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Category: 3D printing

Wind-powered robot could enable long-term exploration of hostile environments

Researchers at Cranfield University have created WANDER-bot, a low-cost, 3D-printed robot that is powered by wind energy. Designed to spend long durations in hostile, windy environments such as certain deserts, polar regions or even other planets, WANDER-bot doesn’t need a battery to power movement, enabling longer operations without having to pause and recharge.

Movement accounts for around 20% of battery use in most robots, so running on natural energy makes WANDER-bot an efficient solution for long-term exploration or mapping of unknown terrains. As a result, any electronic elements added to future versions for data collection or transmission purposes could have their own smaller, lighter power source. Using natural energy also counters the issue of performance degradation over time in traditional power sources, such as solar cells and radioisotope thermoelectric generators.

Designed by Dr. Saurabh Upadhyay and Sam Kurian, Research Associate in Space Engineering, the robot uses parts that are entirely 3D printed, with the design deliberately simple to allow for quick repair and replacement. This means that, in theory, you could print and construct WANDER-bot anywhere and make replacement parts in situ as needed, removing the need for time-consuming and costly resupply missions.

Using moon dirt with 3D printing to build future lunar colonies

Simulated lunar dirt can be turned into extremely durable structures, potentially paving the way to more sustainable and cost-effective space missions, a new study suggests. Using a special laser 3D printing method, researchers melted fake lunar soil—a synthetic version of the fine dusty material on the moon surface, called regolith simulant—into layers and fused it with a base surface to manufacture small, heat-resistant objects.

If utilized on the lunar surface, the material may help build sturdy, nontoxic habitats and tools for future astronauts, capabilities that would be vital to the NASA Artemis missions that aim to establish a long-term human presence on the moon by the end of the decade.

But to assess how well this new construction material may work in space, the team tested their fabrication process under a range of different environmental conditions, revealing that the overall quality of the material depends greatly on the surface onto which the soil is printed.

A 3D-printed swallowable robot could perform gastrointestinal procedures

Recent technological advances have opened new possibilities for the development of advanced medical devices, including tiny robots that can safely move inside the human body. Some of these systems could help to simplify complex medical procedures, including delicate surgeries and the targeted delivery of drugs to specific sites.

THE MINIMAX lab at University of Texas (UT) Austin specializes in the development of tiny robots for medical, environmental, and other applications. In a recent preprint paper on arXiv, researchers from this lab introduced a new 3Dprintable and magnetically steerable capsule robot that could potentially help to diagnose and treat some gastrointestinal (GI) conditions.

“My motivation for GI health monitoring is deeply personal,” Fangzhou Xia, director of the MINIMAX lab at UT Austin and senior author of the paper, told Medical Xpress. “In 2022, when I was a postdoc at MIT, I experienced a severe GI medical episode involving repeated gallstone-induced bile duct blockage that ultimately required gallbladder removal surgery.

3D-printed photonic lanterns combine up to 37 multimode lasers into one fiber

Researchers have developed a microscopic 3D-printed optical device that can efficiently combine light from dozens of small semiconductor lasers into a single multimode optical fiber with very low loss. The team demonstrated photonic lanterns that multiplex 7, 19, and 37 multimode VCSEL lasers directly into a fiber while preserving brightness and easing alignment constraints. By enabling scalable incoherent beam combining of many multimode lasers, the technology could simplify and improve high-power laser systems, optical communications, and other photonic applications where efficiently delivering large optical power through fibers is critical.

A new study published in Nature Communications by Ph.D. student Yoav Dana, under the guidance of Professor Dan M. Marom and his team at the Institute of Applied Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, demonstrate a significant breakthrough in system scale and miniaturization for an optical beam combining apparatus, as those required in high-power laser systems.

The research, conducted in collaboration with Civan Lasers, introduces a novel 3D-printed microscale Photonic Lantern (PL) designed for the efficient incoherent combining of multimode sources. This innovation addresses the long-standing challenge of coupling light from large Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL) arrays, each of said VCSEL sources being multimoded, into multimode fibers (MMFs) while preserving the brightness and modal capacity of the system.

Hybrid ‘super foam’ uses 3D-printed struts to absorb up to 10 times more energy

Aerospace engineering and materials science researchers at Texas A&M University and the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory have developed a “super foam” that can absorb up to 10 times more energy than conventional padding.

The composite, published and described in the journal of Composite Structures, combines an ordinary foam with 3D-printed injections of stretchy, plastic columns known as struts.

The result? An affordable, lightweight and ultra-durable hybrid foam poised to redefine the defense, automotive, aerospace and consumer industries.

Novel prosthetic design combines AI and 3D printing to improve fit

A new, fully customizable 3D printed socket design is set to transform the prosthetics industry. The reimagined limb socket interface combines highly personalized pressure mapping with AI software and a lighter infill, creating a highly customized prosthetic that’s more comfortable to wear, for much longer, say researchers at Simon Fraser University.

3D-printed ‘plug’ links fiber optics to photonic chips with low loss

Physicists and chemists at Heidelberg University have realized a photonic microchip that is driven by light just as easily as electronic components via a “plug.” Their development could serve as the basis for fast and cost-effective production of photonic integrated systems that are of great importance for implementing innovative computing and communications systems.

Prof. Dr. Wolfram Pernice of the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics headed up the research on this novel coupling concept for light-controlled chips. The results appear in the journal Science Advances.

3D printing with moon dirt for lunar habitats

“By combining different feedstocks, like metal and ceramics, in the printing process, we found that the final material is really sensitive to the environment,” said Sizhe Xu. [ https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/30260/3d-printing-mo…habitats-2](https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/30260/3d-printing-mo…habitats-2)

How can lunar regolith be used to construct future habitats on the Moon? This is what a recent study published in Acta Astronautica hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated novel methods for using lunar regolith for making structures on the lunar surface. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, mission planners, and future astronauts develop methods for working and living on the Moon, which comes as NASA’s Artemis program plans to land humans on the Moon in 2028.

For the study, the researchers examined how a laser 3D printing method called laser directed energy deposition (LDED) could be used for manufacturing structures using lunar simulant under a myriad of environments, specifically lunar conditions of zero atmosphere, oxygen, and complete vacuum. The lunar simulant used for the experiments is known as LHS-1 (lunar highland regolith simulants), with the lunar highlands being the lighter-colored mountainous regions of the Moon as seen from Earth, as opposed to the volcanic regions of the Moon that are darker in appearance.

Along with the environmental conditions, the researchers also examined how printing LHS-1 on various types of surfaces yielded different results. They also examined laser speed, scanning power, and the final microstructure products. In the end, the researchers found that alumina-silicate ceramic surfaces and high temperatures produced the most promising structures but cautioned that laboratory conditions vary from the real-world environment on the Moon.

A puddle that jumps: What bubble bursts reveal about water on lotus-like surfaces

Water droplets have a unique ability: They can leap from a surface on their own. This can happen for a variety of reasons, such as when a surface repels water or when heat is involved, such as a water or oil droplet skittering across a hot pan.

It also happens at a very small scale. Up to this point, researchers have observed droplets up to 3 millimeters in diameter exhibiting this behavior. When droplets are larger than that, gravity prevents it from jumping.

A new study published in Nature Physics identifies a previously unreported way to get a puddle of water up to a centimeter wide to jump into the air, something that could support applications from surface cleaning to 3D printing.

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