[Image: Wikipedia]

I remember how surprised I was when I first learned that a laser was not only a light-emitting device, but also an acronym for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.” Lasers have many applications today, from laser surgery and laser engraving to laser light shows. There are also multiple 3D printing processes that use lasers, like Adaptive Laser Sintering (ALS), Direct Metal Laser Melting (DMLM), Laser Metal Deposition (LMD), and Selective Laser Melting (SLM). This last is the focus of a new process, developed by the 

, which has yet to be researched in the field of SLM.

SLM is also known as Laser Beam Melting or Laser Powder Bed Fusion, and the powder bed-based technique has been used to process metal in multiple sectors, such as automotive engineering, medical technology, and turbo machinery manufacturing. Researchers with Fraunhofer ILT, which is headquartered in Aachen, Germany and recently partnered with the Aachen University of Applied Sciences to open the largest SLM facility in the world, hope to further develop the SLM process to make it more suitable for 3D printing components made of copper alloys and pure copper. The research project is being funded by AiF German Federation of Industrial Research Associations.

Daniel Heussen, a research fellow in the Rapid Manufacturing group, explained, “Depending on surface properties, pure copper reflects up to 90 percent of laser radiation in conventionally used wavelengths of 1µm.”

Exposure of a single layer in a SLM process with green laser light to manufacture an internally cooled coil for inductive heat treatment. [Image: Fraunhofer ILT]

The SLM process is currently only suitable for copper alloys, but pure copper is more electrically and thermally conductive. Because it reflects up to 90% of laser radiation, only a small bit of the energy is deposited in the material and able to be used for the melting process; system components can also be damaged by the reflected radiation, and the material’s absorptivity for infrared light increases as the copper transitions to a liquid state, causing an unstable remelting process.

By using green laser light with a 515 nm wavelength, copper’s absorptivity grows, so less laser power output is necessary to keep the process stable. Additionally, a green laser beam can be more precisely focused, so it’s able to manufacture more delicate components. At formnext 2017 in Frankfurt, Fraunhofer ILT will be introducing its research topic, using a model and initial process videos, for a specially developed laser beam source that operates with green light, instead of infrared, to enable the economic production of pure copper components.

“We are hoping for a more homogeneous melt pool dynamics so that we can build components with high material density and achieve other positive effects, such as a higher detail resolution,” Heussen said of the new SLM approach.

Fraunhofer ILT’s department for laser beam source development is building its own green laser source, in a project dubbed “SLM in green,” because one does not currently exist on the market that meets the boundary conditions of its new process. The immediate goal is to create a high-quality laser, which works with a maximum output of 400 watts in continuous service (cw) with green wavelength (515 nm), for single-mode operation, but the aim for the future is to develop a reliable process for industrial users, in which they can 3D print complex geometries with undercuts and hollow structures using pure copper.

‘SLM in green’ process should allow 3D printing of pure copper components. [Image: Fraunhofer ILT]

This process could be used to produce small batches of delicate, complex electrical components, efficient heat sinks, and even jewelry.

“Inductors for inductive heat treatment in industrial production are excellent showcases for additive manufacturing,” Heussen explained. “They are mostly produced in small numbers with a high level of complexity and a wide range of different variants.”

When it comes to using the new process to make jewelry, the Fraunhofer ILT researchers are hoping to get a much higher detail resolution, and greater cost efficiency in production, than other 3D printing methods, like electron beam melting. The potential even exists for the green laser to work with other non-ferrous and precious metals in the jewelry industry.

Heussen said, “However, before we achieve that, we still need to overcome a few hurdles in process and system development and gain a deeper process understanding for the use of the new wavelength. This is currently the goal of the publicly funded project, which will run until mid-2019.”

An ‘SLM in green’ laboratory setup should be ready by the end of this year. To learn more about Fraunhofer ILT’s new SLM process, visit them in hall 3.0, stand F50, at formnext this fall.

If you walk across any college campus, you’ll probably see several recycling bins piled high with plastic bottles. Most people barely notice those bins, looking at them only when they need to discard a bottle themselves, but Dr. Nathaniel Petre of Imperial College London looked at the piles of plastic bottles and thought “I could make a surfboard out of those.”

Why not? Dr. Petre isn’t the first person to have the idea of 3D printing a surfboard, but the board he created may be the most eco-friendly one 3D printed yet, and it shows a lot of promise for more sustainable – and less expensive – surfboard production in the future. The surfboard was a serious project that received seed funding from NASA, and Dr. Petre worked with colleagues to 3D print the board in sections. Some of the sections were 3D printed from plastic bottles melted down and extruded into filament, and the rest of it was printed with filament from ALGIX, which creates materials from an invasive diatomic algae.

“It is really satisfying to think that we can take an invasive lake algae, which is literally sucking the air and life out of lakes in the USA and use it as a sustainable material for surfboard manufacture,” Dr. Petre said. “What is evident from this pilot project is that not only is there a potential future in for printed boards, but that there’s an opportunity to print more things from waste or compostable material provided you have a big enough printer.”

Dr. Nathaniel Petre and Zachary Ostroff

Many of the surfboards that have been 3D printed before have been prototypes only, but Dr. Petre’s board is durable enough for regular use, in addition to being cheaper and more sustainable to produce than other boards. 3D printing also allows surfboard designers to approach their designs from a more creative angle. Dr. Petre himself was inspired by dolphins when he designed his board, appropriately dubbed the Dolphin Board of Awesome.

The Dolphin Board of Awesome is currently being tried out by Dr. Petre’s colleague Zachary Ostroff off the coast of California. While this particular board was 3D printed in sections and then later assembled, Dr. Petre has received a grant from the Imperial College Hackspace that will allow him to develop a larger 3D printer, which can then be used to 3D print a surfboard all in one piece.

So the Dolphin Board of Awesome is only the beginning, then. Dr. Petre has also partnered with Surfdome, one of Europe’s largest surf retailers, to 3D print a surfboard out of plastic trash from beaches. That board will be put on permanent display at the Eden Project in Cornwall, but it won’t be a surprise if Dr. Petre and his colleagues end up 3D printing additional surfboards from plastic found along beaches. As these makers have shown, 3D printing is a fast, inexpensive way to create surfboards, and plastic trash is something that is always readily accessible – especially if you’re someone, like a surfer, who spends a lot of time on the beach. Who says beach cleanup can’t be fun?

Discuss in the 3D Printed Surfboard forum at 3DPB.com.

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Last summer, 3D printing-friendly tech and automotive company Local Motors teamed up with IBM’s Watson IoT’s AutoLAB to release the self-driving Olli shuttle, which was created with 3D printing technology and can operate as one car or in a network of smart vehicles; it’s already been used to transport commuters in Washington, D.C. and Berlin. The autonomous vehicle celebrated its first birthday this June, not long after the company’s microfactory in Knoxville, Tennessee produced the first fully 3D printed Olli.

Local Motors has also set up localized micro-factories in Phoenix, Las Vegas, National Harbor, and Berlin, which design and manufacture automobiles in the regions they serve – this plan has helped the company achieve a small-batch, on-demand business model, so they can keep a small footprint while working on big ideas, like the Olli bus, that have the potential to redefine existing industries.

The company needs specific, high-tech tools to help meet prototyping and production needs. By using streamlined 3D printing, Local Motors design engineers can keep parts production in-house, while lowering tooling costs by 50% and production time by 90%.

“There’s a huge difference between using an outside part manufacturer and having that capability in-house. The convenience of being able to print a part and have it in your hand in a couple of hours is not only cheaper, but also reduces lead times and allows us to iterate that much more quickly,” said Design Engineer Frederik Tjonneland.

Local Motors turned to MakerBot, and its Replicator+ cloud-enabled desktop 3D printer, to produce parts for the autonomous Olli.

Alex Fiechter, Local Motors’ Director of Product Development, explained, “We really don’t have the time to wait for the parts we need. We need to set the making of them in motion and forget about them while we work on other things. The MakerBot Replicator+ has been the ideal example of this ‘set it and forget it’ experience for creating 3D printed parts on both the production and the prototyping side.”

The design process for the Olli parts begins with MakerBot’s intuitive print preparation software, MakerBot Print. The software comes with a powerful interface, and a list of professional capabilities, such as automatic build plate arrangement, native CAD file importing, and the ability to save different build plates and assemblies as one single project – this last feature is essential for collaboration and iteration.

Local Motors needs quality tools, and processes, that can make its existing workflows stronger, so it’s able to keep churning out disruptive solutions, like the sustainable Olli shuttle, to mobility issues – that’s why it turned to MakerBot.

Tjonneland said, “Fast and iterative desktop 3D printing is absolutely critical at Local Motors…it’s integral towards what we do. MakerBot will always have a place with us.”

The company also makes good use of MakerBot Tough PLA, the company’s strong, impact-resistant material. The filament experiences longer plastic deformation under severe tensile loads, and greater tensile elongation as well. This is why Local Motors uses Tough PLA for its 3D printed Olli parts, which need to function well under stress.

Local Motors engineers use the Tough PLA filament to create high-impact, durable strength fixtures and prototypes for metal parts on-demand. It replaces long lead times with instant results, and has tensile, impact, and flexible strength characteristics similar to ABS plastic.

“We like Tough PLA because we can thread directly into the part and mount other components to it. In the time it would have taken to order a metal part and have it shipped here, we already finished the entire project,” said Mechanical Engineer Tony Rivera.

As the idea of autonomous vehicles like Olli picks up speed around the world, Local Motors turns to MakerBot products for pretty much everything – from development and testing to final parts manufacturing. Thanks to the benefits of 3D printing technology, the Olli can be refined without having to completely modify it, and the company believes that it will eventually involve other professionals, such as city planners and urban designers, in the design work for the Olli.

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When a new trend in footwear appears, it often shows up first in the world of sports, and 3D printed shoes are no exception. Professional athletes can benefit greatly from the customization that 3D printing offers, and they can also bring widespread attention to the technology. Several professional athletes have sported footwear made with 3D printing, like Olympic runner Shelly-Ann Fraser-Price and Cleveland Indians pitcher Corey Kluber, just to name a couple. Now NBA star Dwight Howard has thrown his support behind 3D printing, in the form of a pair of specially designed basketball boots.

The boots were designed and produced by PEAK Sport Products, the Chinese company responsible for the 3D printed “Future” sneakers released earlier this year. Describing the basketball shoes as the first-ever wearable 3D printed basketball boots, PEAK introduced them last week at the 2017 PEAK China Tour and Dwight Howard III Press Conference. Howard, for whom the Dwight Howard III 3D Basketball Boots have been named, is impressed.

“This pair of boots has obviously higher performance than traditional ones,” he said. “I felt that the 3D printed soles and vamp side walls enable a more comfortable wearing experience. Maybe, one day in the future, you’ll see me wearing the 3D printed basketball boots, footwear designed based on R&D carried out by PEAK, during an NBA competition.”

PEAK 3D printed the boots using SLS technology. Each shoe has a 3D printed lattice structure in the middle of the sole, and the vamp side walls are also 3D printed using TPU material. This results in a flexible, lightweight shoe with a lot of room for design freedom and customization. There’s no word on if and when Howard or any other NBA players will be wearing the shoes in an actual game, but it would seem likely, and if these shoes are anything like the other 3D printed athletic shoes that have been released, they could potentially be tailored to each individual wearer in ways that improve not only comfort but performance.

There’s also no word on whether the 3D printed basketball boots will be available on the market, or how much they might cost, but new types of athletic shoes such as these often tend to be rolled out to professional athletes first before becoming available on the wider market at a later time. It could be a while before we see these particular shoes in stores, but the frequency at which 3D printed athletic shoes are being introduced these days bodes well for them soon becoming more accessible to the average person. Adidas recently announced the production of partially 3D printed running shoes at scale, a first for an industry that has thus far only produced 3D printed shoes in very limited release.

PEAK is just getting started, too. The company plans to use 3D printing for many more athletic products in the future.

“As a new prototyping and processing technology, 3D printing is of great significance to Chinese sports brands and the country’s Made in China 2025 strategy,” said Xu Zhihua, General Manager of PEAK Sport. “Our goal is to transform PEAK into the world’s leading professional sports brand through continuous innovation and ongoing expansion into international markets.”

So keep an eye out for 3D printed PEAK products in the future – if not on your local store shelves just yet, at least on NBA basketball courts and in other professional sports settings.

[Images: PEAK Sport Products]

Cappasity, founded in 2013, is on a mission: to make 3D digitizing as simple as photography. The startup is known for its in-store browsing experience, with interactive 3D images, to online retail, and introduced its Easy 3D Scan software in 2015; it was released a year later. Cappasity aims to develop an easy, scalable platform for creation, embedding, and analysis of 3D, AR, and VR content, and since 2014, has raised $1.8 million from VC funds and angel investors to make the platform a reality.

A beta version of the Cappasity platform was released in January, and this week, the startup announced that it’s developing an AR/VR blockchain ecosystem, powered by ARToken (ART), that’s designed to allow quick and easy AR/VR/3D content creation. The ecosystem itself is made up of blockchain and storage infrastructure and a marketplace, with a ‘sandbox’ testing environment for the unique AR/VR/3D content in practice.

According to the ARToken by Cappasity website, “We believe the AR/VR revolution will be driven by content creators. That’s why we are introducing the first platform that leverages blockchain infrastructure to create, rent and sell 3D content. This approach ensures decentralized and trustless copyright storage and content exchange within the AR/VR ecosystem.”

ART is a virtual currency that’s used to trade the content inside the ecosystem, and will be available with Cappasity’s $50 million token crowdsale, which will be launched next month.

“Top luxury retailers who have implemented our 3D imaging integrations are showing conversion increases of as much as 30-40%. We are excited to bring innovative content creators the opportunity to participate in the AR/VR content revolution with the utility ARToken (ART) to power the whole ecosystem,” said Kosta Popov, the founder and CEO of Cappasity

As 3D content becomes more important in many verticals, such as education, art, retail, entertainment, health, and gaming, Cappasity’s new ecosystem will leverage the blockchain, which is the underlying technology of Bitcoin, in an effort to be the most favored AR/VR/3D content exchange platform in the world for businesses, developers, and users who can benefit from creating, trading, and embedding 3D image creation. Blockchain is a chain of blocks (records) that contain transactional data, and within the data set, financial information, like recipient details and the amount of transactions, are stored. Blockchain has been used in the 3D printing world in a military testing capacity, and to store data of 3D printed aircraft parts.

3D content creators and distributors will be able to use the platform to monetize and share their results through a tokenized ecosystem, which includes compatibility with AR/VR devices, high quality production of AR/VR and 3D content through SDK and plugins, tools that enable 3D content to be embedded into mobile apps and web stores, and powerful Cappasity AI analytics that will handle customer interactions with 3D by creating a heatmap for every digitized product.

The decentralized billing system for ART can handle many microtransactions, and will be secured by smart contracts. ARTs can be used to buy or rent 3D/AR/VR content on the platform and subscribe to the 3D content base, and are earned by creating, renting and selling, and moderating the unique content. 70% of ARTs will be delivered to crowdsale participants, and the rest will be set aside for early contributors and founders’ long-term endowment. The month-long ARToken crowdsale will begin on September 27th.

According to Cappasity, AR has the potential to become a major element of e-commerce, and Goldman Sachs expects the AR/VR software market to attain $35 billion by the year 2025, with 60% of the revenue driven by consumers.

[All Images: Cappasity]

[Image: Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy]

A

published in the 

last month found that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which results from repeated blows to the head, was found in 99% of the brains of deceased NFL players that had been donated for scientific research. Multiple hits to the head are common for those who play contact sports, like boxing and football, and CTE is associated with issues like speech and gait abnormalities, memory disturbance, behavioral and personality changes, and even Parkinson’s Disease. Unfortunately, there’s not a cure, as the progressive degenerative disease can only definitively be diagnosed postmortem. But a team of engineers from

are studying biological structures to see if 3D printing technology can be used to prevent sports-related injuries, and CTE.

This question has been asked before, and as a result, we’ve seen all kinds of 3D printed sports safety equipment, like helmets, mouthguards, shin guards, and even a binding system for snowboards. The USC Viterbi team is studying a specific sea creature to see if it’s possible to make stronger 3D printed body armor…and no, it’s not fish.

Yang Yang, a post-doctoral scholar at USC Viterbi, was enjoying a lobster dinner in a restaurant, but having a difficult time breaking the crustacean’s claws to get to the meat inside.

Yang said, “I thought maybe there was some special structure involved that brings the lobster claws very high impact resistance.”

Lobsters and other crustaceans have exoskeletons with extraordinarily high impact resistance that has been studied for manufacturing stronger materials. [Image: Wikimedia Commons]

He was right – earlier this summer,

about the extreme durability of the conch shell, and the possibility of using it to make human body armor. The outer shells of lobsters and mantis shrimps have a very strong design, made of fibrous chitin material, called Bouligand-type fiber alignment: the structural fibers in the design align in a spiral, and are rotating constantly, so small cracks have a hard time expanding into larger cracks that could break the shell.

[Image: USC Viterbi]

“The crack has to rotate with the fibers, so you get a much longer cracking propagation path. You may have a micro-crack, but it doesn’t break the shell,” explained Dr. Yong Chen, a 3D printing expert and USC Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

Dr. Chen and Yang worked together and developed a process that adds an electrical field into 3D printing. The electric-assisted 3D printing process aligns layers of material in resilient, bio-inspired ways, like a lobster shell’s design. The team, consisting of Yang, Zeyu Chen, Xuan Song, Zhuofeng Zhang, Jun Zhang, K. Kirk Shung, Qifa Zhou, and Dr. Chen, published a research paper on their work, titled “Biomimetic Anisotropic Reinforcement Architectures by Electrically Assisted Nanocomposite 3D Printing,” which made the cover of the March 2017 Issue of Advanced Materials.

The abstract reads, “Biomimetic architectures with Bouligand-type carbon nanotubes are fabricated by an electrically assisted 3D-printing method. The enhanced impact resistance is attributed to the energy dissipation by the rotating anisotropic layers. This approach is used to mimic the collagen-fiber alignment in the human meniscus to create a reinforced artificial meniscus with circumferentially and radially aligned carbon nanotubes.”

The team 3D printed prototypes of human meniscus in the knee, which absorbs shock between the thighbone and shinbone, and then tested the impact resistance of a model made with plastic, one made with plastic and carbon nanotubes, and a second model of plastic and carbon nanotubes, but with an electric field applied during printing to align the interior fibers.

Dr. Chen explained, “The carbon nanotube is a microscale fiber, so basically when you try to pull it, you have a lot of fiber inside, so it’s reinforced, over a thousand times stronger than plastic. When you just add nanofibers to plastic, overall you get 4x improvement in strength. And if we add and then align the same nanofibers with a 1000-volt electric field, you get 8x improvement in strength.”

The research team’s next move will be to build bigger, biocompatible prototypes; Yang says it’s imperative that they find the perfect material, as their research has clinical applications.

“Right now, we’re trying to improve this electric-assisted 3-D printing process with the help of an NSF grant started April 1, 2017. The electrically assisted 3-D printing provides a new tool to fabricate arbitrary 3-D geometries with any nanofiber orientations,” said Dr. Chen. “In addition to the reinforced structures, we believe this manufacturing capability offers tremendous possibilities for applications in aerospace, mechanical, and tissue engineering.”

Think about the possibilities: a football player has their head scanned, and then a custom, super-strong helmet is 3D printed for them right then and there, using a digital design of their unique head shape; the same concept would apply for a prosthetic meniscus for a player’s knee. There have been many 3D printing innovations inspired by nature, from a 3D printable ceramic foam ink and bio-friendly 3D printing materials to a 6-axis 3D printer and a better design for tandem wing airplanes…and to think, USC Viterbi’s lobster claw-inspired research came about after having a hard time cracking into a dinner entrée.

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“All I ask for is one simple request, and that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads!” (Credit: Dr. Evil, Austin Powers Goldmember). Perhaps, if Dr. Evil was an Additive Engineer, he may have rephrased as such: “All I ask for is one simple request, and that is to have Additive Machines with frickin’ femtosecond lasers attached to their optic systems!”  Pretty cheesy, but you get the gist.

Femtosecond lasers have been used for decades in micro-machining to achieve machining with nearly zero thermal stresses and precise dimensional tolerance. Due to the short pulse width and high energy of a femtosecond laser, thermal stresses are kept local and do not deform surrounding areas of the metal.

Representative thermal picture of femtosecond laser (fs) vs current nanolaser (ns) in an additive machine

PolarOnyx, an additive manufacturing company based out of San Jose, California, has created a first-of-its-kind femtosecond laser-based additive system. Traditional DMLM (Direct Metal Laser Melting) machines use what’s known as CW or Continuous Wave lasers. These lasers, although ideal for low-temperature parts such as aluminum and titanium, have shown to have challenges with higher-temperature materials such as tungsten and iron. Higher-temperature materials require quite a bit more energy to bond metal particles together as compared to their lower temperature counterparts. Due to this increase in energy, CW lasers must output much more laser power. However, their pulse duration (i.e. how long the laser stays on) does not change. Thus, surrounding metal particles are affected and what are known as “thermal stresses” are built into the part itself.

Samples of tungsten parts on tungsten substrates with various shapes and density. The gear has a 1/2-in. diameter (left), while the thin wall (right) has a thickness of 100 µm. [Image: PolarOnyx]

In comparison, femtosecond lasers with their much shorter pulse duration are able to instantaneously ionize and bond the metal particles together with nearly zero thermal stresses. By being able to instantaneously melt particles together, femtosecond lasers also have an innate advantage in building denser parts.

Additionally, PolarOnyx was also able to successfully print iron powder directly on glass. Iron and glass have different but very close melting temperatures. With traditional CW lasers, the thermal buildup would have caused the glass to crack. However, with the femtosecond laser process and its ability to quickly fuse the iron powder, the iron was able to melt without causing any damage to the glass substrate.

Iron and Glass Property Comparison

Most interesting is PolarOnyx’s vision for a process whereby both the additive and subtractive properties of femtosecond lasers are integrated into one machine. Although metal additive has come a long way, there are still cases where complex features must be machined post-print. With femtosecond lasers, this task could be done all in one process with one machine. The femtosecond lasers could first additively build a layer, followed by a subtractive ablation of the same layer where tight machining dimensional tolerances are required.

If only Dr. Evil would have known about femtolasers, he may have been more specific in his request!