A kit of 3D-printed anatomical body parts could revolutionize medical education and training, according to its developers at Monash University.
Professor Paul McMenamin, Director of the University’s Centre for Human Anatomy Education, said the simple and cost-effective anatomical kit would dramatically improve trainee doctors’ and other health professionals’ knowledge and could even contribute to the development of new surgical treatments.
“Many medical… read more
University of California, San Diego researchers have 3D-printed a tissue that closely mimics the human liver’s sophisticated structure and function. The new model could be used for patient-specific drug screening and disease modeling and could help pharmaceutical companies save time and money when developing new drugs, according to the researchers.
The liver plays a critical role in how the body metabolizes drugs and produces key proteins, so liver… read more
Researchers at American University have demonstrated the first use of commercial 3D printers to create a structure with active chemistry — in this case, a structure that acts to mitigate pollution.
The researchers added titanium dioxide nanoparticles to standard ABS filament material (used in 3D printers) and extruded a filament that they then used to print a small, sponge-like plastic object on a low-cost Flashforge Creator… read more
UC Berkeley engineers, in collaboration with colleagues at Taiwan’s National Chiao Tung University, have developed a 3D printing process for creating basic electronic components, such as resistors, inductors, capacitors, and integrated wireless electrical sensing systems.
As a test, they printed a wireless “smart cap” for a milk carton that detected signs of spoilage using embedded sensors.
The findings were published Monday, July 20, in… read more
Researchers at ETH Zurich university have developed a technique for 3D-printing biocompatible living bacteria for the first time — making it possible to produce produce high-purity cellulose for biomedical applications and nanofilters that can break down toxic substances (in drinking water, for example) or for use in disastrous oil spills, for example.
The technique, called “Flink” (“functional living ink”) allows for printing mini biochemical factories with properties… read more
NASA and a Texas company are exploring the possibility of printing food on a 3D printer on deep space missions.
NASA has awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract to Systems and Materials Research Consultancy of Austin, Texas to conduct a study for the development of a 3D printed food system for long duration space missions.
As NASA ventures farther into space, whether… read more
A new 3D printing process using human stem cells could pave the way to custom replacement organs for patients, eliminating the need for organ donation and immune suppression, and solving the problem of transplant rejection.
The process, developed at Edinburgh-based Heriot-Watt University, in partnership with Roslin Cellab, could also speed up and improve the process of reliable, animal-free drug testing by growing three-dimensional human tissues and structures… read more
![For the first time, a research team from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demonstrated the ability to 3D-print a battery. This image shows the interlaced stack of electrodes that were printed layer by layer to create the working anode and cathode of a microbattery. [Ke Sun, Teng-Sing Wei, Jennifer Lewis, Shen J. Dillon]](http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/Printed-structure-SEM-e1371673751631.jpg "Fig 1")
A team based at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has printed precisely interlaced stacks of tiny battery electrodes, each less than the width of a human hair
3D printing can now be used to print lithium-ion microbatteries the size of a grain of sand. The printed microbatteries could supply electricity to tiny devices in fields from medicine to communications, including many that have… read more
In another leap for 3D printing, researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering have developed a faster 3D printing process that allows for 3D-printing multi-material objects in minutes instead of hours.
Fabrication time and the complexity of multi-material objects have been a hurdle to widespread use of 3D printing.
Speeding up printing
USC Viterbi researchers developed improved mask-image-projection-based stereolithography (MIP-SL) to drastically… read more
A common vitamin — riboflavin (vitamin B2) — has made it possible to 3D-print non-toxic medical implants, researchers from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Laser Zentrum Hannover have discovered.
“This opens the door to a much wider range of biocompatible implant materials, which can be used to develop customized implant designs using 3-D printing technology,” says Dr.… read more
Researchers at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, and Pennsylvania State University have developed a 3D printing process that transitions from one metal or alloy to another in a single object.
For example, they created a prototype of an improved telescope mirror mount. The part at the top near the glass mirror is made of a metal with low… read more
A custom-built programmable 3D printer can create materials with some the properties of living tissues, Oxford University scientists have demonstrated.
The new type of material consists of tens of thousands of picoliter connected water droplets encapsulated within lipid films, which can perform some of the functions of the cells inside our bodies.
These printed “droplet networks” might be interfaced with tissues, used as tissue… read more
3M and IBM announced that the two companies plan to jointly develop the first adhesives that can be used to package semiconductors into densely stacked silicon “towers,” making it possible to build, for the first time, commercial microprocessors composed of layers of up to 100 separate chips.
Such stacking would allow for dramatically higher levels of integration for information technology and consumer electronics applications. Processors could… read more
3M plans to launch its handheld MPro110 mini projector on September 30 for $359, with VGA and composite video inputs.
New iPhone apps let anyone use an existing photo as the basis for an artistic illustration, with tools like virtual bushes and pencils to apply to your photos, and various paper and canvas textures.
The week’s much-discussed New Yorker cover used the advanced Brushes app: