#Additive manufacturing

[materialsscienceandengineering]

From roots to rugged circuits: Tree-inspired printing tech for flexible electronics

A printing technology, inspired by the resilience of tree root systems, is set to redefine the future of conformal electronics. This innovation addresses long-standing challenges related to the mechanical stability and resolution of circuits on irregular surfaces, particularly in smart robotics and advanced sensing systems. By improving both the durability and precision of electronic circuits, this new method promises to withstand extreme conditions—such as high temperatures and mechanical stress—thereby vastly expanding the potential applications and reliability of conformal electronics. Conformal electronics, which are crucial for applications like smart skins and robotics, have long struggled with significant mechanical and thermal vulnerabilities. Traditional printing methods often produce circuits that are prone to tearing, cracking, and other forms of damage, limiting their performance and dependability.

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[solarpunkbusiness]

Swiss researchers develop robotic additive manufacturing method that uses earth-based materials—and not cement

Researchers at ETH Zurich, a university in Switzerland, have developed a new robotic additive manufacturing method to help make the construction industry more sustainable. Unlike concrete 3D printing, the process does not require cement.

According to a press statement from ETH Zurich, the robotic printing process, called impact printing, uses cheap, abundant, and low-carbon earth-based materials such as clay or excavated earth. Currently, the robotic additive manufacturing method uses a mix of excavated materials, silt, and clay. Most of the custom material is common waste product sourced locally from Eberhard Unternehmungen, a Swiss construction company. In the future, the process could use other materials.

With ETH Zurich’s method, a robot deposits material from above, gradually building a wall. On impact, the pieces of material bond together, with minimal additives. Whereas concrete 3D printing creates layers, ETH Zurich’s method extrudes and drops the material one bit at a time at velocities of up to 10 meters per second. The fast speed allows the material to bond quickly.

ETH Zurich’s process can build full-scale, freeform structures, including one- or two-story walls and columns. The printing tool has been used to build structures as tall as almost 10 feet. The process results in walls with a bumpy texture, but robotic surface finishing methods can achieve a smoother finish.

The custom printing tool can be integrated with multiple robotic platforms. As a result, the tool can build walls in both offsite facilities and onsite construction projects. At ETH Zurich’s Robotic Fabrication Laboratory, the tool has been integrated with a high-payload gantry system. The hardware can be mounted on an autonomous legged excavator to build walls on sites with variable terrain.

ETH Zurich says it aims to increase the cost competitiveness of sustainable building materials through efficient and automated production.

[3dwithus]

Formnext is happening next week! 🌟 Curious about what to expect? Visit our Formnext Highlights Guide to warm up for the event.

[architecturalthesis]

scene setup

[materiallugy]

Additive manufacturing for aerospace part.

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[3dprinterchat]

3D printing with Ceramic slurries

Did you know that 3D printing is becoming more accessible and affordable? While printing in various plastics or resin is relatively easy and inexpensive, printing in other materials can be more complex. There are printers available for metals and even concrete, but they tend to be much more expensive compared to their plastic counterparts. However, ceramic, as a material for 3D printing, has…

[jcmarchi]

Scientists 3D Print Self-Heating Microfluidic Devices - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/scientists-3d-print-self-heating-microfluidic-devices-technology-org/

Scientists 3D Print Self-Heating Microfluidic Devices - Technology Org

The one-step fabrication process rapidly produces miniature chemical reactors that could be used to detect diseases or analyze substances.

MIT researchers have used 3D printing to produce self-heating microfluidic devices, demonstrating a technique which could someday be used to rapidly create cheap, yet accurate, tools to detect a host of diseases.

MIT researchers developed a fabrication process to produce self-heating microfluidic devices in one step using a multi-material 3D printer. Pictured is an example of one of the devices. Illustration by the researchers / MIT

Microfluidics, miniaturized machines that manipulate fluids and facilitate chemical reactions, can be used to detect disease in tiny samples of blood or fluids. At-home test kits for Covid-19, for example, incorporate a simple type of microfluidic.

But many microfluidic applications require chemical reactions that must be performed at specific temperatures.

These more complex microfluidic devices, which are typically manufactured in a clean room, are outfitted with heating elements made from gold or platinum using a complicated and expensive fabrication process that is difficult to scale up.

Instead, the MIT team used multimaterial 3D printing to create self-heating microfluidic devices with built-in heating elements, through a single, inexpensive manufacturing process. They generated devices that can heat fluid to a specific temperature as it flows through microscopic channels inside the tiny machine.

The self-heating microfluidic devices, such as the one shown, can be made rapidly and cheaply in large numbers, and could someday help clinicians in remote parts of the world detect diseases without the need for expensive lab equipment. Credits: Courtesy of the researchers / MIT

Their technique is customizable, so an engineer could create a microfluidic that heats fluid to a certain temperature or given heating profile within a specific area of the device. The low-cost fabrication process requires about $2 of materials to generate a ready-to-use microfluidic.

The process could be especially useful in creating self-heating microfluidics for remote regions of developing countries where clinicians may not have access to the expensive lab equipment required for many diagnostic procedures.

“Clean rooms in particular, where you would usually make these devices, are incredibly expensive to build and to run. But we can make very capable self-heating microfluidic devices using additive manufacturing, and they can be made a lot faster and cheaper than with these traditional methods. This is really a way to democratize this technology,” says Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, a principal scientist in MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) and senior author of a paper describing the fabrication technique.

He is joined on the paper by lead author Jorge Cañada Pérez-Sala, an electrical engineering and computer science graduate student. The research will be presented at the PowerMEMS Conference this month.

An insulator becomes conductive

This new fabrication process utilizes a technique called multimaterial extrusion 3D printing, in which several materials can be squirted through the printer’s many nozzles to build a device layer by layer. The process is monolithic, which means the entire device can be produced in one step on the 3D printer, without the need for any post-assembly.

To create self-heating microfluidics, the researchers used two materials — a biodegradable polymer known as polylactic acid (PLA) that is commonly used in 3D printing, and a modified version of PLA.

The modified PLA has mixed copper nanoparticles into the polymer, which converts this insulating material into an electrical conductor, Velásquez-García explains. When electrical current is fed into a resistor composed of this copper-doped PLA, energy is dissipated as heat.

“It is amazing when you think about it because the PLA material is a dielectric, but when you put in these nanoparticle impurities, it completely changes the physical properties. This is something we don’t fully understand yet, but it happens and it is repeatable,” he says.

Using a multimaterial 3D printer, the researchers fabricate a heating resistor from the copper-doped PLA and then print the microfluidic device, with microscopic channels through which fluid can flow, directly on top in one printing step. Because the components are made from the same base material, they have similar printing temperatures and are compatible.

Heat dissipated from the resistor will warm fluid flowing through the channels in the microfluidic.

In addition to the resistor and microfluidic, they use the printer to add a thin, continuous layer of PLA that is sandwiched between them. It is especially challenging to manufacture this layer because it must be thin enough so heat can transfer from the resistor to the microfluidic, but not so thin that fluid could leak into the resistor.

The resulting machine is about the size of a U.S. quarter and can be produced in a matter of minutes. Channels about 500 micrometers wide and 400 micrometers tall are threaded through the microfluidic to carry fluid and facilitate chemical reactions.

Importantly, the PLA material is translucent, so fluid in the device remains visible. Many processes rely on visualization or the use of light to infer what is happening during chemical reactions, Velásquez-García explains.

Customizable chemical reactors

The researchers used this one-step manufacturing process to generate a prototype that could heat fluid by 4 degrees Celsius as it flowed between the input and the output. This customizable technique could enable them to make devices which would heat fluids in certain patterns or along specific gradients.

“You can use these two materials to create chemical reactors that do exactly what you want. We can set up a particular heating profile while still having all the capabilities of the microfluidic,” he says.

However, one limitation comes from the fact that PLA can only be heated to about 50 degrees Celsius before it starts to degrade. Many chemical reactions, such as those used for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, require temperatures of 90 degrees or higher. And to precisely control the temperature of the device, researchers would need to integrate a third material that enables temperature sensing.

In addition to tackling these limitations in future work, Velásquez-García wants to print magnets directly into the microfluidic device. These magnets could enable chemical reactions that require particles to be sorted or aligned.

At the same time, he and his colleagues are exploring the use of other materials that could reach higher temperatures. They are also studying PLA to better understand why it becomes conductive when certain impurities are added to the polymer.

“If we can understand the mechanism that is related to the electrical conductivity of PLA, that would greatly enhance the capability of these devices, but it is going to be a lot harder to solve than some other engineering problems,” he adds.

“In Japanese culture, it’s often said that beauty lies in simplicity. This sentiment is echoed by the work of Cañada and Velasquez-Garcia. Their proposed monolithically 3D-printed microfluidic systems embody simplicity and beauty, offering a wide array of potential derivations and applications that we foresee in the future,” says Norihisa Miki, a professor of mechanical engineering at Keio University in Tokyo, who was not involved with this work.

“Being able to directly print microfluidic chips with fluidic channels and electrical features at the same time opens up very exiting applications when processing biological samples, such as to amplify biomarkers or to actuate and mix liquids. Also, due to the fact that PLA degrades over time, one can even think of implantable applications where the chips dissolve and resorb over time,” adds Niclas Roxhed, an associate professor at Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology, who was not involved with this study.

Written by Adam Zewe

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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[pampermama]

From 3D Printing to Bioprinting: The Future of Manufacturing

In recent years, the world of manufacturing has experienced significant transformations, with 3D printing and bioprinting technologies emerging as key drivers of change. These advanced manufacturing methods have the potential to revolutionize how products are created, impacting various industries and potentially reshaping the global supply chain. In this article, we will delve into the world of…

[engineering-courses]

📌 What You’ll Learn in This Video: ✅ What is slicing, and why is it necessary? ✅ Overview of slicing software and their key features 🔍 ✅ Understanding file formats like STL, G-Code, and OBJ 📂 ✅ How slicing software affects infill, supports, and print settings 🖨️ ✅ Optimizing your 3D print workflow for better results! 🔎

Whether you're a beginner or an expert, mastering slicing software is key to achieving precise, high-quality 3D prints!

Check out the previous episodes of this series here! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9-f9hWLZS63LJTwIbM8vLNNKblt05aHz

[rubylobo15]

Revolutionizing Industries with Additive Manufacturing and Metal 3D Printing Solutions

Discover how Additive Manufacturing, including Metal 3D Printing and Metal Additive Manufacturing, is transforming production with innovative, efficient, and scalable solutions.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Researchers at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering have used machine learning to design nano-architected materials that have the strength of carbon steel but the lightness of Styrofoam. In a new paper published in Advanced Materials, a team led by Professor Tobin Filleter describes how they made nanomaterials with properties that offer a conflicting combination of exceptional strength, light weight and customizability. The approach could benefit a wide range of industries, from automotive to aerospace. "Nano-architected materials combine high performance shapes, like making a bridge out of triangles, at nanoscale sizes, which takes advantage of the 'smaller is stronger' effect, to achieve some of the highest strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios, of any material," says Peter Serles, the first author of the new paper.

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[solarpunkbusiness]

Italian multinational group Legor is now using 3D technology to create jewelry and fashion accessories made from 100% precious metals from recycled sources, making progress toward its goals of enabling a circular economy.

[architecturalthesis]

Some photos from the printing process

[codeidetic]

alighted structures | stainless steel