In recent years, updates in 3D printing technologies have allowed medical researchers to print things that were not possible to make using the previous version of this technology, including food, medicine, and even body parts.
In 2018, doctors from the Ontario Veterinary College 3D printed a custom titanium plate for a dog that had lost part of its skull after cancer surgery.
face_with_colon_three circa 2018.
Meagan Moore, a Biological and Agricultural Engineering student from Louisiana State University (LSU) has 3D printed a full-size model of the human body for use in radiotherapy.
Such models used in radiotherapy mimic the human tissue, and in medical terms are known as imaging phantoms or phantoms. They are used in radiotherapy to estimate the amount of dose delivery and distribution. A customized phantom of a patient can make the whole process more precise.
3D printing and cancer research
As has been previously reported, 3D printing is being explored by researchers for use in cancer treatment. Earlier this year, Adaptiiv Medical Technologies’ 3D printed bolus was approved for radiation therapy.
It’s all thanks to nanoclusters.
A new nanoscale 3D printing material developed by Stanford University engineers may provide superior structural protection for satellites, drones, and microelectronicsAn improved lightweight, a protective lattice that can absorb twice as much energy as previous materials of a similar density has been developed by engineers for nanoscale 3D printing.
According to the study led by Stanford University, a nanoscale 3D printing material, which creates structures that are a fraction of the width of a human hair, will enable to print of materials that are available for use, especially when printing at very small scales.
Phuchit/iStock.
An improved lightweight, a protective lattice that can absorb twice as much energy as previous materials of a similar density has been developed by engineers for nanoscale 3D printing.
Scientists from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Osaka University introduced a method for manufacturing complex microrobots driven by chemical energy using in situ integration. By 3D-printing and assembling the mechanical structures and actuators of microrobots inside a microfluidic chip, the resulting microrobots were able to perform desired functions, like moving or grasping. This work may help realize the vision of microsurgery performed by autonomous robots.
As medical technology advances, increasingly complicated surgeries that were once considered impossible have become reality. However, we are still far away from a promised future in which microrobots coursing through a patient’s body can perform procedures, such as microsurgery or cancer cell elimination.
Although nanotech methods have already mastered the art of producing tiny structures, it remains a challenge to manipulate and assemble these constituent parts into functional complex robots, especially when trying to produce them at a mass scale. As a result, the assembly, integration and reconfiguration of tiny mechanical components, and especially movable actuators driven by chemical energy, remains a difficult and time-consuming process.
With the help of NASA and Japan, Uganda has officially become a spacefaring nation — and its newly-launched PearlAfricaSat-1 craft has some pretty nifty tech onboard.
As the Uganda-based Nile Post reports, the satellite launched out of NASA’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport facility in Virginia on the morning of November 7 will not only provide important agricultural and security monitoring features for the developing nation, but will also conduct experiments involving the 3D printing of human tissue.
Per the Ugandan news site, the tissues printed on PearlAfricaSat-1 will be used in research into the effects microgravity has on ovary function — and as Quartz notes in its write-up of the NASA and Japan-supported mission, the microgravity aspect of the experiments is key because “bioprinting” human organs is difficult to achieve with Earth’s gravity.
THE most impressive designs for near-future Mars bases have finally been revealed.
These elaborate celestial plans are the difference between human life surviving on Mars – and thriving.
When it comes to planning how to live on a planet like Mars, 3D printing has provided scientists with the easiest way of navigating an environment that has similarities, but ultimately boasts a vastly different environment from Earth.
To produce the next generation of high-frequency antennae for 5G, 6G and other wireless devices, a team at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has invented the machine and manufacturing technique to manipulate microscopic objects using 3D printing and braid them into filaments a mere micrometre in diameter.
How small is this? One human hair varies in diameter between 20 and 200 micrometres from tip to root. Spider web silk can vary from 3 to 8 micrometres in diameter. So that’s teeny tiny. And for us to pack in the many antennae that go into mobile phone technology today, the smaller the better.
Current manufacturing techniques can’t make one-micrometre filaments. But the machine invented by the Harvard SEAS team can. How does it do it? It uses the surface tension of water to grab and manipulate micromaterials. The capillary forces in the water are harnessed to help in the assembly using the variable width channels contained within the machine. Using 3D printing and the hydrophilic properties of the machine’s walls, the team used surface tension to guide kevlar nanowires attached to small floats which as they travelled through the device plaited into micrometre-scale braids.
More affordable than the regular ones.
The Arm2u biomedical engineering team from the Barcelona School of Industrial Engineering (ETSEIB) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya designed and constructed a configurable transradial prosthesis that responds to the user’s nerve impulses using 3D printing technology.
Arm2u is a prosthesis that can replace a missing arm below the elbow. It can be controlled with myoelectric control, which means that it is controlled by the natural electrical signals produced by muscle contraction.
UPC
As stated in the release, UPC bachelor’s and master’s degree students started off improving a prosthesis for people with disabilities using assistive technologies.
The race to create a solid-state battery that could compete with today’s lithium-ion cells is heating up. In the past few years, there’s been a lot of R&D around solid electrolytes that promise to be safer and more powerful. In this video, we visit Sakuú, a company that doesn’t just want to make solid-state batteries, they also want to 3D-print them.
0:00 Intro.
0:29 Battery basics feat. a potato.
1:29 Lithium-ion batteries 101
2:18 What is a solid-state battery?
3:28 Intro to Sakuú
4:00 Why 3D-printing?
5:35 3D-printing prototype.
6:25 Customized battery shapes.
7:34 Challenges of total reinvention.
8:09 Looking forward.
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