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Category: 3D printing – Page 6

Imagine a crew of astronauts headed to Mars. About 140 million miles away from Earth, they discover their spacecraft has a cracked O-ring. But instead of relying on a dwindling cache of spare parts, what if they could simply fabricate any part they needed on demand?

A team of Berkeley researchers, led by Ph.D. student Taylor Waddell, may have taken a giant leap toward making this option a reality. On June 8, they sent their 3D printing technology to space for the first time as part of the Virgin Galactic 7 mission.

Their next-generation microgravity printer—dubbed SpaceCAL—spent 140 seconds in suborbital space while aboard the VSS Unity space plane. In that short time span, it autonomously printed and post-processed a total of four test parts, including space shuttles and benchy figurines from a liquid plastic called PEGDA.

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Chip design can rapidly and efficiently test for multiple pathogens simultaneously, potentially reducing foodborne illness. Researchers have developed a new method for detecting foodborne pathogens that is faster, cheaper, and more effective than existing methods. Their microfluidic chip uses light to detect multiple types of pathogens simultaneously and is created using 3D printing, making it easy to fabricate in large amounts and modify to target specific pathogens. The researchers hope their technique can improve screening processes and keep contaminated food out of the hands of consumers.

Every so often, a food product is recalled because of some sort of contamination. For consumers of such products, a recall can trigger doubt in the safety and reliability of what they eat and drink. In many cases, a recall will come too late to keep some people from getting ill.

In spite of the food industry’s efforts to fight pathogens, products are still contaminated and people still get sick. Much of the problem stems from the tools available to screen for harmful pathogens, which are often not effective enough at protecting the public.

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The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has publicly released a new set of additive manufacturing data that industry and researchers can use to evaluate and improve the quality of 3D-printed components. The breadth of the datasets can significantly boost efforts to verify the quality of additively manufactured parts using only information gathered during printing, without requiring expensive and time-consuming post-production analysis.

Data has been routinely captured over a decade at DOE’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, or MDF, at ORNL, where early-stage research in coupled with comprehensive analysis of the resulting components has created a vast trove of information about how 3D printers perform. Years of experience pushing the boundaries of 3D printing with novel materials, machines and controls have provided ORNL with the unique ability to develop and share comprehensive datasets. The newest dataset is now available for free through an .

The conventional manufacturing industry benefits from centuries of quality-control experience. However, additive manufacturing is a newer, non-traditional approach that typically relies on expensive evaluation techniques for monitoring the quality of parts. These techniques might include destructive mechanical testing or non-destructive X-ray computed tomography, which creates detailed cross-sectional images of objects without damaging them.

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Scientists at the European Space Agency have designed and 3D printed bricks that are similar to LEGO pieces and are made out of 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite dust. The pieces, called ESA Space Bricks, are part of an initiative to develop clean and sustainable buildings on the Moon that lunar settlers could live and work in. In theory, astronauts could use materials readily available on the lunar surface to build structures, launch pads, and other vital pieces of infrastructure without having to solely rely on Earth-made supplies.

But why did the scientists end up going with the LEGO-inspired design for their ESA Space Bricks? While the bricks are not currently intended to be used to construct anything on the Moon, their existence does prove to researchers that it is possible to 3D print durable interlocking building bricks out of lunar materials.

“Nobody has built a structure on the Moon, so it was great to have the flexibility to try out all kinds of designs and building techniques with our space bricks,” says ESA Science Officer Aidan Cowley. “It was both fun and useful in scientifically understanding the boundaries of these techniques.”

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Researchers have developed a new two-photon polymerization technique that uses two lasers to 3D print complex high-resolution structures. The advance could make this 3D printing process less expensive, helping it find wider use in a variety of applications.

Two-photon polymerization is an advanced additive manufacturing technique that traditionally uses femtosecond lasers to polymerize materials in a precise, 3D manner. Although this process works well for making high-resolution microstructures, it isn’t widely used in manufacturing because femtosecond lasers are expensive and increase the cost of printing parts.

“We combined a relatively low-cost laser emitting with a emitting infrared pulses to reduce the power requirement of the femtosecond laser,” said research team leader Xianfan Xu from Purdue University. “In this way, with a given femtosecond laser power, the printing throughput can be increased, leading to a lower cost for printing individual parts.”

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Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed the first additive manufacturing slicing computer application to simultaneously speed and simplify digital conversion of accurate, large-format three-dimensional parts in a factory production setting.

The technology, known as Slicer 2, can help widen the use of 3D printing for larger objects made from metallic and composite materials. Objects the size of a house and beyond are possible, such as land and aquatic vehicles and aerospace applications that include parts for reusable space vehicles.

Slicing software converts a computer-aided design, or CAD, digital model into a series of two-dimensional layers called slices. It calculates print parameters for each slice, such as printhead path and speed, and saves the information in numerically controlled computer language. The computer file contains instructions for a 3D printer to create a precise 3D version of the image.

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