3D Printing Research

Researchers from the US and Mexico are looking to better understand the rheological and printability characteristics of nutrient-rich 3D printed foods. While 3D printed food products do make for the occasional playful headline, they also have serious potential to provide target populations with the specific nutrients they need. As such, one of the more promising reasons to advance food additive manufacturing is the prospect of personalized nutrition. However, for individualized nutrition to cover a wide variety of needs based on a balanced diet, printing formulations composed of fruits, vegetables, grains, and perhaps even animal products are needed. Custom food formulations with complex multi-ingredient mixtures have proven difficult to 3D print with extrusion-based methods in the past. This can largely be attributed to a lack of understanding of how food behaves during the printing process, so there’s an ongoing need to delve deeper into the effects of rheology on the printability…    read more 

America Makes has announced three new project calls intended to boost the use of industrial 3D printing and provide a new method for supply chain companies to work directly with the Institute. Several actionable areas of focus are linked to each call, including materials data, process monitoring, and data management, as well as education and development of the workforce. America Makes is the leading public-private partnership focusing on 3D printing technology and education. America Makes’ members, drawn from academia, industry, government, and workforce and economic development agencies, are working together to speed up the use of additive manufacturing and the USA’s worldwide manufacturing competitiveness. “We are extremely excited about these project calls as they speak to the core of what America Makes does as an Institute – convenes, coordinates, and catalyzes the AM community,” said John Wilczynski, Executive Director of America Makes “We feel that now is a good time…    read more 

Korean 3D bioprinting specialist T&R Biofab has patented a way of creating human tissues that could one day be used to develop a heart disease treatment which doesn’t put patients through open surgery.  Utilizing T&R Biofab’s process, scientists have already proven it possible to create 100-micrometer cardiac spheroids, capable of regenerating damaged tissues upon transplantation. While the technology remains at a pre-clinical stage, the firm’s patent approval in Japan could now be significant, in that the only developer of something similar in the country, has reportedly licensed it out for $600 million.  Imaging showing cardiac fibrosis taking place in spheroid samples after 8 weeks. Image via T&R Biofab. Regenerative cardiac therapy According to CDC heart disease data, cardiac illnesses are the leading cause of death in men and women across most racial and ethnic groups in the US. As such, the development of robust cardiac therapies is a matter of…    read more 

A team of international researchers has turned towards mother nature in a bid to 3D print ceramic composite materials with bio-inspired toughening characteristics. Ceramics composites with damage-resistant properties are in high demand, as toughness is a key requirement in a wide variety of industrial applications. These materials also tend to offer combinations of chemical and mechanical stability, qualifying them for use in everything from automotive and aerospace to energy systems. Unfortunately, many of today’s conventional ceramic composite processing techniques, such as ice templating or freeze casting, are unable to create parts with complex and custom geometries, owing to limitations in mold manufacturing. The international team is now exploring how the protective structures found in mantis shrimps can be used in conjunction with digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing to create geometrically complex ceramic composite components. The mantis shrimp. Photo via Roy L. Caldwell, University of California, Berkeley. What’s so special…    read more 

A team of US researchers led by Virginia Tech has used 3D printing to create octopus-inspired adhesive suckers. Octopi, along with other members of the cephalopod class, rely on a combination of controllable adhesives and embedded sensing to stick to and manipulate objects underwater. Many of today’s synthetic adhesive-based manipulation systems tend to be human-operated without any sort of integrated sensing, which can result in relatively slow adhesion activation and release. The Virginia Tech research team has now developed its own nature-inspired nervous system capable of detecting objects and automatically switching on adhesion in a matter of milliseconds. Having implemented the 3D printing-enabled adhesive skin into a wearable glove, the scientists have created a novel approach to reliably manipulating objects in an underwater environment. The adhesion mechanism of the 3D printing-enabled sucker gloves. Image via Virginia Tech. Mother nature knows best To this day, effective and reversible adhesion to underwater…    read more