A 12-year-old is building a successful 3D-printing business from his playroom, earning hundreds of dollars a month while learning entrepreneurship alongside his twin brother.
Category: 3D printing
3D-printed battery electrolyte could let devices store power in almost any shape
Researchers at The University of Texas at El Paso have developed a way to 3D-print an essential battery component in nearly any shape. Their innovation could free engineers from the constraints of standard rechargeable battery sizes and allow energy storage to be built directly into the devices the batteries power.
The work, detailed in a study published in Communications Engineering, centers on gel polymer electrolytes, the material inside a battery that carries the ions (the particles that carry the electrical charge) between the electrodes—the two terminals where chemical reactions occur and electricity enters or leaves the battery.
From liquid limits to printable gel Conventional electrolytes are liquids that must be sealed inside rigid casings, a design that limits battery shapes and raises safety concerns about leaks. The UTEP team instead created a printable gel by combining a light-curable resin with a lithium-based liquid electrolyte, then hardening it layer by layer using a technique called vat photopolymerization.
Engineers create 3D-printed robotic fish that swim, play and recharge themselves through automated charging systems. Here’s all you need to know
Engineers have developed robotic fish that mimic real aquatic life, offering an aquarium experience without the upkeep. These miniature submarines, powered by Arduino and guided by an overhead camera and Raspberry Pi, autonomously navigate, interact, and even return to a wireless charging station. This innovation promises a maintenance-free aquatic display, blending technology with the tranquility of nature for a futuristic aquarium.
Team uses 3D printing to develop zinc-ion hybrid battery with seven times more energy
Storing solar and wind energy to meet the increasing power needs of the electrical grid calls for devices that can deliver power quickly, recharge quickly and last for decades at low cost. A new study led by UCLA has uncovered a technology that could meet all these criteria: a zinc-ion hybrid battery with a 3D-printed electrode that stores more than seven times the charge of similar hybrids.
Energy storage based on zinc instead of lithium would be cheaper and more sustainable because zinc is 100 times more abundant, easier to mine and easier to recycle.
“The future of energy storage won’t be defined by a single technology,” said co-corresponding author Maher El-Kady, an assistant researcher in UCLA College’s chemistry and biochemistry department. “At some point, we will need to look for something to complement the current options for grid-scale energy storage. What we’ve done in this study essentially gives us zinc-ion hybrid devices that can store nearly one order of magnitude higher capacity.”
Blame the model, not the machine—better data helps 3D-printed metamaterials match predictions
Additive manufacturing, such as 3D printing, provides an excellent opportunity to design metamaterials: materials with an engineered structure that leads to desired properties such as, for instance, resistance to vibrations. However, a major challenge was that the predicted metamaterial response often failed to match real-world behavior.
Researchers at the University of Groningen have now shown that the unexpected behavior of 3D-printed metamaterial structures is not due to structural defects, as was commonly believed, but that the material simply needs to be properly characterized to obtain models with high predictive accuracy. The results were published in Materials Horizons on June 3, 2026.
Solid-state material turns visible light into high-energy UV at sunlight intensity, expanding solar energy potential
Two cups of warm water don’t make one cup of boiling water. But in the quantum world, multiple low-energy photons can combine to produce a single, higher-energy photon.
A research team at Kyushu University has developed a solid-state molecular material that “upgrades” visible light into ultraviolet (UV) light under ordinary outdoor sunlight, achieving a conversion efficiency of 1.9%. The study is published in Nature Communications.
Harsh UV light is something most people try to avoid in summer, yet it is indispensable in fields ranging from air purification and resin curing in 3D printing to gel hardening in dental fillings and nail art. Despite its importance, UV accounts for only about 6% of the sunlight reaching Earth’s surface, with only a fraction of that being practically usable.
