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Pollen-Based Bioink Heralds New Potential for Bioprinting Drugs https://ift.tt/3gK1DzU Bioprinting has made its way out of the lab and… into other labs. We still haven’t seen a true bioprinted organ implant, but the technology has so evolved and proliferated that a wide variety of printers and materials are being sold, mostly to university and corporate labs around the world. So, while the technology is on the precipice of a market explosion, we’re witnessing numerous advances take place. One recent example is that of a bioprinting ink created by researchers at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) using sunflower pollen. The new material is capable of maintaining its shape upon deposition onto a substrate, opening up the possibility of using it as an alternative to other bioprinting inks. Many bioprinting materials—such as hydrogels, cells, and biopolymers—are soft and delicate, presenting difficulties for retaining the desired shape of the print as ink is deposited. In turn, they require support matrix into which they might be extruded during the printing process. This results in waste, as the support material is not used after printing.
To develop an alternative, the NTU team turned to sunflower pollen, which the group has already explored as a natural and renewable resource for other projects, such as eco-friendly paper and biodegradable sponges for cleaning up oil. The process began with the incubation of sunflower pollen in an alkaline solution for six hours to create a pollen microgel. This was then combined with other hydrogels, such as seaweed-derived alginate or hyaluronic acid.
To test the potential of this pollen-based material, the team 3D printed a five-layer tissue scaffold, a process that took about 12 minutes. Collagen was added to the scaffold before it was seeded with human cells with a high cell-seeding efficiency of 96 to 97%, similar to that of more commonly used inverted colloidal crystal hydrogels. In addition to demonstrating the durability of the material, the researchers explored several other possible advantages of sunflower pollen bioink. One exciting possibility was the use of bioprinted scaffolds for drug delivery. Because pollen responds to changes in acidity or alkalinity, the team tested the possibility of printing a stimulus-responsive drug delivery system. To do so, they dripped red dye onto the scaffold, noting that the pollen microgel released the die into the scaffold gradually. When acid was added, more dye was released more quickly, opening up the potential for a controlled release system for medications.
Another advantage they found was that the material could potentially be used as a recyclable support matrix. 3D printing a silicon rubber mesh, the researchers relied on pollen microgel as a support structure. The print was then cured at 75°C (167°F) for 24 hours within the pollen matrix. Once cured, the mesh could be removed and shaped to the curvature of the human elbow and maintained physical properties similar to traditional cast elbow meshes.
In addition to developing sustainable materials, NTU has as a 2025 plan to commercialize its research in order to enhance the country’s economy and quality of life. In turn, the researchers are looking to work with industry partners to perfect their 3D printing technique and bring it closer to commercialization. There are a number of companies we could imagine being interested in this development. Bico Group (previously known as Cellink), is a quickly growing biomedical company that has made a string of acquisitions that could be excited about the possibilities of a sustainable bioink. 3D Systems, too, has been rapidly increasing its presence in the bioprinting space. Korea’s ROKIT Healthcare may be a bit closer in terms of physical location. There’s an entire global map of bioprinting businesses that could be great partners for such a project. Regardless of who takes this opportunity, the research is yet a further demonstration of the exciting work that is coming out of NTU Singapore. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com August 30, 2021 at 07:24AM
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3D Printing Webinar and Event Roundup: August 29, 2021 https://ift.tt/2Wsv2YQ As we move from August into September, we have a slower week of webinars and events ahead of us, covering topics from ceramics printing and SOLIDWORKS 2022 to 3D printing for medical simulation and more. Read on for all the details! Ceramics Expo in Cleveland, Ohio This week, the Ceramics Expo returns to a live, in-person event format at the Huntington Convention Center in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Starting with an invite-only VIP and exhibitor reception on Monday, August 30th, and followed by two days of presentations and exhibits, the technical ceramic and glass industry-focused conference is free and focused on exploring ceramic advancements for a clean, efficient, and electrified future. The theme on the first day, August 31st, will be sustainability and innovation, followed by materials and processing on September 1st.
You can register for the free Ceramics Expo here. ASTM Concludes AM General Personnel Certificate Course ASTM International’s AM Center of Excellence (AMCOE) will finish up its eight-module virtual General Personnel Certificate Course this week. Previous module topics included an overview of the AM process, design and simulation, feedstock, AM safety, and more, and after completing a multiple-choice exam after the course, attendees can earn a General AM Certificate. The 7th module, “Non-Destructive Inspection,” will be held from 9 am until 12 pm EST on Tuesday, August 31st, and taught by Don Roth of Roth Technical Consulting. The final module, “Qualification and Certification,” will be taught in two parts, with the first from 9 am until 12 pm EST on September 1st and the second from 9 am until 1 pm EST on the 2nd. Dr. Matthew Di Prima, a Research Materials Scientist with the FDA, will teach Part 1, and NASA’s Douglas Wells and the FAA’s Michael Gorelik will be teaching Part 2.
You can register for the course here. TriMech and SOLIDWORKS 2022 At 10 am EST on Tuesday, August 31st, TriMech is holding a webinar called “What You Need to Know Before SOLIDWORKS 2022.” The company’s Elite Application Engineer John Landis will discuss SOLIDWORKS and PDM system requirements, options for installation, and how to plan for a successful update. Attendees will hear about best practices, how to back up their systems and user settings, custom file locations, best practices, and more.
You can register for the webinar here. Sinterit: Compact SLS Setup Webinar SLS technology leader Sinterit is again offering its popular hybrid webinar about compact SLS 3D printing, “What do I really need to get into SLS 3D printing?” at 11 am EST on the 31st. The main part of the webinar has been pre-recorded, and at the end, Sinterit’s International Sales Manager Dominik Stasiak and Support Manager Robert Garbacz will take part in a live Q&A session with attendees. Attendees will learn about SLS 3D printing, how to compose an SLS solution, how many materials they’ll need for an SLS setup, and more.
You can register for the webinar here. RIZE on Free Coloring Tools for 3D Models Moving on to Wednesday, September 1st, RIZE is holding a webinar titled “Free Tools to Color 3D Models” at 2 pm EST. Attendees will learn about the company’s patented Augmented Polymer Deposition (APD) process for full-color composite 3D printing, as well as the latest free 3D model coloring software and its limitations and benefits. They’ll also get to see a demonstration of coloring 3D models using several different free platforms.
You can register for the webinar here. Operational Excellence Through Personalized Medical Devices In a webinar titled “Bringing Personalized Medical Devices to the Masses: How Terumo Aortic Optimizes its Case Management,” medical device company Terumo Aortic will discuss how it used SurgiCase, an online case management platform by Materialise, to enhance the operational excellence of its clinical operations, specifically in scaling up its custom stent-graft business. The webinar, at 10 am EST on Thursday, September 2nd, will be co-taught by Materialise Marketing Manager Bastien Pirson and Jamie McCarte, the Head of Global Custom Devices for Terumo Aortic. They’ll discuss the challenges that the medical device company faced when adapting to increased demand for its services, in addition to other topics as well.
You can register for the webinar here. 3DHEALS on 3D Printing for Medical Simulation The final webinar this week, “3D Printing for Medical Simulation,” is by 3DHEALS, sponsored by HP, and will be held from 3-4:30 pm EST on September 2nd. A major 3D printing application is medical simulation for education and surgical training, and with all the progress being made with additive manufacturing in the healthcare field in terms of hardware, materials, and software, medical simulation is also seeing advances. Four speakers will discuss this topic during the webinar: Abdel Hakim Moustafa, MD, a cardiologist at the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau in Barcelona; Robert S. Pugliese, Director of Innovation Design at Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health; Stephen Wilson, Director of Engineering at Boston Children’s Hospital’s pediatric Simulator Program (SIMPeds); and Ziad Rouag, President and CEO of Biomodex.
You can register for the webinar here. Do you have news to share about any future webinars or virtual and live events? Please let us know! Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com August 29, 2021 at 07:18AM
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3D Printing News Briefs, August 28, 2021: Events, Research, & More https://ift.tt/3mEwf9Q We’re starting off with event and business news in today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, as formnext has a couple of event announcements and Anisoprint launched a new production facility in Luxembourg. Moving on, an engineering non-profit received a Cool Idea Award from Protolabs, and a collaborative team of research partners is scaling up a process for converting alcohol sourced from renewable or industrial waste gases into jet or diesel fuel. Finally, Hackaday posted a cool project about filtering coffee through 3D printed glass. Formnext 2021 Holding Physical Event, Formnext Tokyo Postponed As we get closer to the official AM industry event season, Mesago Messe Frankfurt and the Formnext Team have announced that formnext 2021 will be taking place as a physical, on-site event in Germany, November 16-19, with roughly 450 exhibitors already confirmed. Preparations have begun in earnest, and highlights will included presentations from the partner country Italy, talks by industry experts, the purmundus Challenge innovations, TCT Conference and Stage, and more. After last year’s event was transformed to a digital one, you can imagine that the overall AM community is thrilled by this news, and for those who may still not be comfortable with large in-person gatherings or are facing travel restrictions, the physical event will be complemented with Formnext Digital Days from November 30-December 1st.
On the flip side, Messe Frankfurt Japan Ltd, has made the decision to postpone Formnext Forum Tokyo, due to health and safety concerns. The event, which was originally to be held next month, will now take place in September of 2022. Anisoprint Launches Production in the EU Continuous fiber 3D printer manufacturer Anisoprint announced that, nearly three years since it established headquarters in the EU, it shifted production to Luxembourg, and has now earned the label “Made in Luxembourg” from the Chamber of Commerce for complying with its standards. The company previously relied on contract manufacturing, but found it too difficult during the pandemic in terms of deadlines and quality control management, which is why it decided to organize production in Luxembourg, close to headquarters. All of the inspections by the Chamber are now complete, and Anisoprint has begun shipping its first printers with the “Made in Luxembourg” label to customers.
Non-Profit Empowering Youth Receives Cool Idea Award Protolabs (NYSE: PRLB) has selected non-profit organization The BOOM as the latest recipient of its Cool Idea Award, a manufacturing grant that helps speed development of innovative products. The BOOM helps at-risk youth in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood work to achieve a brighter future by teaching them engineering and entrepreneurial skills. In the program, participants learn to build a retro boombox and bring it to market, and gain experience so later on they can develop their own product ideas. Protolabs partnered with the organization to build a part that holds battery cells together in order to make a pack that powers the boombox. The unique part makes the pack expandable, and features a spacer-nut, 3D printed out of nylon with HP’s Multi Jet Fusion technology.
Converting Alcohol from Renewable Waste Gas into Fuel Research partners at Oregon State University and LanzaTech, which developed a carbon recycling technology, are working at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to scale up a patented process for converting alcohol that’s sourced from renewable or industrial waste gases into diesel and jet fuel. In a nutshell, the PNNL-patented catalyst, when combined with a 3D printed microchannel reactor, can convert ethanol into a useful “platform” chemical called n-butene that has several commercial uses. This is a one-step chemical conversion, so it streamlines the current multi-step process and makes it more efficient, as well as more cost-effective, and it’s also more sustainable as well. Also, by using 3D printing, the team can create a pleated honeycomb of smaller reactors that will increase the surface-area-to-volume ratio that’s available for the reaction itself.
The team published an initial research study in ACS Catalysis, and later on published a follow-up study with more information. Making Coffee with 3D Printed Glass Finally, a maker called Ahron Wayne has been working on 3D printing special impregnated filaments, filled with alternative materials, and created a prototype print for an experiment that Hackaday found pretty interesting. 3D printing isn’t all UV-cured resins and melted plastics, and Wayne was specifically focused on a glass-impregnated filament that The Virtual Foundry has been developing. This filament is full of very small glass particles, and the idea is that it can be 3D printed just like a regular plastic filament like PLA. After, it’s heated in a debinding process, in which the plastic is removed, and a sintering process heats the print again to bond together the glass particles that are left. Wayne decided to use this 3D printed glass and filter coffee through it, which, while not the most efficient way to make a cup of Joe, did at least work.
Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com August 28, 2021 at 07:06AM
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3D Printing Unicorns: Gelato Gets $240M in Funding, Expands into 3D Printing https://ift.tt/3znVEZ7 On-demand printing platform Gelato, based in Oslo, Norway, achieved the coveted unicorn status after a new funding round. On August 16, 2021, the company announced it had raised $240 million in new funding, pushing its valuation to $1 billion. The cash infusion will accelerate Gelato’s market penetration and growth in the U.S. and Asia and expand new local production hubs and products, including 3D printing. New York global venture capital (VC) firm Insight Partners led Gelato’s latest round, bringing the company’s total funding to date to $269 million since its 2007 inception. VC fund SoftBank Vision Fund 2, as well as funds managed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and other existing backers, like early-stage venture fund Dawn Capital; Gelato Chairman John Hepburn; SEB Pension Fund, and Tellef Thorleifsson, CEO of Norwegian investment fund Norfund, also participated in the financing. Gelato joins other Norway unicorns, like online education firm Kahoot, online grocery firm Oda and storage technology company Autostore, as well as unicorns in the 3D printing universe, like MIT Media Lab spin-off Formlabs, 3D printing technology manufacturer Carbon, and office-safe metal 3D printing developer Desktop Metal (which is now trading on the New York Stock Exchange). Set up as one of the fastest, smartest, and greenest one-stop-shops for customized print products on demand. Gelato’s unique business model and global production network tap into the growing “creator economy.” It lowers the barriers to entrepreneurs, creators, and global brands by giving them the production costs and delivery speed of large e-commerce sellers without upfront investment. According to Insight Partners Managing Director Adam Berger, the Norwegian company’s platform is a “game-changer for the world’s creator community.” For example, he described how with Gelato’s software, an African entrepreneur could produce, ship, and get paid for a product sold in Germany, with no upfront investment in inventory, manufacturing, or logistics, while achieving similar profit margins as competitors 100 times their size.
Up next, Gelato is diving into 3D printing production. The company announced on social media platform LinkedIn that the $240 million investment will help Gelato expand its team, which will accelerate its expansion of local production hubs and product categories.
Aside from its headquarters in Oslo, the business has offices in Boston, London, Moscow, Mumbai, Santiago, São Paulo, Shanghai, Stockholm, Tallinn, and Tokyo, and claims to have local production capacity in 33 countries, capable of reaching up to five billion potential consumers overnight, and reducing carbon emissions from intensive logistics operations. Through its hyper-local network of worldwide production partners and software, Gelato solves the challenge of producing and distributing customized products. In fact, thousands of online stores, like Shopify and Etsy, connect to Gelato for customized items produced locally and delivered within an average of just 72 hours. In 12 years, the business has fulfilled more than 10 million print orders, including printed wall art, clothing, books, and home decor, to a global customer base for e-commerce entrepreneurs, like sports courses art developer Sportymaps. In the 3D printing ecosystem, companies like ProtoLabs and Materialise have empowered customers in a wide range of verticals, from automotive to aerospace, for decades, helping them transition towards a digital manufacturing process and launch innovations by pairing their demands with a wide range of 3D printing capabilities on a global scale. Since Gelato opened its API (application programming interface)-driven platform to the e-commerce industry in 2019, it has supported larger companies and individual sellers and creators worldwide and delivered annual revenue growth of 120%. The revenue is propelled by the company’s API business which grew 320% year-over-year. SoftBank Investment Advisers partner Anthony Doeh believes that Gelato’s curated marketplace can redefine manufacturing, breaking through previous barriers for individual sellers to access a global consumer base faster, and at a lower cost. In fact, Gelato’s customized software platform connects two of the world’s largest industries, the $230 billion digital production industry, with the rapidly growing e-commerce sector, according to the finance expert. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com August 27, 2021 at 09:06AM
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Take FullControl Over Your 3D Printing Gcode https://ift.tt/3ynPCGC FullControl is open source software made by Loughborough’s Andrew Gleadall. It’s slicing software, but, at the same time, it’s not completely slicing software. Under development for a few years now, FullControl is a new way to make things. It is not widely known and has few adherents, but more should consider it. You see, FullControl lets you manage all relevant parameters of a sliced 3D printing file’s Gcode. You can make prints where the path changes all throughout the print. For example, you can have a part of a print where layer height is altered along with speed, acceleration, and the rate of extrusion. Any number of other parameters can be modified as well. FullControl allows you to perform non-planar printing or come up with very specific extrusion profiles for materials, applications, or parts. You can design new structures and strategies for your printer, as well. More than this, however, FullControl is a new way of making. Now, we author in CAD, change the geometry to an STL, slice it with Cura, then the Gcode controls our printer. With FullControl, you design a “print procedure” in the software and this powers your machine. It’s so so simple it’s crazy. Andrew calls it a Gcode Designer, but its also a new paradigm. As we design, we can control for change and adapt to process limitations and forces that will act on our print. We design within the process and shape this process. This is a much more direct way of making and designing in a way that replaces two or three software packages with one. I highly recommend that you watch the detailed video below and download FullControl. There are tutorials here. A paper about it can be found here. Another way to think about FullControl is as Notepad for Gcode. Or, to give it another metaphor, imagine we’re all using Adobe Dreamweaver and now you can code parts in HTML. Now, this is super-mega not for everyone, nor will it be in your daily workflow, even if you’re 3girati or a 3D printing mega nerd. But, if you’re making something that cannot be made, this is amazing. The software Allows you make custom Gcode for completely new methods of extruding completely new materials or parts that will fuse in an entirely novel way. Think of adjusting layer width throughout a part to optimize for intra layer adhesion. Or we could compensate for weight to change layer height and make layers adhere better. Or maybe we could extrude a material more quickly or perform a kind of pulse extrusion to improve adhesion to another material. We could slow down and make cooling stops at particular points where we think more adhesion might be required. You can change how bridging is done. Or you could avoid stringing for one particular model for one particular material. Or we could make very particular tweaks to a model to improve its repeatability. What also excites me is the prospect of recoding models for manufacturing. Imagine you just have one headphone model made in CAD. Now, you’ve gotten 100 orders for it. You look at the errors your printer is making in over extrusion or examine parts where the print doesn’t look nice and then you recode the entire model in FullControl to optimize it. You can adjust the particular parameters specifically for one location by optimize the settings for that location. Now, imagine you get 10,000 orders for the model. You can place ten on a bed and now you can recode each individual model per bed placement to optimize them all. You can change all of the specific parameters to optimally 3D print that one particular model. You can also use this to make very specific textures or internal structures. You could generate a variable infill structures at every single location. It’s like printing directly from the command line while also allowing you to modify every voxel. I reached out to Andrew to find out why he started FullControl. He explained:
FullControl really does give you control over every movement of your nozzle. I knew FullControl existed, but I never really realized how impactful it could be until now. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com August 27, 2021 at 08:36AM
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Paratriathlete Uses Bespoke 3D Printed Parts on Adaptive Race Bike https://ift.tt/3sZbA1t The 2020 Paralympic Games just opened in Tokyo, Japan, and one of the participants is Joe Townsend, a paratriathlete who has previously competed, representing Great Britain, in the Paralympics, Invictus Games, National and World Championships, Commonwealth Games, and Ironman, and won plenty of medals at all of them. The 33-year-old from Eastbourne lost both of his legs in an explosion in Afghanistan in 2008 when he was serving as a Commando with the Royal Marines, and has aspirations of working in elite sports as a Strength and Conditioning coach. Having come in sixth in the men’s PT1 event at the Rio de Janeiro Paralympics in 2016, Townsend was obviously looking to improve upon his performance for this year’s games, and turned to 3D printing to do just that. Townsend has prior experience with 3D printing bespoke parts, but had run into difficulties with the equipment on the market that he’d used before, finding the systems not up to the task of producing strong adaptive parts for his adaptive racing bike as he worked to attain “physical and mechanical perfection.” So he decided to reach out to Solid Print3D, the sister business of Solid Solutions, which is the UK’s largest SOLIDWORKS reseller; Solid Print3D itself offers a range of 3D printing services and products, including 3D printers, 3D scanners, and consumables. Through Solid Print3D, Townsend discovered Markforged technology, which seemed like the perfect solution for 3D printing high quality, high strength custom end-use parts for his adaptive bike. Specifically, the paratriathlete decided to use the desktop Markforged Mark Two 3D printer—the company’s flagship continuous carbon fiber composite system—to fabricate the bespoke bike parts. Townsend first had the idea to adapt the handgrips he uses to pedal his adaptive bike. Not only do these need to fit perfectly in the athlete’s hand, but they also have to be strong enough to hold up under the large amount of force the athletes put through the handles—therefore, quality and strength are of the utmost importance. But shoulder injuries are a real fear here as well, again due to the amount of repeated force, and so he also decided to redesign and 3D print his bike cranks as well. They are now set in the perfect location for his shoulders so he can achieve as much power as possible through the cranks without worrying about hurting his shoulders during the race.
Once the initial handgrips and bike cranks had been printed and tested, Townsend and Solid Print3D determined that carbon fiber-reinforced parts could definitely deliver both the necessary strength and quality. Thanks to the Mark Two, they were able to fabricate bespoke parts that had a better strength to weight ratio than aluminum, which will help Townsend when he competes in the paratriathlon later this week. Several other Paralympians besides Townsend have used 3D printing to adapt their equipment for the competition, as the technology allows for production and testing of parts, as well as refining them to ensure a perfect fit without upfront costs, long lead times, or costly tooling. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com August 27, 2021 at 08:06AM
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AM Investment Strategies Profile: ASTM International https://ift.tt/2WzsF6e American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International’s Mohsen Seifi will take part in the SmarTech – Stifel AM Investment Strategies 2021 summit on September 9, 2021. There, senior executives and key decision-makers from the 3D printing industry will gather to discuss the business opportunities and financial impact of the technology going forward. As one of the leading players in the additive manufacturing (AM) world, global standards developer ASTM is on a mission to integrate consensus standards, developed with its international membership of volunteer technical experts and innovative services. So far, some 31 AM standards have been published, and over 40 are under development. Moreover, ASTM’s AM standards are intended to promote knowledge of the industry, help stimulate research and accelerate the adoption and implementation of the technology, especially as companies move from prototyping to industrial production at scale, ASTM’s origins date back to the beginning of the twentieth century when chemist Charles Dudley began standardizing how rail quality was tested to ensure railway safety. Still, it wasn’t until 2009 that the organization began developing and publishing the first standards for additive manufacturing technologies. By that time, 3D printing was still considered a fairly young industry, beginning to disrupt manufacturing. However, interest in AM processes became widespread, evidenced by the increasing innovations in new products and designs that can only be created through AM and a surge in intellectual property. Between 2010 and 2019, leading companies published over 3,000 3D printing patents – with industry giants like HP and GE leading the pack. By 2020, AM patents were booming. In fact, in a 2021 study published by leading patent data analysts at IFI Claims Patent Services, 3D printing ranked 9th out of the top ten fastest-growing technologies. The study found that the number of patents filed in the AM market had an annual growth rate of 27.14%. As AM became an emerging industry, many companies began claiming industry-specific standards for structured methods and more reliable data that would facilitate technology adoption and growth. To create and revise the AM standards required by the industry, ASTM formed the Committee F42 in 2009. With well over 700 expert members globally, the F42 meets twice a year and publishes its Annual Book of all standards developed to date, which will play a preeminent role in all aspects of 3D printing processes. Currently published standards for AM respond to particular industry needs, such as how to characterize the properties of metal powders used in AM (ASTM F3049-14) or how to quickly assess the quality of 3D printed parts and the performance of laser powder bed fusion 3D printing processes (ASTM F3434-20). ASTM also issued a standard guide for directed energy deposition (DED) with metals (ASTM F3187-16) and even defined standard terminology for AM. Furthermore, some of F42’s standards have been adopted as joint ISO/ASTM standards under an agreement with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Interested in creating a place where industry, government, and academia converged to advance the current state of AM, ASTM launched the Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AMCOE) program in July 2018. ASTM created the dynamic, fast-paced technology space in collaboration with Auburn University, NASA, manufacturing technology innovator EWI, and the UK-based Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC). AMCOE’s advisory board is comprised of U.S. and international public and private sector leaders that are helping fill the gaps in technical standards for the AM industry to drive innovation. As a result, ASTM hopes to empower industries, such as aerospace, automotive, and healthcare, eager to apply AM to their production. On a fast-track to developing more AM standards and expand 3D printing applications, ASTM recently debuted a strategic guide that identifies gaps, challenges, solutions, and action plans for AM data, developed in collaboration with America Makes, signed cooperative agreements with AMCOE founding member NASA for more collaborative projects and launched several funding rounds to support the development of its AM standards. In 2018, the non-profit organization announced its first investment round worth $300,000 to support AMCOE partners in addressing pressing technical information needs in the fast-growing 3D printing arena. With international offices in Belgium, Canada, China, Peru, and Washington D.C., ASTM is making lots of progress in an area beginning to standardize processes to improve manufacturing quality and productivity. As AM technologies continue to evolve and become more cost-efficient, standardization becomes a crucial stepping stone moving forward. Learn more about ASTM and how its standards will continue to play a key role in helping companies drive innovation during the free SmarTech – Stifel AM Investment Strategies 2021 summit on September 9, 2021. Hear from Seifi and other industry leaders as they explore the core financial side of 3D printing. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com August 27, 2021 at 07:36AM
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AI-Driven 3D Printing Firm Inkbit Moves into 38,000 Sq Ft Facility https://ift.tt/3kAK4Uq MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) spinout company Inkbit, founded in 2017, uses computer science to enable fast, on-demand 3D printing of multimaterial end-use products. The startup’s unique technology is based on research led by MIT’s Prof. Wojciech Matusik—one of Inkbit’s three co-founders—and intellectual property licensed from the institute. The MultiFab, a vision-assisted 3D printer able to print with ten different materials in the same build, eventually became the company’s commercial Inkbit Vista, which it says is the first 3D printer to be powered by real-time, machine vision-based feedback control. The startup has just announced that it will be moving into a new headquarters in Medford, Massachusetts, in order to expand its ability to create and distribute the innovative Inkbit Vista.
This move to a new, larger workspace comes on the heels of the startup’s recently closed $30M Series B funding round, led by Phoenix Venture Partners LLC and building on Inkbit’s $12 million round of funding in late 2019. The new office, featuring more space and upgraded systems, will help the startup continue the development of its closed-loop feedback Inkbit Vista 3D printing ecosystem, along with growing and managing innovation in order to create more printers. While Inkbit used to reside in a 6,000 square foot property, its new office provides 38,000 square feet of space, which is a big improvement. The new space is located at One Cabot Road, a corporate community owned by The Davis Companies that’s just five miles from Boston’s Financial District.
In addition to more space, the new location includes upgraded building amenities provided by One Cabot Road and a 3,370 square foot materials lab with plenty of industrial equipment like tensile testers and fume hoods, which will allow the startup to safely fabricate and test hardware, formulate materials, and test out chemistry. The office also has an 8,100 square foot area with its own power and air lines that’s meant specifically for the Digital Factory, allowing for Inkbit’s customers and partners to take part in dedicated testing and development of materials, hardware, and 3D printed parts. The Inkbit Vista, which deposits photopolymer resins from piezoelectric inkjet heads, has applications in the medical and military sectors, and with all this extra room for hardware R&D, system assembly, materials research, and more in the new office space, Inkbit’s operational capacity for building its Vision-Controlled Jetting (VCJ) system and supplying it to customers will definitely grow. You can learn more about the Inkbit Vista at the upcoming RAPID + TCT 2021 in Chicago at the company’s booth #E7004. 3DPrint.com will also be attending the event. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com August 27, 2021 at 07:06AM Sculpture Design: Bringing Prehistoric Beasts to the 21st Century With a Fusion of Art and Sience8/27/2021
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Sculpture Design: Bringing Prehistoric Beasts to the 21st Century With a Fusion of Art and Sience https://ift.tt/3BcjzuQ From a very young age Konstantinos Fais had two passions: Art and History. Born and grown up in the city of Ioannina in northern Greece, he started the thorough study of ancient Greek and Roman literature in 2010 to depict it through his artistic momentum and cultivating it. In 2017, his first exhibition took place. Since then, he regularly organized painting exhibitions all over Greece with all of his works, without exception, related to ancient Greek literature, while the materials he is working with are, mainly pencil, ink and some of them with dry pastels. Apart from the study of ancient scripts, his inspiration is based on ancient findings such as black and red vases, reliefs, busts, statues, coins, jewelery and tombstones. In 2019 he expanded thematically into two new sectors: One is World Historic Shipping. The focus is primarily on ships famous in history, most of them shipwrecks. The other is the Prehistoric era, from the Upper Neolithic to the Pleistocene in order to approach its relation with Greek and worldwide Mythology. Prehistory is defined as events that occurred before the existence of written records in a given culture or society. In the summer of 2020, MADE Group, a non-profit platform for innovative social projects and creative synergies asked Konstantinos to join the group of creators of the STARTS project, which is financed by the European Commission. In regards to this project, Konstantinos pointed out, that the crew works with concepts allowing them to develop installations recreating paleontological creatures in collaboration with foundations, engineers, artists and local developers. The creature Konstantinos chose to work on is one descending from the Pleistocene. It is based on the biggest saber tooth specimen that has ever been found. In March of 2020, an article in the New York Times caught his attention. The enormous skull of the so-called Smilodon Populator was found in Uruguay. Smilodon Populator became widespread in South America, significantly bigger and more robust than its North American brother, S. Fatalis. It was able to feed on even the most giant prey of its era, in other words, it was at the top of the food chain. Allometric equations revealed that this remarkably big skull once belonged to a ”Hulk-smashed” 435 kg individual. Twice as big as an African lion, and with huge fangs. The artist was so fascinated about this beast that, as soon as he had finished reading the bespoke article, he had the idea of reconstructing the major part of the animal’s skeleton. So, beyond the skull, he had to add the mandible, the neck, the shoulder, thoracic bones, lumbar bones, sacrum part of pelvis bone and the tail. He had to obtain morphology and corresponding dimensions of the rest of the body’s structure. By using clay parts on iron reinforcement, he would bring to life the beast’s skeleton. Step by step he studied all the osteological/osteomorphical structure and considering that the skull found in Uruguay wass 13% bigger than the respective one of the notorious and also big Smilodon Bonaerensis described by Muñis in 1845( or Machaerodus neogaeus, named by Hermann in 1866 ), he enlarged every other single bone by 13% as well. He dedicated more than 1200 hours ( 7 months ) and almost 60 kg of clay to complete it, separately from the iron base. It’s in 1:1 scale, which translates in a total length of almost three meters, measured from the front of the skull to the tail. Sculpture Digitalization: Making the 3D Scanning Data Accessible for Education and ResearchAfter the sculpture has been completed, the valuable and fragile pieces of the giant were transported from Ioannina to Athens. The sculpture was transferred to the high-tech 3D scanning facilities of 3DHUB Greece. 3DHUB has been partnering with SHINING 3D and selling EinScan 3D scanners all over Greece for several years already. Thus, the EinScan-Pro HD multifunctional handheld 3D scanner turned out to be the perfect 3D scanning tool helping Konstantinos to bring every single piece of the skeleton sculpture into the 3D world. The whole process lasted 3 days and high-resolution object models were provided, suitable for either commercial applications or educational purposes. The team opted to use the EinScan-Pro HD to complete the project due to its exceptional ability to capture very high details while keeping a fast capturing speed and tracking capability. All parts were scanned in one go without tracking problems while changing from front to back side. The scanner even coped at ease with scanning the fully assembled sculpture. This article has been brought to you by 3DHUB. The information compiled in this case study has been derived from the following sources: About Konstantinos´ journey to prehistoric sculpture building
Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com August 27, 2021 at 06:54AM
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Benjamin Wurster https://ift.tt/3BfMvlR Based in the beautiful Black Forest in the south of Germany, Benjamin Wurster is a communication designer and printmaker. Benjamin works freelance for a range of clients and agencies in the Stuttgart area, whilst also establishing himself as a printmaker. Born and raised in Taiwan, when he was 11 years old Benjamin’s family moved back to Germany where they settled in the northern Black Forest. From 2011 to 2017 he studied Communication Design at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. During this time he focused his efforts on print media design, where he developed his now signature strong conceptual and artistic approach. Whilst studying Benjamin also partook in an internship at Pentagram partner Sascha Lobe’s former design office, L2M3, who he still collaborates with from time to time. Benjamin’s work has always focused intensively on the topic of inspiration. His diploma thesis was titled Über Inspiration and included a blog, a poster, and a book in which he dealt with the topic theoretically and practically. Nature is also one of the greatest sources of influence for his practice; “It is so diverse that I can discover something new every day that makes me marvel. But it is also so calming that I always retreat to it when I am agitated and confused.” Through the design process Benjamin likes to combine analogue and digital techniques, often starting the design on the computer, producing it by hand, and then returning to the computer to further process what has been created. For example, in his print series Leafy House Plants, he used plant illustrations from the botanical encyclopedia Zimmerblattpflanzen from 1899 as templates for his own linocuts. The 120 year old book by Udo Dammer had inspired Benjamin so much that he “had to make something new out of it”. Last year he was able to publish a new version of the book called Leafy House Plants with Slanted Publishers. Currently, Benjamin is working on Woodcut Words; posting a new woodcut on Instagram each week with the hashtag #weeklywoodcut. He plans to combine the 52 prints that appear in the course of 2021 into a card game next year. He hopes that these cards will then serve as a new source of inspiration for other creatives. “With my work, I always try to create things that inspire other people. I want to help them to become creative themselves and create something new.” @benjaminwurster Printing via People of Print https://ift.tt/2DhgcW7 August 27, 2021 at 03:42AM |
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