Three-dimensional printing allows for the production of highly detailed objects through a process known as additive manufacturing. Traditional, mold-injection methods to create models or parts have several limitations, the most important of which is a difficulty in making highly complex products in a timely, cost-effective manner.
However, gradual improvements in three-dimensional printing technology have resulted in both high-end and economy instruments that are now available for the facile production of customized models. These printers have the ability to extrude high-resolution objects with enough detail to accurately represent in vivo images generated from a preclinical X-ray CT scanner. With proper data collection, surface rendering, and stereolithographic editing, it is now possible and inexpensive to rapidly produce detailed skeletal and soft tissue structures from X-ray CT data. Even in the early stages of development, the anatomical models produced by three-dimensional printing appeal to both educators and researchers who can utilize the technology to improve visualization proficiency.
The real benefits of this method result from the tangible experience a researcher can have with data that cannot be adequately conveyed through a computer screen. The translation of pre-clinical 3D data to a physical object that is an exact copy of the test subject is a powerful tool for visualization and communication, especially for relating imaging research to students, or those in other fields. Here, we provide a detailed method for printing plastic models of bone and organ structures derived from X-ray CT scans utilizing an Albira X-ray CT system in conjunction with PMOD, ImageJ, Meshlab, Netfabb, and ReplicatorG software packages.
Researchers at Duke University have developed an invisibility cloak that can be made by an entry-level 3D printer.
Invisibility cloaks have been around in various forms since 2006, when the first cloak based on optical metamaterials was demonstrated. The design of cloaking devices has come a long way in the past seven years, as illustrated by a simple, yet highly effective, radar cloak developed by Duke University Professor Yaroslav Urzhumov, that can be made using a hobby-level 3D printer.
As envisioned by Harry Potter and DARPA, invisibility cloaks are an important new direction for camouflage technology. In contrast to conventional stealth technology, which concentrates on reducing the detection signature (radar cross section, heat signatures, optical detection, etc.) of an object, invisibility cloaks work by making it seem as if radar and light flows around the cloaked object. When successfully accomplished, neither the cloaked object nor the cloak will be detected.
How a cloak works can be illustrated by an analogy offered by Duke University Professor David Smith. Imagine a fabric in which the threads are optical fibers. As seen on the left of the image below, light will travel freely from one edge to the opposite edge of a piece of this fabric. If an opaque object is placed so that it blocks some of the light, it is equivalent to cutting a hole in the optical fiber fabric, as seen in the top right-hand image.
Scientists at Princeton University used off-the-shelf printing tools to create a functional ear that can 'hear' radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability.
Creating organs using 3D printers is a recent advance; several groups have reported using the technology for this purpose in the past few months. But this is the first time that researchers have demonstrated that 3D printing is a convenient strategy to interweave tissue with electronics.
The technique allowed the researchers to combine the antenna electronics with tissue within the highly complex topology of a human ear. The researchers used an ordinary 3D printer to combine a matrix of hydrogel and calf cells with silver nanoparticles that form an antenna. The calf cells later develop into cartilage.
Manu Mannoor, a graduate student in McAlpine's lab and the paper's lead author, said that additive manufacturing opens new ways to think about the integration of electronics with biological tissue and makes possible the creation of true bionic organs in form and function. He said that it may be possible to integrate sensors into a variety of biological tissues, for example, to monitor stress on a patient's knee meniscus.
David Gracias, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins and co-author on the publication, said that bridging the divide between biology and electronics represents a formidable challenge that needs to be overcome to enable the creation of smart prostheses and implants.
"Biological structures are soft and squishy, composed mostly of water and organic molecules, while conventional electronic devices are hard and dry, composed mainly of metals, semiconductors and inorganic dielectrics," he said. "The differences in physical and chemical properties between these two material classes could not be any more pronounced."
The finished ear consists of a coiled antenna inside a cartilage structure. Two wires lead from the base of the ear and wind around a helical "cochlea" – the part of the ear that senses sound – which can connect to electrodes. Although McAlpine cautions that further work and extensive testing would need to be done before the technology could be used on a patient, he said the ear in principle could be used to restore or enhance human hearing. He said electrical signals produced by the ear could be connected to a patient's nerve endings, similar to a hearing aid. The current system receives radio waves, but he said the research team plans to incorporate other materials, such as pressure-sensitive electronic sensors, to enable the ear to register acoustic sounds.
In addition to McAlpine, Verma, Mannoor and Gracias the research team includes: Winston Soboyejo, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton; Karen Malatesta, a faculty fellow in molecular biology at Princeton; Yong Lin Kong, a graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton; and Teena James, a graduate student in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Johns Hopkins.
If there ever was a major leap in the evolution of the 3D printer, the Voxeljet concept is the benchmark machine to follow. In the explosive arena of start-ups that produce innovative 3D-printers, voxeljet has decided to challenge and change the direction of how 3D printers work. Taking a look at three specific factors that set this process apart from others on the market, it becomes quite clear just how revolutionary this concept is.
• The ability to have a continuous supply of consumables delivered to the machines as it is making a model. This is made possible because the bed of consumables sits above where the models are actually made.
• The printhead sits in an area that it tilted at about a 35 degree angle with a printhead resolution of 600 DPI.
• The build size 800mm x 500mm x Infinity. As the model is being printed it sits on a conveyor belt that delivers the model out at the other end.
At a layer thickness of 150 to 400 microns, the resolution is decent when compared to others 3D printers but it is worth noting that this is still in the concept phase so there is the possibility to improve the layer thickness.
Continuous 3D-Printing Technology represents a new dimension in the manufacturing of moulds and models without tools. With its big advantages compared to conventional standard-3D-printers VX concept is a pioneer for a whole new generation of machines. The length of the moulds is virtually unlimited with this type of system as there is no restriction to the length of the belt conveyor. The usable build length is only limited by the manageability of the moulds. Furthermore, the tilt of the print level enables the print head to take far less time for positioning movements, which improves the print speed. Apart from the technological highlights, users will be pleased with the investment and operating costs because they are lower than those of conventional systems. With the continuous printing system, there is no need for a build container or separate unpacking station, which has a positive effect on the purchase costs. The printer also scores points with its high re-use rate for the unprinted particle material, which is returned straight to the build zone from the unpacking area. Consequently, the machine requires smaller filling quantities and incurs lower set-up costs.
The voxeljet adds a whole new possibility with the ability to produce a larger number of mass-customized products. The notion of using 3D printed models as the only source of fabrication for manufactured models is still too costly, but with the voxeljet, we approach the tipping point in that it allows for the best of both worlds. Additive manufacturing as a process has less waste as when compared to its subtractive counterpart. There is also no increase in cost when it comes to the complexity of geometry in additive manufacturing. Coupled with an extra long support bed out the other side, it becomes quite clear that a customized, on-demand future is just that much closer.
NASA engineers are using a 3D laser printing system to produce intricate metal parts such as rocket engine components for its next-generationSpace Launch System (SLS). The method called “selective laser melting “ (SLM) promises to streamline fabrication and significantly reduce production costs.
Rocket engines are as complex as precision watches, but watches don’t have to deal with highly corrosive or cryogenic liquids, gases hot enough to melt steel, or destructive stresses and vibrations.
Rocket engines have to do all this the first time they’re used and they have to fit a great deal of gear into a very cramped space. Fabricating the parts for these engines is an exacting, time consuming and expensive task. Since many of their components are very intricate, making them is just the sort of job for 3D printers.
Some of these principles already hold true today. Others will come true in the next decade or two (or three). By removing familiar, time-honored manufacturing constraints, 3D printing sets the stage for a cascade of downstream innovation. In the following chapters we explore how 3D printing technologies will change the ways we work, eat, heal, learn, create and play. Let's begin with a visit to the world of manufacturing and design, where 3D printing technologies ease the tyranny of economies of scale.
Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman are leading experts on 3D printing, frequently speaking and advising on this technology to industry, academia, and government. Lipson's lab at Cornell University has pioneered interdisciplinary research in 3D printing, product design, artificial intelligence, and smart materials. Kurman is a technology analyst and business strategy consultant who writes about game-changing technologies in lucid, engaging language.
Nanoscribe, a spin-off from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, has developed a tabletop 3D microprinter that can create complicated microstructures 100 times faster than is possible today. "If something took one hour to make, it now takes one minute," says Michael Thiel, chief scientific officer at Nanoscribe.
While 3D printing of toys, iPhone covers and jewelry continues to grab headlines, much of 3D printing's impact could be at a much smaller scale. Micrometer-scale printing has shown promise for making medical and electronic devices. Thiel says it should be possible to speed up his company's microprinting technique even more in the future. Nanoscribe plans to start selling its machine in the second half of this year.
Printing microstructures with features a few hundred nanometers in size could be useful for making heart stents, microneedles for painless shots, gecko adhesives, parts for microfluidics chips, and scaffolds for growing cells and tissue. Another important application could be in the electronics industry, where patterning nanoscale features on chips currently involves slow, expensive techniques. 3D printing would quickly and cheaply yield polymer templates that could be used to make metallic structures.
So far, 3D microprinting has been used only in research laboratories because it's pretty slow. In fact, many research labs around the world use Nanoscribe’s first-generation printer. The new, faster machine will also find commercial use. Thiel says numerous medical, life sciences, and nanotechnology companies are interested in the new machine. "I'm positive that with the faster throughput we get with this new tool, it might have an industrial breakthrough very soon," he says.
The technology behind most 3D microprinters is called two-photon polymerization. It involves focusing tiny, ultrashort pulses from a near-infrared laser on a light-sensitive material. The material polymerizes and solidifies at the focused spots. As the laser beam moves in three dimensions, it creates a 3D object.
Today's printers, including Nanoscribe's present system, keep the laser beam fixed and move the light-sensitive material along three axes using mechanical stages, which slows down printing. To speed up the process, Nanoscribe's new tool uses a tiny moving mirror to reflect the laser beam at different angles. Thiel says generating multiple light beams with a microlens array could make the process even faster.
The smallest features that can be created using the Nanoscribe printer measure about 30 nanometers, says Julia Greer, professor of materials science at the California Institute of Technology.
3-D printing is an important technology of the future as it see's promising abilities to create things like growing cells and tissue. something with such capabilities can have an infinite amount of uses and that will be expressed throughout the future with new ideas being found for the 3-D printing machines.
The future of urban runabouts will be ultra lightweight, electrically powered and 3D-printed... if Jim Kor has his way.
Picture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles.
If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo.
Urbee’s approach to maximum miles per gallon starts with lightweight construction – something that 3-D printing is particularly well suited for. The designers were able to focus more on the optimal automobile physics, rather than working to install a hyper efficient motor in a heavy steel-body automobile. As the Urbee shows, making a car with this technology has a slew of beneficial side effects.
Jim Kor is the engineering brains behind the Urbee. He’s designed tractors, buses, even commercial swimming pools. Between teaching classes, he heads Kor Ecologic, the firm responsible for the 3-D printed creation.
“We thought long and hard about doing a second one,” he says of the Urbee. “It’s been the right move.”
Kor and his team built the three-wheel, two-passenger vehicle at RedEye, an on-demand 3-D printing facility. The printers he uses create ABS plastic via Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). The printer sprays molten polymer to build the chassis layer by microscopic layer until it arrives at the complete object. The machines are so automated that the building process they perform is known as “lights out” construction, meaning Kor uploads the design for a bumper, walk away, shut off the lights and leaves. A few hundred hours later, he’s got a bumper. The whole car – which is about 10 feet long – takes about 2,500 hours.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, U.S. President Barack Obama noted that “Our first priority is making America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing. After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three.
“Caterpillar is bringing jobs back from Japan. Ford is bringing jobs back from Mexico. After locating plants in other countries like China, Intel is opening its most advanced plant right here at home. And this year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.
“There are things we can do, right now, to accelerate this trend. Last year, we created our first manufacturing innovation institute in Youngstown, Ohio. A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.
There’s no reason this can’t happen in other towns. So tonight, I’m announcing the launch of three more of these manufacturing hubs, where businesses will partner with the Departments of Defense and Energy to turn regions left behind by globalization into global centers of high-tech jobs. And I ask this Congress to help create a network of fifteen of these hubs and guarantee that the next revolution in manufacturing is Made in America.”
The tiny spaceship in the video above was built using a microscale 3-D printer. At 125 micrometers long, the craft is about the length of a dust mite, and it took less than 50 seconds to produce. The super-fast, high-resolution printer that made the spaceship was introduced this week at the Photonics West fair by Nanoscribe GmbH, a company based in Germany that specializes in nanophotonics and 3-D laser lithography.
The printer crafted the spaceship using two-photon polymerization, in which ultra-short laser pulses activate photosensitive building materials. Afterward, the ship — based on a Hellcat fighter from the Wing Commander Saga — was inspected using an electron microscope. While the spacecraft can’t fly, thereby limiting its usefulness for space exploration (unlike, say, 3-D printed astrofood), the technology’s other tiny productsinclude biological scaffolds, ultralight metamaterials, and channels that have found homes in biological research, photonics, and microfluidics.
Next step? We’d love to watch this thing launch into space, piloted by an army of microbes.
The behavior of cells strongly depends on their environment. If they are to be researched an manipulated, it is crucial to embed them in suitable surroundings. Aleksandr Ovsianikov is developing a laser system, which allows living cells to be incorporated into intricate taylor-made structures, similar to biological tissue, in which cells are surrounded by the extracellular matrix. This technology is particularly important for artificially growing biotissue, for finding new drugs or for stem cell research.
At first, the cells are suspended in a liquid, which mainly consists of water. Cell-friendly molecules are added, which react with light in a very special way: a focused laser beam breaks up double bonds at exactly the right places. A chemical chain reaction then causes the molecules to bond and create a polymer.
This reaction is only triggered when two laser photons are absorbed at the same time. Only within the focal point of the laser beam the density of photons is high enough for that. Material outside the focal point is not affected by the laser. “That is how we can define with unprecedented accuracy, at which points the molecules are supposed to bond and create a solid scaffold”, explains Ovsianikov.
Guiding the focus of the laser beam through the liquid, a solid structure is created, in which living cells are incorporated. The surplus molecules which are not polymerized are simply washed away afterwards. This way, a hydrogel structure can be built, similar to the extracellular matrix which surrounds our own cells in living tissue. Ideas from nature are imitated in the lab and used for technological applications. This approach, called ‘bio-mimetics’ plays an increasingly important role, especially in materials science. Aleksandr Ovsianikov is confident that in many cases, this technology will render animal testing unnecessary and yield much quicker and more significant results.
Stem cell research is a particularly interesting field of application for the new technology. “It is known that stem cells can turn into different kinds of tissue, depending on their environment”, says Aleksandr Ovsianikov. “On top of a hard surface, they tend to develop into bone cells, on a soft substrate they may turn into neurons.” In the laser-generated 3D structure the rigidity of the substrate can be tuned so that different types of tissue can be created.
In a few years, 3D printers will become a consumer electronics commodity. Today you can buy a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic, “the latest in cutting edge personal manufacturing technology,” for $2,500. You can plug it into your computer via USB, load up some freely-available 3D modeling software, and print stuff; it really is that simple. The only real barrier to mass adoption is the initial purchase price, and the printing material itself isn’t cheap either.
Both of these costs will tumble in coming years, however. Printing — or additive manufacturing — techniques will improve. 3D printers will speed up, and the choice of colors and finishes will expand. For now these magical printers are just the plaything of prototypers, inventors, and gadgeteers, but sooner rather than later they will find a place in the home. To begin with they will be attached to a family computer, but it’s safe to assume that wireless versions that can sit on the kitchen worktop won’t be far behind.
3D printing is increasingly permitting the direct digital manufacture (DDM) of a wide variety of plastic and metal items. While this in itself may trigger a manufacturing revolution, far more startling is the recent development of bioprinters. These artificially construct living tissue by outputting layer-upon-layer of living cells. Currently all bioprinters are experimental. However, in the future, bioprinters they could revolutionize medical practice as yet another element of the New Industrial Convergence.
Bioprinters may be constructed in various configurations. However, all bioprinters output cells from a bioprint head that moves left and right, back and forth, and up and down, in order to place the cells exactly where required. Over a period of several hours, this permits an organic object to be built up in a great many very thin layers.
Several experimental bioprinters have already been built. For example, in 2002 Professor Makoto Nakamura realized that the droplets of ink in a standard inkjet printer are about the same size as human cells. He therefore decided to adapt the technology, and by 2008 had created a working bioprinter that can print out biotubing similar to a blood vessel. In time, Professor Nakamura hopes to be able to print entire replacement human organs ready for transplant. You can learn more about this groundbreaking workhere or read this message from Professor Nakamura. The movie below shows in real-time the biofabrication of a section of biotubing using his modified inkjet technology.
Another bioprinting pioneer is Organovo. This company was set up by a research group lead by Professor Gabor Forgacs from the University of Missouri, and in March 2008 managed to bioprint functional blood vessels and cardiac tissue using cells obtained from a chicken. Their work relied on a prototype bioprinter with three print heads. The first two of these output cardiac and endothelial cells, while the third dispensed a collagen scaffold -- now termed 'bio-paper' -- to support the cells during printing.
Since 2008, Organovo has worked with a company called Invetech to create a commercial bioprinter called the NovoGen MMX. This is loaded with bioink spheroids that each contain an aggregate of tens of thousands of cells. To create its output, the NovoGen first lays down a single layer of a water-based bio-paper made from collagen, gelatin or other hydrogels. Bioink spheroids are then injected into this water-based material. As illustrated below, more layers are subsequently added to build up the final object. Amazingly, Nature then takes over and the bioink spheroids slowly fuse together. As this occurs, the biopaper dissolves away or is otherwise removed, thereby leaving a final bioprinted body part or tissue.
In more complex bioprinted materials, intricate capillaries and other internal structures also naturally form after printing has taken place. The process may sound almost magical. However, as Professor Forgacs explains, it is no different to the cells in an embryo knowing how to configure into complicated organs. Nature has been evolving this amazing capability for millions of years. Once in the right places, appropriate cell types somehow just know what to do.
this article discusses current research of bioprinting for regenerative scaffolds, bones and organs. It also discussed future prospects of bioprinting in cosmetic applications and in situ bioprinting.
A Japanese company, Pioneer, has unveiled a service that creates 3D holograms of unborn fetuses. Ultrasound photos - sooo old school from last century! Make way for hologram-babies. The service uses data gathered during a routine pregnancy checkup. The information from an echogram is used to create a 3D digital model of the baby on a computer. That digital model is then printed using Pioneer's compact hologram printer, first developed end of 2012. Within two hours, you have a stunning, but slightly creepy, multi-colored 3D image that lets you see your child from a range of angles.
Holograms are recordings of "light fields", the sum of the scattered light reflecting off a surface in a range of directions. (As opposed to an ordinary photograph, which captures only the light scattered in one direction). By capturing the light from a range of directions, the "light field", the hologram allows a 3D recreation of the original object. Creating a hologram from scratch is a straightforward but tricky process. (See our "How To" here). But the printer developed by Pioneer bypasses all of that, at least as far as you're concerned.
"Previously, holograms were produced by making a model of the subject, shining two lights on the model, and photographing it. That method involved a lot of work, because it required a darkroom, knowledge of techniques, and specialized equipment," said a spokesperson for Pioneer. "But with the device we've developed, even if you don't have the actual object, as long as you have a CG design, then that can be used to record a hologram easily."
Advances in holographic technology have seen holograms invade various areas of modern life. Researchers at Cambridge are investigating the security applications of holograms embedded in carbon nanotubes; it has been suggested that infrared holographic images could aid firefighters; and in 2012, Coachella festival in California featured a performance from a holographic Tupac -- though it wasn't a "hologram"in the strictest sense of the word.
NASA engineers are building the largest rocket ever constructed — one that will eventually take us beyond the moon — using 3D-printed materials.
Creating this rocket, called the Space Launch System (SLS), is a top priority at the agency because it has a big date: Obama wants to get humans to an asteroid and then on to Mars by the mid 2030s. To speed up the construction process, NASA is relying on a form of 3D printing to fabricate some of its engine parts virtually out of thin air.
The machine, called selective laser melting, uses a laser to build a component. Unlike traditional rocket building, which relies on welding together disparate parts, 3D printing starts with an empty table. That space fills up with a completed component, built one layer at a time, out of NASA's 3D-printing material of choice. What used to take weeks to build now only takes hours.
"We were looking at a way to save costs, be more efficient and reduce weight. That's how we got here," says NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr.
"The big thing about 3D printing is that there are no welds with seams, no places for stuff to leak in a component," he tells Mashable. "It starts from nothing and grows into what you want in one fell swoop."
Researchers have created networks of water droplets that mimic some properties of cells in biological tissues. Using a three-dimensional printer, a team at the University of Oxford, UK, assembled tiny water droplets into a jelly-like material that can flex like a muscle and transmit electric signals like chains of neurons. The work is published today in Science.
These networks, which can contain up to 35,000 droplets, could one day become a scaffold for making synthetic tissues or provide a model for organ functions, says co-author Gabriel Villar of Cambridge Consultants, a technology-transfer company in Cambridge, UK. “We want to see just how far we can push the mimicry of living tissue,” he says.
The network relies on each water droplet having a lipid coating, which forms when the droplets are in a finely-tuned mix of oil and a pure lipid.
The lipid molecules have a water-loving head, which sticks to the droplet's surface, and a water-fearing tail, which pokes out into the oily solution. When two lipid-coated droplets come together, each with its carpet of water-fearing tails, they stick to each other like Velcro, forming a lipid bilayer, similar to those in cell membranes. The bilayer creates a structural and functional connection between droplets.
Although previous studies have shown that lipid-coated droplets can form such connections, their watery composition and spherical shape made them tricky to assemble. “I already made a raft of droplets that stuck together,” says biomedical engineer David Needham of the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, who was not involved in the study. “But to print them is really an achievement.”
For the first time, scientists have printed human embryonic stem cells using a 3D printer.
Using stem cells as a form of ink, the Heriot-Watt University team led by Dr Will Wenmiao Shu think they will soon be able to print human tissue.
Bioengineer Alan Faulkner-Jones built the printer using parts from an old 3D printer. It uses a valve-based technique to deposit whole life cells onto a surface.
The team printed tiny droplets of bio ink, each containing up to five cells from an embryonic human kidney and an embryonic cell line.
Ninety-nine percent of cells tested were alive and viable for replication. "It's accurate enough to produce 3D micro-tissue." said Dr Shu.
"The printed cells can still maintain their potency, which is their ability to differentiate into any other cell types in our body."
That differentiation occurs when the stem cells are combined with nascent cells from specific organs, like the liver or lungs, which emit chemical signals to transform the stem cells into liver or lung tissue.
Dr Shu's team want to produce human liver tissue by 2015 and build individual organs with their stem cell printer soon after.
Steel beams are pretty uniformly strong, but they're all run of the mill, literally. If you start 3D-printing custom beams for the exact purpose they're intended to serve though, you've got a regular space-age material on your hands. It's lighter than steel and orders of magnitude stronger.
The process, developed byYong Mao of the University of Nottingham, UK and colleagues, isn't just the product of one innovation, but rather a whole bunch of them wrapped up into one bundle. First, you start out withF a hollow beam and you test it with the load it needs to bear. When it inevitably fails, you use some sophisticated software to analyze that sucker and 3D print an internal fractal structure to provide support, kind of like what's inside your bones.
Then lather, rinse, and repeat. With each iteration of ever-smaller fractal innards, the beam can gain strength by the order of magnitude, with practically negligible weight gain. Third generation beams, about as far as we can hope to go with current tech, are 10,000 times stronger than steel.
There is one big limitation to how strong you can get with this stuff however, and it all depends on printer fidelity. Since these sorts of beams are specifically designed, there's not much extra support to carry your load, so if the mesh isn't perfect, you could be in trouble. As 3D printers get better however, imperfections won't be a problem on the larger scales, and more and more iterations will be possible, making for structures that are both incredibly strong and incredibly light. Now if only they could figure out how to 3D print some new bones for us.
An engineer named Jim Kor is printing, as in building, a car. The Winnipeg, Manitoba, car visionary is responsible for the Urbee 2, being readied for the road, intended eventually as an about-town car, with three wheels, and built for two passengers. It looks like a big, shiny red bug cruising down the road. Interest grows in its means of production and implications for car manufacturing in the future.
If printing cars develop, conventional manufacturing plants might operate aside very small "cottage" plants deploying lights-out manufacturing. Kor's company, Kor Ecologic, is responsible for the Urbee 2, described as strong as steel yet lightweight. (The motto for the company is "Reasonable Design.") By using 3-D printing, there is a special focus on lightness but strength; he is creating large pieces with varied thicknesses. The Urbee's car body will be assembled from about 50 separate parts. The team's practice is to take small part from a big car and make them into single large pieces. The less pieces, the less car weight. The lighter the car, the more miles per gallon. The less spaces between parts and the Urbee becomes the more aerodynamic. The teardrop-shaped car has a curb weight of 1,200 pounds. The bumper, which is made in two pieces, required 300 hours to finish. The entire car takes about 2,500 hours.
The printing process to make the car is called Fused Deposition Modeling. (FDM), where one lays down thin layers (0.04 mm) of melted plastic filament. The FDM approach enables tight control by the designer, who is able to add thickness and rigidity to special sections. Kor likes to compare the fender of a future Urbee with a bird bone. As shown in a cross section of a bird bone, he said there is bone only where the bird needs strength, and the FDM process can replicate a bird bone.
Kor has been printing the body pieces at RedEye, a business unit of Stratasys, which uses 3-D printers to produce on-demand parts and prototypes. Kor Ecologic has drawn up specific design ideals that are applied to the Urbee car project..A few of them are highlighted here. "Use the least amount of energy possible for every kilometer traveled. Cause as little pollution as possible during manufacturing, operation and recycling of the car. Use materials available as close as possible to where the car is built. Use materials that can be recycled again and again….
Be simple to understand, build, and repair. Be as safe as possible to drive. Be affordable." Kor does not have a high-priced toy in mind but rather an economy car. He has received orders for 14 cars. Most of the orders are from those involved in designing the car. Kor is presently planning to make one car and to drive it, when it is ready, with a partner, from San Francisco to New York City. They hope to do it on ten gallons of gas; Kor would prefer to use pure ethanol. They will try to prove without argument that they did the drive with existing traffic.
With a big splash, the first 3D printed fully articulated gown was modeled and presented by the queen of burlesque Dita Von Teese to a crowd of über-cool fashonistas and paparazzi at the Ace Hotel in New York. The gown is based on the Fibonacci sequence and was designed by Michael Schmidt and 3D modeled by architect Francis Bitonti to be 3D printed in Nylon by Shapeways. The gown was assembled from 17 pieces, dyed black, lacquered and adorned with over 13,000 Swarovski crystals to create a sensual flowing form.
Thousands of unique components were 3D printed in a flowing mesh designed exactly to fit Dita's body. This represents the possibility to 3D print complex, customized fabric like garments designed exactly to meet a specific person or need. As we see the material properties of 3D printing mature to produce more fine, flexible materials we will see more and more forays into fashion such as this. At first it is at the boundaries of haute couture and art but as we have seen with Nike using 3D printing in footwear, we will see more and more 3D printing creep into the world of clothing and fashion until it becomes ubiquitous.
Cornell bioengineers and physicians have created an artificial ear - using 3-D printing and injectable molds - that looks and acts like a natural ear, giving new hope to thousands of children born with a congenital deformity called microtia.
Over a three-month period, these flexible ears grew cartilage to replace the collagen that was used to mold them. "This is such a win-win for both medicine and basic science, demonstrating what we can achieve when we work together," said co-lead author Lawrence Bonassar, associate professor of biomedical engineering.
The novel ear may be the solution reconstructive surgeons have long wished for to help children born with ear deformity, said co-lead author Dr. Jason Spector, director of the Laboratory for Bioregenerative Medicine and Surgery and associate professor of plastic surgery at Weill Cornell.
"A bioengineered ear replacement like this would also help individuals who have lost part or all of their external ear in an accident or from cancer," Spector said. Replacement ears are usually constructed with materials that have a Styrofoam-like consistency, or sometimes, surgeons build ears from a patient's harvested rib. This option is challenging and painful for children, and the ears rarely look completely natural or perform well, Spector said.
To make the ears, Bonassar and colleagues started with a digitized 3-D image of a human subject's ear and converted the image into a digitized "solid" ear using a 3-D printer to assemble a mold. They injected the mold with collagen derived from rat tails, and then added 250 million cartilage cells from the ears of cows. This Cornell-developed, high-density gel is similar to the consistency of Jell-O when the mold is removed. The collagen served as a scaffold upon which cartilage could grow.
The process is also fast, Bonassar added: "It takes half a day to design the mold, a day or so to print it, 30 minutes to inject the gel, and we can remove the ear 15 minutes later. We trim the ear and then let it culture for several days in nourishing cell culture media before it is implanted." The incidence of microtia, which is when the external ear is not fully developed, varies from almost 1 to more than 4 per 10,000 births each year. Many children born with microtia have an intact inner ear, but experience hearing loss due to the missing external structure.
With controversy swirling over gun-sale background checks, limiting the size of weapon magazines and retaining Second Amendment rights, the problem of making homemade guns with 3-D printers has become a matter of public concern.
Laws mean little if a determined criminal or a hobbyist teen wants to make plastic guns or extra-high capacity magazines, says Hod Lipson, Cornell University professor of engineering and a pioneer in 3-D printing.
"With a homemade 3-D printer, you can print a gun using ABS plastic, the same material that LEGOS are made out of. You can even use nylon, and that's pretty tough," he says. "You won't be able to make a sniper rifle with a 3-D printer and it won't shoot 10 rounds a second, but the gun you can make could be dangerous. And a high-capacity magazine is nothing more than a strong plastic box with a spring. It's trivial to print."
Lipson and co-author Melba Kurman just published a new book, "Fabricated: The promise and peril of a machine that can make (almost) anything." (Wiley, 2013.) The book includes a chapter on "3-D printing and the law," which addresses the legal and ethical challenges raised by 3-D printed firearms. The book also explores 3-D printing's impact on consumer safety, intellectual property, and ethics.
As Lipson and Kurman detail, three-dimensional printers are intended to do the world good. In industry, 3-D printers can make hard-to-find spare parts and complex new devices. Researchers are developing techniques to 3-D print tailored and personalized body parts like he
One day in the future, astronauts on a long-term deep-space mission might have the ability to use 3-D printers to make delicious, nutritious meals.
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Several decades from now, an astronaut in a Mars colony might feel a bit hungry. Rather than reach for a vacuum-sealed food packet or cook up some simple greenhouse vegetables in a tiny kitchen, the astronaut would visit a microwave-sized box, punch a few settings, and receive a delicious and nutritious meal tailored to his or her exact tastes.
This is the promise of the rapidly maturing field of 3-D food printing, an offshoot of the revolution that uses machines to build bespoke items out of metal, plastic, and even living cells. Sooner than you think, 3-D printed designer meals may be coming to a rocketship, or a restaurant, near you.
“Right now, astronauts on the space station are eating the same seven days of food on rotations of two or three weeks,” said astronautical engineer Michelle Terfansky, who studied the potential and challenges of making 3-D printed food in space for a master’s thesis at the University of Southern California. “It gets the job done, but it’s not exactly home cooking.”
A new 3D printing process using human stem cells could pave the way to custom replacement organs for patients, eliminating the need for organ donation and immune suppression, and solving the problem of transplant rejection.
The process, developed at Edinburgh-based Heriot-Watt University, in partnership with Roslin Cellab, could also speed up and improve the process of reliable, animal-free drug testing by growing three-dimensional human tissues and structures for pharmaceuticals to be tested on.
Mediante este pequeño artículo me gustaría destacar la importancia de las nuevas técnicas tecnológicas. Es una manera de ir sustituyendo poco a poco la experimentación animal en la ciencia. La técnica que aquí se describe es además sencilla y no produce riesgo alguno para la salud.
Organovo Holdings, Inc., a creator and manufacturer of functional, 3D human tissues for medical research and therapeutic applications, is working together with researchers at Autodesk, Inc., the leader in cloud-based design and engineering software, to create the first 3D design software for bioprinting.
The software, which will be used to control Organovo’s NovoGen MMX bioprinter, will represent a major step forward in usability and functionality for designing three-dimensional human tissues, and has the potential to open up bioprinting to a broader group of users, Oraganovo says.
“Autodesk is an excellent partner for Organovo in developing new software for 3D bioprinters,” said Keith Murphy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Organovo. “This relationship will lead to advances in bioprinting, including both greater flexibility and throughput internally, and the potential long-term ability for customers to design their own 3D tissues for production by Organovo.”
“Bioprinting has the potential to change the world,” said Jeff Kowalski, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Autodesk. “It’s a blend of engineering, biology and 3D printing, which makes it a natural for Autodesk. I think working with Organovo to explore and evolve this emerging field will yield some fascinating and radical advances in medical research.”
Organovo’s 3D bioprinting technology is used to create living human tissues that are three-dimensional, architecturally correct, and made entirely of living human cells. The resulting structures can function like native human tissues, and represent an opportunity for advancement in medical research, drug discovery and development, and in the future, surgical therapies and transplantation.
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