Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers at the Professorship of Electrical Energy Conversion Systems and Drives at Chemnitz University of Technology have succeeded for the first time in 3D printing housings for power electronic components that are used, for example, to control electrical machines. During the printing process, silicon carbide chips are positioned at a designated point on the housing.

As with the printed motor made of iron, copper and ceramics, which the professorship first presented at the Hannover Messe in 2018, ceramic and metallic pastes are also used in the 3D printing of housings. “These are sintered after the printing process, together—and this is what makes them special—with the imprinted chip,” says Prof. Dr. Ralf Werner, head of the Professorship of Electrical Energy Conversion Systems and Drives. Ceramic is used as an insulating material and copper is used for contacting the gate, drain and source areas of the field-effect transistors. “Contacting the gate area, which normally has an edge length of less than one millimeter, was particularly challenging,” adds Prof. Dr. Thomas Basler, head of the Professorship of Power Electronics, whose team supported the project with initial functional tests on prototypes.

Following the ceramic-insulated coils printed at Chemnitz University of Technology, which were presented at the Hannover Messe in 2017, and the printed motor, drive components that can withstand temperatures above 300 °C are now also available. “The desire for more temperature-resistant power electronics was obvious, because the housings for power electronic components are traditionally installed as close as possible to the engine and should therefore have an equally high temperature resistance,” says Prof. Werner.

Extrusion-based 3D printing/bioprinting is a promising approach to generating patient-specific, tissue-engineered grafts. However, a major challenge in extrusion-based 3D printing and bioprinting is that most currently used materials lack the versatility to be used in a wide range of applications.

New nanotechnology has been developed by a team of researchers from Texas A&M University that leverages colloidal interactions of nanoparticles to print complex geometries that can mimic tissue and organ structure. The team, led by Dr. Akhilesh Gaharwar, associate professor and Presidential Impact Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, has introduced colloidal solutions of 2D nanosilicates as a platform technology to print complex structures.

2D nanosilicates are disc-shaped inorganic nanoparticles 20 to 50 nanometers in diameter and 1 to 2 nanometers in thickness. These nanosilicates form a “house-of-cards” structure above a certain concentration in water, known as a colloidal solution.

Chopping down trees and processing the wood isn’t the most efficient or environmentally friendly way to make furniture or building materials. Scientists at MIT have now made breakthroughs in a process that could one day let us 3D print and grow wood directly into the shape of furniture and other objects.

Wood may be a renewable resource, but we’re using it up much faster than we’re replenishing it. Deforestation is having a drastic impact on wildlife and exacerbating the effects of climate change. Since our appetite for wooden products isn’t likely to change, our methods for obtaining it will have to.

In recent years, researchers have turned to growing wood in the lab. Not trees – just the wood itself, not unlike the ongoing work into cultivating animal cells for lab-grown meat, rather than raising live animals and slaughtering them. And now, a team of MIT scientists has demonstrated a new technique that can grow wood-like plant material in the lab, allowing for easy tuning of properties like weight and strength as needed.

By combining two distinct approaches into an integrated workflow, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) researchers have developed a novel automated process for designing and fabricating customized soft robots. Their method, published in Advanced Materials Technologies, can be applied to other kinds of soft robots—allowing their mechanical properties to be tailored in an accessible manner.

Though robots are often depicted as stiff, metallic structures, an emerging class of pliable machines known as soft robots is rapidly gaining traction. Inspired by the flexible forms of living organisms, soft robots have wide applications in sensing, movement, object grasping and manipulation, among others. Yet, such robots are still mostly fabricated through manual casting techniques—limiting the complexity and geometries that can be achieved.

“Most fabrication approaches are predominantly manual due to a lack of standard tools,” said SUTD Assistant Professor Pablo Valdivia y Alvarado, who led the study. “But 3D printing or additive manufacturing is slowly coming into play as it facilitates repeatability and allows more complex designs—improving quality and performance.”

Advance shows promise for “meta-bots” designed to deliver drugs or aid rescue missions.

UCLA engineers developed a 3D printing technique to build robots in a single step. Made of piezoelectric metamaterials, the robots can walk, maneuver and jump.

Facing shortages on the battlefield, Ukrainian soldiers get supplies they need to survive the war from 3D printers across the world.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an upcycling approach that adds value to discarded plastics for reuse in additive manufacturing, or 3D printing. The readily adoptable, scalable method introduces a closed-loop strategy that could globally reduce plastic waste and cut carbon emissions tied to plastic production.

Results published in Science Advances detail the simple process for upcycling a commodity plastic into a more robust material compatible with industry 3D-printing methods.

The team upgraded acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS, a popular thermoplastic found in everyday objects ranging from auto parts to tennis balls to LEGO blocks. ABS is a popular feedstock for fused filament fabrication, or FFF, one of the most widely used 3D-printing methods. The upcycled version boasts enhanced strength, toughness and chemical resistance, making it attractive for FFF to meet new and higher performance applications not achievable with standard ABS.

3D printing can deliver massive savings in time taken to build the house exteriors, shaving off weeks from the process.