Lifeboat Foundation

Additive manufacturing (AM) has revolutionized many industries and holds the promise to affect many more in the not too distant future. While people are most familiar with the 3D printers that function much like inkjet printers, another type of AM offers advantages using a different approach: building objects with light one layer at a time.

Absorption of light initiates many natural and artificial chemical processes, for example, photosynthesis in plants, human vision, or even 3D printing. Until now, it seemed impossible to control a light-driven chemical reaction at the atomic scale, where only a specific part of one molecule is addressed.

Researchers at MIT have unexpectedly stumbled upon a way to 3D print active electronics – meaning transistors and components for controlling electrical signals – without the use of semiconductors or even special fabrication technology.

That goes far beyond what we can currently do with 3D printers. And if perfected, this method could eventually spell the beginning of a new wave in prototyping, experimentation, and even DIY projects for tinkerers at home.

With 3D printing, any of a range of materials including thermoplastic filaments, resin, ceramic, and metal, are laid down in successive thin layers to form a three-dimensional object. That means you can print all kinds of things, from action figures to jewelry to furniture to buildings.

Active electronics — components that can control electrical signals — usually contain semiconductor devices that receive, store, and process information.

Researchers produced 3D-printed, semiconductor-free logic gates, which perform computations in active electronic devices. As they don’t require semiconductor materials, they represent a step toward 3D printing an entire active electronic device.

A team from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania introduced a novel wet chemical etching process that modifies the surface of conventional metal powders used in 3D printing.

In a significant advancement for metal additive manufacturing, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and their academic partners have developed a groundbreaking technique that enhances the optical absorptivity of metal powders used in 3D printing.

The innovative approach, which involves creating nanoscale surface features on metal powders, promises to improve the efficiency and quality of printed metal parts, particularly for challenging materials like copper and tungsten, according to researchers.

Continue reading “New technique enhances absorptivity of powders for metal 3D printing” »

The interlocking bricks, which can be repurposed many times over, can withstand similar pressures as their concrete counterparts. Engineers developed a new kind of reconfigurable masonry made from 3D-printed, recycled glass. The bricks could be reused many times over in building facades and internal walls.

What if construction materials could be put together and taken apart as easily as LEGO bricks? Such reconfigurable masonry would be disassembled at the end of a building’s lifetime and reassembled into a new structure, in a sustainable cycle that could supply generations of buildings using the same physical building blocks.

That’s the idea behind circular construction, which aims to reuse and repurpose a building’s materials whenever possible, to minimize the manufacturing of new materials and reduce the construction industry’s “embodied carbon,” which refers to the greenhouse gas emissions associated with every process throughout a building’s construction, from manufacturing to demolition.

Model is featured in figure 5.4 of Visualizing Mathematics with 3D Printing. This is joint work with Keenan Crane.

Researchers at Concordia have developed a novel method of 3D printing that uses acoustic holograms. And they say it’s quicker than existing methods and capable of making more complex objects.

While 3D printing has exploded in popularity, many of the plastic materials these printers use to create objects cannot be easily recycled.

The automatically generated parameters can replace about half of the parameters that typically must be tuned by hand. In a series of test prints with unique materials, including several renewable materials, the researchers showed that their method can consistently produce viable parameters.

This research could help to reduce the environmental impact of additive manufacturing, which typically relies on nonrecyclable polymers and resins derived from fossil fuels.