3D printing tagged posts

In the quest to develop life-like materials to replace and repair human body parts, scientists face a formidable challenge: Real tissues are often both strong and stretchable and vary in shape and size.

A CU Boulder-led team, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, has taken a critical step toward cracking that code. They’ve developed a new way to 3D print material that is at once elastic enough to withstand a heart’s persistent beating, tough enough to endure the crushing load placed on joints, and easily shapable to fit a patient’s unique defects.

Better yet, it sticks easily to wet tissue.

Their breakthrough, described in the Aug...

Researchers report that they have developed a new composite material designed to change behaviors depending on temperature in order to perform specific tasks. These materials are poised to be part of the next generation of autonomous robotics that will interact with the environment.

The new study conducted by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign civil and environmental engineering professor Shelly Zhang and graduate student Weichen Li, in collaboration with professor Tian Chen and graduate student Yue Wang from the University of Houston, uses computer algorith...

A method to convert a commonly thrown-away plastic to a resin used in 3Dprinting could allow for making better use of plastic waste.

A team of Washington State University researchers developed a simple and efficient way to convert polylactic acid (PLA), a bio-based plastic used in products such as filament, plastic silverware and food packaging to a high-quality resin.

“We found a way to immediately turn this into something that’s stronger and better, and we hope that will provide people the incentive to upcycle this stuff instead of just toss it away,” said Yu-Chung Chang, a postdoctoral researcher in the WSU School of Mechanical and Mat...

Wooden objects are usually made by sawing, carving, bending or pressing. That’s so old school! Today, scientists will describe how flat wooden shapes extruded by a 3D printer can be programmed to self-morph into complex 3D shapes. In the future, this technique could be used to make furniture or other wooden products that could be shipped flat to a destination and then dried to form the desired final shape.

The researchers will present their results at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

In nature, plants and some animals can alter their own shapes or textures...