3D Printing

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has successfully tested a 3D printed specimen capsule in its High Flux Isotope Reactor. The capsule, known in the industry as a rabbit capsule, was designed and manufactured using a laser powder bed printer with stainless steel materials. This marks the first time an additively manufactured component of this type has been qualified for reactor use. Image Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory The specimen capsule underwent nearly a month of testing inside the High Flux Isotope Reactor, where it demonstrated its ability to withstand the reactor’s high neutron flux environment. These capsules play an essential role in nuclear fuels and materials research by containing experiments during irradiation testing. “This is a significant step toward demonstrating that additive manufacturing can be used to develop and qualify specialized components that cannot be conventionally machined,” said Richard Howard, group lead for irradiation engineering at ORNL. The technology offers…    read more 

A research team at the University of Strathclyde has developed a low-cost 3D printed microscope. The device, which can be assembled in under three hours, costs approximately $60 to produce and includes 3D printed clear plastic lenses. According to New Scientist, the team based their design on OpenFlexure‘s open-source microscope platform and incorporates a commercial camera, light source, and Raspberry Pi for control. Image Credit: OpenFlexure The microscope demonstrates cellular-level imaging capabilities, successfully examining blood and mouse kidney samples. This achievement is notable considering traditional lab-grade microscope lenses typically cost thousands of dollars. The complete system weighs approximately 6.6 pounds, making it portable for various applications. The cost reduction represents a significant advancement compared to existing alternatives. Current budget options, such as Gary Croft’s 2022 microscope camera setup, require additional components that push total costs above $390. The Strathclyde team’s version delivers similar functionality at less than a quarter of…    read more 

Last week we took a look at some promising research that utilized processed pineapple leaf fibers for the production of biocomposites. Bioplastics and biocomposite systems are great, and the research of such things should be lauded, especially if they make use of waste matter such as leaves, fruit skins or husks. So this week, let’s see how durian-based biocomposites compare. King of Fruits The durian is known as the King of Fruits. It is renowned for its shape, taste, texture and smell, which many find to be an acquired taste, putting it mildly. It’s very popular in Malaysia, and it is in this South East Asian peninsula where researchers from different institutes have been looking at different approaches for making durian into biocomposites. The durian husk consists 60.45% of cellulose, 13.09% of hemicellulose, and 15.45% of lignin, which are all useful bio-polymers, and so are useful as filler in biocomposites…    read more 

California-based rocket company Relativity Space has announced their new super-sized rocket printing robotic 3D printer system, dubbed the Stargate 4th generation. The new system is capable of printing objects up to 120ft long and 24ft wide at speeds of up to 12x faster than the previous systems. Yes, that means rockets! This one also differs from previous iterations in one notable way – it prints rockets horizontally. You can see the 4th gen Stargate in the image below. Stargate 4th gen. Faster, better, cheaper? (Image credit: Relativity Space) The new printer platform will support the scaled up production of Relativity Space’s Terran-R rocket, which is the company’s first fully reusable, 3D printed rocket, which will be capable of hoisting 20,000 tons into low Earth orbit (LEO). The new robotic printer achieves its higher print speed thanks in part to the new multi-wire print head into which multiple metal feedstock wires…    read more 

Accuracy and speed are often the big trade off especially when it comes to resin printers with their increasingly fine micron-level resolutions. Researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Heidelberg University, and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have published details on their successful demo of a method called lightsheet 3D microprinting, that maintains small voxel sizes while keeping a relatively high speed. According to the researchers, using light-sheet 3D printing technology, the print time per part has now come close to typical manufacturing times found in injection molding. The paper, titled “Light-sheet 3D microprinting via two-colour two-step absorption”, states that voxel volumes of less than 1 cubic micron are possible with non-linear optical systems in resin printing, but these often suffer from low printing speed or high cost. Typical linear optical systems (projection methods such as LCD) print in the 100 cubic micron voxel size region, and so while…    read more