisotropy was achieved in the printing process via self-assembly of the LCP ink along the print path. Thereafter, complex-shaping capacity offered by the 3-D printing process was exploited to tailor the local stiffness and strength of the structure based on environmental loading conditions. In the study, Silvan Gantenbein and co-workers demonstrated an approach to generate 3-D lightweight, recyclable structures with hierarchical architecture and complex geometries for unprecedented stiffness and toughness. The results are now published in Nature.
The miniaturization of spectroscopic measurement devices opens novel information channels in medical science and consumer electronics. Scientists of the University of Stuttgart, Germany, developed a 3-D-printed miniature spectrometer with a volume of 100 by 100 by 300 μm3 and a spectral resolution of up to 10 nm in the visible range. This spectrometer can be manufactured directly onto camera sensors, and a parallel arrangement allows for quick (“snapshot”) and low-profile, highly customizable hyperspectral cameras.
Femtosecond direct-laser writing as a 3-D printing technology has been one of the key building blocks for miniaturization in recent years. It has transformed the field of complex micro-optics since the early 2000s. Medical engineering and consumer electronics benefit from these developments. It is now possible to create robust, monolithic and nearly perfectly aligned freeform optical systems on almost arbitrary substrates such as image sensors or optical fibers.
Simultaneously, the miniaturization of spectroscopic measurement devices has been advanced with quantum dot and nanowire technology. These are based on computational approaches, which have the drawback of being calibration-sensitive and require complex reconstruction algorithms.
Authored by Kenny Walter, Digital Reporter, R&D Magazine
Thanks to 3D printing, customers across the country can now order a customized loafer, sneaker or sandal designed specifically to fit their exact foot— and receive it in less than 24 hours.
Feetz, a San Diego-based company founded by Lucy and Nigel Beard, creates a shoe that is almost entirely printed, with approximately 90 percent of each shoe created with a 3D printer. The only part of the shoe that is not made from the 3D printer is the fabric lining, which is produced using traditional methods because 3D printers are currently unable to print fabrics.
A new form of 3-D-printed material made by combining commonly-used plastics with carbon nanotubes is tougher and lighter than similar forms of aluminium, scientists say.
The material could lead to the development of safer, lighter and more durable structures for use in the aerospace, automotive, renewables and marine industries.
In a new paper published in the journal Materials & Design, a team led by University of Glasgow engineers describe how they have developed a new plate-lattice cellular metamaterial capable of impressive resistance to impacts.
Metamaterials are a class of artificially-created cellular solids, designed and engineered to manifest properties which do not occur in the natural world.
Researchers in the labs of Christopher Bates, an assistant professor of materials at UC Santa Barbara, and Michael Chabinyc, a professor of materials and chair of the department, have teamed to develop the first 3-D-printable “bottlebrush” elastomer. The new material results in printed objects that have unusual softness and elasticity—mechanical properties that closely resemble those of human tissue.
Conventional elastomers, i.e. rubbers, are stiffer than many biological tissues. That’s due to the size and shape of their constituent polymers, which are long, linear molecules that easily entangle like cooked spaghetti. In contrast, bottlebrush polymers have additional polymers attached to the linear backbone, leading to a structure more akin to a bottle brush you might find in your kitchen. The bottlebrush polymer structure imparts the ability to form extremely soft elastomers.
The ability to 3-D-print bottlebrush elastomers makes it possible to leverage these unique mechanical properties in applications that require careful control over the dimensions of objects ranging from biomimetic tissue to high-sensitivity electronic devices, such as touch pads, sensors and actuators.
The speed of light has come to 3-D printing. Northwestern University engineers have developed a new method that uses light to improve 3-D printing speed and precision while also, in combination with a high-precision robot arm, providing the freedom to move, rotate or dilate each layer as the structure is being built.
Most conventional 3-D printing processes rely on replicating a digital design model that is sliced into layers with the layers printed and assembled upwards like a cake. The Northwestern method introduces the ability to manipulate the original design layer by layer and pivot the printing direction without recreating the model. This “on-the-fly” feature enables the printing of more complicated structures and significantly improves manufacturing flexibility.
“The 3-D printing process is no longer a way to merely make a replica of the designed model,” said Cheng Sun, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. “Now we have a dynamic process that uses light to assemble all the layers but with a high degree of freedom to move each layer along the way.”
NUST MISIS scientists have proposed a technology that can double the strength of composites obtained by 3-D printing from aluminum powder, and advance the characteristics of these products to the quality of titanium alloys: titanium’s strength is about six times higher than that of aluminum, but the density of titanium is 1.7 times higher.
The developed modifiers for 3-D printing can be used in products for the aerospace industry.
The developed modifying-precursors, based on nitrides and aluminum oxides and obtained through combustion, have become the basis of the new composite. The research results have been published in the highly rated scientific journal Sustainable Materials and Technologies.
Two decades ago, molding was considered the only cost-effective way to manufacture bulk products. Today, 3-D printers for metal are a worthy competitor to metallurgical methods. 3-D printers have a chance to replace traditional methods of metallurgical production in the future. Using additive technologies with 3-D printing creates a whole array of advantages, from creating more difficult forms and designs to the technology’s cheaper cost and theoretical edge.
You can now 3D print lithium-ion batteries in any shape.
Lithium-ion batteries are normally either cylindrical or rectangular shaped, which forces manufacturers to dedicate a certain size and place for the battery in its design. This way of making electronic devices such as laptops and mobile phones may cause a waste of both space and options to branch out with design.
InACS Applied Energy Materials, researchers present their method of 3D printing which can create the whole structural device, including the battery and with all the electronic components – in almost any shape.
Since the polymers used for printing, like poly(lactic acid) (PLA) are not ionic conductors, the researchers infused PLA with an electrolyte solution as well as adding graphene into the anode or cathode to boost the battery’s electrical conductivity.
Showing the capacity of the printed battery, the team printed a bracelet with an integrated battery. As of now, the battery could only power the green LED for approximately 60 seconds – making the battery circa two orders of magnitude lower than already commercially available batteries. Although this makes the battery capacity too low to use at the moment, the researchers have multiple ideas to fix the low capacity such as, replacing the PLA materials with 3D printable pastes.
Recipes for three-dimensional (3D) printing, or additive manufacturing, of parts have required as much guesswork as science. Until now.
Resins and other materials that react under light to form polymers, or long chains of molecules, are attractive for 3D printing of parts ranging from architectural models to functioning human organs. But it’s been a mystery what happens to the materials’ mechanical and flow properties during the curing process at the scale of a single voxel. A voxel is a 3D unit of volume, the equivalent of a pixel in a photo.
Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a novel light-based atomic force microscopy (AFM) technique – sample-coupled-resonance photorheology (SCRPR) – that measures how and where a material’s properties change in real time at the smallest scales during the curing process.
Spider silk has long been noted for its graceful structure, as well as its advanced material properties: Ounce for ounce, it is stronger than steel. Scientists at MIT have developed a systematic approach to research the structure of spider silk, blending computational modeling and mechanical…
One-dimensional nanomaterials with highly anisotropicoptoelectronic properties can be used within energy harvesting applications, flexible electronics and biomedical imaging devices. In materials science and nanotechnology, 3-D patterning methods can be used to precisely assemble nanowires with locally controlled composition and orientation to allow new optoelectronic device designs. In a recent report, Nanjia Zhou and an interdisciplinary research team at the Harvard University, Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Kavli Energy Nanoscience Institute developed and 3-D printed nanocomposite inks composed of brightly emitting colloidal cesium lead halide perovskite (CsPbX3, where X= Cl, Br, or I) nanowires.
They suspended the bright nanowires in a polystyrene-polyisoprene-polystyrene block copolymer matrix and defined the nanowire alignment using a programmed print path. The scientist produced optical nanocomposites that exhibited highly polarized absorption and emission properties. To highlight the versatility of the technique they produced several devices, including optical storage, encryption, sensing and full color displays. The work is now published on Science Advances.
Techniques could lead to personalized wearable and implantable devices
Hearing aids, dental crowns, and limb prosthetics are some of the medical devices that can now be digitally designed and customized for individual patients, thanks to 3-D printing. However, these devices are typically designed to replace or support bones and other rigid parts of the body, and are often printed from solid, relatively inflexible material.
Now MIT engineers have designed pliable, 3-D-printed mesh materials whose flexibility and toughness they can tune to emulate and support softer tissues such as muscles and tendons. They can tailor the intricate structures in each mesh, and they envision the tough yet stretchy fabric-like material being used as personalized, wearable supports, including ankle or knee braces, and even implantable devices, such as hernia meshes, that better match to a person’s body.
As a demonstration, the team printed a flexible mesh for use in an ankle brace. They tailored the mesh’s structure to prevent the ankle from turning inward – a common cause of injury – while allowing the joint to move freely in other directions. The researchers also fabricated a knee brace design that could conform to the knee even as it bends. And, they produced a glove with a 3-D-printed mesh sewn into its top surface, which conforms to a wearer’s knuckles, providing resistance against involuntary clenching that can occur following a stroke.
“This work is new in that it focuses on the mechanical properties and geometries required to support soft tissues,” says Sebastian Pattinson, who conducted the research as a postdoc at MIT.
Additive Manufacturing: Directed Energy Deposition
A type of metal additive manufacturing process, directed energy deposition (DED) uses either powders or wires to create finished parts. Unlike most other AM processes, DED is commonly used to repair components or add additional material, rather than simply create new parts.
Types of directed energy deposition, or other names for the process, include directed metal deposition (DMD), laser metal deposition (LMD), laser-engineered net shaping (LENS), and laser consolidation (LC).
DED uses a deposition head to feed either powder or wire into a laser (or electron) beam that melts the material, thereby building up the surface of the part. Because it is not melting material that has already been laid down (such as in powder bed fusion), DED can build on existing parts. Powders can also be mixed, utilizing different material properties. Using different, compatible materials can increase wear, corrosion, and oxidation resistance, one of the benefits of DED.
Limited in size only by the beam manipulation system, another benefit is that DED can produce relatively large parts, as shown in the top right image above: Sciaky (a US 3D printing company) can make 5-meter-large parts in a variety of different materials. Because of the method of deposition, there is also little to no waste involved. However, DED is also a relatively slow process, which takes much longer than other methods to produce parts.
This year’s latest Nobel Prize winners have been announced, as scientists and researchers across the world are recognised for their outstanding discoveries.
The winner for chemistry category went to 3 researchers for improving the resolution of optical microscopes. Eric Betzig, Stefan Hell and William Moerner used fluorescence to extend the limits of the light microscope.
While the Nobel Prize for Physics celebrated their success for the invention of blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) made in the early 1990s.
To find out more on material science, packaging and engineering news, visit our website IOM3 or follow us on Twitter @MaterialsWorld for regular news updates.
3D printer extraordinaire Jim Rodda, whom you might remember from his Open Source tabletop wargame Seej, is raising funds to begin a new project: he wants to create realistic, lavishly detailed 3D models of medieval armor made specifically for the Fashionista Barbie doll. Ken’d better watch himself, that’s for sure.
As you may or may not know, all of our 3D printing is done through Shapeways 3D printing service, located in Brooklyn NY. Shapeways has begun beta testing a new Etsy integration, which we will be setting up and testing out over the next few weeks.
What this means: Generally faster delivery times, and cheaper shipping. Non-poseable skeletons will now ship straight from the printers to customers. International orders should be much quicker to fulfill now, since they will be shipping from Shapeways’ Eindhoven Netherlands facility rather than the US.
Our “In a Can” line, 2D prints, other non-3D printed items, and Jewelry will be unaffected by this change, as they require post processing or are made in house, in the case of 2D prints.
Additionally, Etsy listings will now give the option to include or leave out the paperwork that generally ships with each model. Prices will be the same as they are now if the paperwork is included (paperwork will ship separately from the model), or $5 cheaper across the board if it isn’t included.
There shouldn’t be many other changes aside from where the models ship from, but if anyone has any question or concerns, our email address is [email protected]
TL;DR - Faster, cheaper order fulfillment and potentially cheaper skeletons going forward.
