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A team of engineers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, has developed a tiny, flexible robotic arm that’s designed to 3D print material directly on the surface of organs inside a living person’s body.

The futuristic device acts just like an endoscope and can snake its way into a specific location inside the patient’s body to deliver layers of special biomaterial to reconstruct tissue, clean up wounds, and even make precise incisions — an amazing jack-of-all-trades they say could revolutionize certain types of surgery.

Engineers from UNSW Sydney have developed a miniature and flexible soft robotic arm which could be used to 3D print biomaterial directly onto organs inside a person’s body.

3D bioprinting is a process whereby biomedical parts are fabricated from so-called bioink to construct natural tissue-like structures.

Continue reading “3D bioprinting inside the human body could be possible thanks to new soft robot” »

Nature has an extraordinary knack for producing composite materials that are simultaneously light and strong, porous and rigid — like mollusk shells or bone. But producing such materials in a lab or factory — particularly using environmentally friendly materials and processes — is extremely challenging.

Researchers in the Soft Materials Laboratory in the School of Engineering turned to nature for a solution. They have pioneered a 3D printable ink that contains Sporosarcina pasteurii: a bacterium which, when exposed to a urea-containing solution, triggers a mineralization process that produces calcium carbonate (CaCO3). The upshot is that the researchers can use their ink — dubbed BactoInk — to 3D-print virtually any shape, which will then gradually mineralize over the course of a few days.

-This would be good for coral reefs.

Continue reading “3D printing with bacteria-loaded ink produces bone-like composites” »

Calcium carbonate is an impressive material, in that it combines strength, light weight and porosity. Scientists have devised a new bacteria-based method of 3D-printing the substance, for use in applications such as bone repair and coral reef restoration.

First of all, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about the 3D-printing of calcium carbonate objects.

Earlier approaches have involved extruding a gel containing mineral particles, which subsequently dries and hardens. Some of the resulting items have been rather soft and fragile, however, or they’ve shrunk as they dried, creating cracks and causing their shape to change.

A precise replica of the patient’s heart is created as a soft, flexible shell.

MIT engineers’ newly developed robotic heart will help doctors adjust therapies to individuals’ unique heart structures and functions. The personalized 3D-printed heart can control and imitate the patient’s capacity to pump blood.

Melanie Gonick/MIT

Continue reading “MIT scientists developed a 3D-printed heart that works like a real one” »

Researchers from the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) and the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) have created “core technology” for 3D printed smart contact lenses building on low-power monochrome displays and demonstrated its functionalities for augmented reality tools such as live navigation. The team’s research has been published in Advanced Science.

“Our achievement is a development of 3D printing technology that can print functional micro-patterns on a non-(planar) substrate that can commercialize advanced smart contact lenses to implement AR (Augmented Reality),” said Seol Seung-Kwon, Ph.D., of the team’s work. “It will greatly contribute to the miniaturization and versatility of AR devices.”

By using shaped ultrasound, researchers in Germany have developed a way to 3D print objects in one shot.

Sakuu has developed a way to 3D print ‘solid state’ batteries, a better alternative to lithium ion batteries.

Dr. Seol Seung-Kwon’s Smart 3D Printing Research Team at KERI and Professor Lim-Doo Jeong’s team at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) developed core technology for smart contact lenses that can implement augmented reality (AR)-based navigation, with a 3D printing process.

A smart contact lens is a product attached to the human eye like a normal lens that provides various information. Research on these lenses is currently focused mainly on diagnosing and treating health problems. Recently, Google and others are developing smart contact lenses for displays that can implement AR. Yet many obstacles to commercialization exist due to several technical challenges.

In implementing AR with smart contact lenses, electrochromic displays that can be driven with low power are necessary, and a “pure Prussian blue” color, with cost competitiveness and quick contrast and transition between colors, is attracting attention as the lens’ material. In the past, the color was coated on the substrate in the form of a film using the electric plating method, which limited the production of advanced displays that can express various information (letters, numbers, images).