Another First For 3D Printing – Woman Receives Jaw Implant. With 3D printing, doctors can now create better bone implants at less cost than with conventional implants. An 83-year-old woman suffering from a lower jaw infection became the first person to receive a jaw implant manufactured with a 3D printer. Infections such as hers are normally remedied with reconstructive surgery, but doctor’s deemed the procedure too risky because of her age and health. Instead they turned to LayerWise, a company that specializes in 3D printing of metallic structures. Titanium powder was melted with a high-precision laser into layers guided by a computer model of the jaw. The computer model was digitally divided into 2D layers and printed at 33 layers per millimeter. The 3D printing made it possible to create an implant that just as intricate as the real thing.
The implant is treated with a bioceramic coating prior to implantation. The structures that can be produced by the layer-by-layer materialization of 3D printing are practically limitless. Printed revolution coming to electronics technology. For decades, digital technology has been synonymous with silicon. But maybe for not much longer. The age of printed electronics may soon be upon us. Following years of hype and development, technologies that allow chips and other electronic components to be made using techniques akin to inkjet printing -- rather than by lithography or other standard methods -- may finally be reaching maturity.Manufacturers using these techniques already have in the works low-cost digital sensors, price placards and memory chips.
Such printed electronics could soon be found in newly interactive versions of traditional board games, and could be used to offer special promotions to particular customers in a supermarket or to ensure that a box of bananas hasn't been exposed to the sun for too long in transit. " The advantages of printed electronics have been touted for years. (Thinfilm/Courtesy) But maybe not for long, he and other industry experts say.
One potential market could be in shipping. 'Gadget printer' promises industrial revolution - 08 January 2003. The idea of printing a light bulb may seem bizarre, but US engineers are now developing an ink-jet printing technology to do just that. The research at the University of California in Berkeley will allow fully assembled electric and electronic gadgets to be printed in one go. The idea was revealed at a December workshop on robotic algorithms in Nice. Instead of creating a casing and then laboriously filling it with electronic circuit boards, components and switches, the plan is to print a complete and fully assembled device. The trick is to print layer upon layer of conducting and semiconducting polymers in such a way that the circuitry the device requires is built up as part of the bodywork.
When the technique is perfected, devices such as light bulbs, radios, remote controls, mobile phones and toys will be spat out as individual fully functional systems without expensive and labour-intensive production on an assembly line. Electroactive polymers "Flexonics" But there is a downside. Bend me, shape me: flexible electronics perform under punishing conditions. Who doesn't want thin and lightweight electronic devices? From flexible computer displays to printable solar cells to medical equipment, the possibilities are myriad. However, testing the durability of nanoscale electronics under strain—twisting, bending, folding, etc. —provides a challenge. The substrate (the layer upon which electronic components are assembled) and the electronics must endure stresses, meaning the entire device needs to perform adequately under the same adverse conditions. Sungjun Park et al. constructed single-molecule thick electronic components on a flexible substrate.
By testing the charge-transport properties under a variety of stresses and repetitive bending, they determined that their devices maintain stability, even after more than 1000 bending and straightening cycles. The researchers' work builds on previous efforts in molecular electronics, including prior work by the same group involving transistors on a rigid substrate. 3-D Printer with Nano-Precision. Printing three-dimensional objects with incredibly fine details is now possible using "two-photon lithography. " With this technology, tiny structures on a nanometer scale can be fabricated. Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have now made a major breakthrough in speeding up this printing technique: The high-precision-3D-printer at TU Vienna is orders of magnitude faster than similar devices. This opens up completely new areas of application, such as in medicine.
Setting a New World Record The 3D printer uses a liquid resin, which is hardened at precisely the correct spots by a focused laser beam. The focal point of the laser beam is guided through the resin by movable mirrors and leaves behind a hardened line of solid polymer, just a few hundred nanometers wide. This amazing progress was made possible by combining several new ideas. Photoactive Molecules Harden the Resin Video: 3D Printing Is The Future Of Manufacturing And Neri Oxman Shows How Beautiful It Can Be. Neri Oxman's piece Monocoque 2 uses a 3D printing technique that allows parts to be made from multiple materials in a single build. To be on forefront of a cutting edge field like 3D printing, the skill set required is pretty stacked. You need to be a designer, engineer, researcher, innovator, and technologist. You should be a good public speaker to present new discoveries to others. And it doesn’t hurt to be a professor at MIT. Neri Oxman fits the bill, and her creations are demonstrating the powerful combination of 3D printing and new design algorithms inspired from nature.
Trained as an architect, Oxman is currently an assistant professor of media arts and science at the MIT Media lab. In 2009, she was named by Fast Company as one of the “100 Most Creative People” and made ICON’s list of the top 20 most influential architects to shape the future. At this early stage in its development, 3D printing is being used mostly to generate replicas of natural and man-made structures.
2012 a Big Year for MakerBot New 3D Printer, $Millions in Funding, and Huge Growth Ahead. The Replicator is MakerBot's latest, greatest desktop device with two color printing, 5 liters of printing volume, and a price tag ($1999) that may make it ideal for the classroom. Three years ago they had three employees and were still trying to keep their equipment from breaking down. Now MakerBot employs 75, has millions in funding, and 7500+ of their printers in use. The Brooklyn-based company is the epitome of a successful tech startup, all the more remarkable because their devices are completely open source hardware – free for anyone to build or modify on their own.
MakerBot hopes to continue their phenomenal growth of the past few years by starting off 2012 with a bang. They’ve just released the Replicator, a bigger and badder 3D printing bot that can produce almost anything out of hard plastic up to the size of about a loaf of bread. There are many different 3D printing companies out there. What else is in store for MakerBot in the future?
Can 3D Printing Make Everything We Need? This article titled “Is 3D printing the key to Utopia?” Was written by John Naughton, for The Observer on Saturday 12th May 2012 23.05 UTC You know the problem: the dishwasher that has cleaned your dishes faithfully for 15 years suddenly stops working. You call out a repairman who identifies the problem: the filter unit has finally given up the ghost.
“Ah,” you say, much relieved, “can you fit a new one?” At which point the chap shakes his head sorrowfully. Up until now, this story would have had a predictable ending in which you sorrowfully junked your trusty dishwasher and bought a new one. Eh? It works like this: a designer uses computer-assisted design software to create a three-dimensional model of an object.
What comes irresistibly to mind the first time one sees a 3D printer in action is Arthur C Clarke’s famous observation that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Why? Quite so. The House You Download To Your Desktop. Will 3D printing revolutionise the way we eat? It has been hailed as the gateway to a new industrial revolution and as Tariq Tahir finds out, 3D printing could have just as big an impact in our homes. It is Christmas Day in 2032 and after turkey with all the trimmings, a family settles down to hear King Charles III’s speech to the nation. The sound of a gentle whirring of a 3D printer can just be heard above granddad’s snoring.But rather than paper coming out of the machine, delicious chocolates are being made to keep our family happy as they sink into the sofa.The chocolates are just one example of the printer’s capabilities. Presents strewn across the living room floor have also been printed.
It might sound improbable but the technology to create this Christmas Day scenario already exists.3D printing is similar to the conventional kind but instead of ink coming from the nozzle, the thing you want to build an object with emerges layer upon layer. At £1,330, the Replicator is one of the cheapest devices on the market. Print your own car | Guardian Sustainable Business. Often it's the most unlikely developments that change the world. The invention of the printing press may have turned things upside down in the 15th century, but who'd have thought that a printer could still hold the potential to revolutionise the way we live? Or at least the way we develop, make and buy material products and how this impacts the environment.
Manufacturers still aim to make as many units of one product as possible to enable economies of scale. However, this form of production produces waste throughout the entire process, even to the point where the consumer ceases to value a mass-produced item and throws it away before the end of its natural life. New developments in 3D printing could change the way we look at the scale of production. 3D printing isn't new.
The technology is sophisticated enough to turn digital prototypes into physical models. This promises a new wave of design and customisation fuelled by our personal taste and imagination. You wouldn’t download a car… or would you? I recently came across an interesting blog post which states that the Pirate Bay (by the way, if you support the kind of thinking behind SOPA you shouldn’t click on that link, it takes you to a site that encourages copyright infringement) has created a new download category — ‘Physibles’. According to the Pirate Bay, physibles are digital objects that can be converted into tangible physical objects.
Huh? It took me a few seconds to work out what the hell these guys were talking about, but it’s not that complicated. You see, most of the design work that people do in CAD software is ultimately destined to be constructed in the form of tangible products. With 3D Printers and Scanners suddenly coming of age, the Pirate Bay has decided that in the very near future everyone will be buying everything they need in digital format. The blog post boldly says, “We believe that in the nearby future you will print spare parts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years.”