3D printing tagged posts

Schematic representation of printer and ultrasonic manipulation rig. (a) Switchable laser module is attached to the print head carriage, and traces out the shape of the printed part. The laser can be deliberately defocused to cure large regions slowly by increasing the height of the laser module. (b) Focused laser beam cures resin within the cavity of the ultrasonic manipulation device. P = PMMA, W = Water, PZT = lead zirconate titanate transducers, R = spot-a low Viscosity photocurable resin. Cross sections of the bundles of fibres lying within traps are shown, and are separated by half a wavelength.

An engineering team has developed a new type of 3D printing that can print composite materials, which are used in many high performance products eg tennis rackets, golf clubs and airplane...

Conceptual design of the robot compared to a desert locust. Credit: Zaitsev, et al. ©2015 IOP Publishing Ltd

Researchers have built a locust-inspired robot that is just 5 inches long, 23 grams, but can jump 11 feet high and cover a horizontal distance of 4.5 ft. This jump height is more than twice the height of similar-sized jumping robots, and is 25X higher than its own length. The robot could have applications in search-and-rescue missions, reconnaissance, and environmental monitoring in rough terrain.

The team of researchers, Valentin Zaitsev, et al is from Tel Aviv University and Ort Braude College, Israel, which inspired the name of the robot: TAUB (Tel Aviv University and Braude College). “We demonstrate a design that is closer to nature,” Zaitsev...

Schematic representation of this research.

These cells – capable of generating all cell types in the body – could be used as the ‘Lego bricks’ to build tissue constructs, larger structures of tissues, and potentially even micro-organs. “It was really exciting to see that we could grow embryoid body in such a controlled manner,” explains Wei Sun. “The grown embryoid body is uniform and homogenous, and serves as a much better starting point for further tissue growth.”

The researchers, based at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA, used extrusion-based 3D printing to produce a grid-like 3D structure to grow embryoid body with cell viability and rapid self-renewal for 7 days while maintaining high pluripotentcy.

Images of the printed cellular model with...

Speaker that grows in a piece of furniture, the shape is generated by an algorithm to suit one’s physical space. Credit: Image courtesy of Umeå universitet

Thus more meaningful products can be made for people and more value for companies. In his research, Guido Hermans has investigated a way to open up design to the consumer and how to give this group an active role in the design of everyday products. “This role change implies a shift for the professional designer from knowing what a future user would like to have towards knowing what a layperson would like to design, which is for most designers an unfamiliar way of thinking,” says Guido Hermans.

The new form of lay design is enabled by 2 developments: On the one hand, the creation of variable designs by using computational design, and ...