3D printing can be used to benefit the world in many ways, and thousands of caring people have dedicated their time and energy towards working with the technology to help others or the planet, whether it’s 3D printing prosthetics or coming up with ways to recycle plastic into 3D printer filament. Both of those are wonderful things do so, so why not combine them into one project? That’s what an organization called Re:Purpose for Good is doing by creating 3D printed, robotic prosthetic devices out of recycled plastic and e-waste.

The Re:Purpose for Good team includes a robotics engineer, a sustainability specialist, a biomedical engineer and an industrial designer. They recently concluded a successful campaign on crowdfunding platform Chuffed, raising more than AUD$10,000 to get their project off the ground. Robotics and prosthetics engineer Gerardo Montoya had been working on 3D printing prosthetics for children in Mexico, and that idea merged with the desire to do something about the eight million tons of plastic entering the oceans.

There are many projects out there dedicated to 3D printing prosthetic hands and arms, but fewer that include legs and feet as well. The Re:Purpose project 3D prints both hands and feet, custom-made for the user.

“There’s a ‘one size fits all’ design and this makes it really difficult to customise prosthetics to a user,” said team member Caitlin Scullin. “Obviously, everyone is different and their needs are different, so usually more invasive surgery is required to make the prosthetics fit the person, instead of customising for their specific needs. Our designs are comfortable and, most importantly custom built for a fraction of the cost.”

Re:Purpose for Good uses Precious Plastic machines to shred plastic waste into pellets, and extrude the pellets into filament. Then, once the prosthetic device has been designed according to the needs of the recipient, it’s 3D printed from the recycled filament. Currently, the team is working on a hand for a boy who was born without one, a leg for someone who lost one to cancer, and a finger for a woman who lost one in the military.

“We also use e-waste, like old smartphones that have all the circuitry and microprocessors we need that enable us to use intuitive design models so that a user with a prosthetic hand, for example, can grasp objects from the first fitting,” said Scullin.

There’s actually a third goal with the project: education. Re:Purpose for Good plans to teach their prosthetic-making process to children as part of their STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics) curriculum, allowing them to learn 3D printing skills as well as a way to help people in need. It’s Re:Purpose’s goal to spread their project as widely as possible, and they’re making it open source as a way to get more people involved.

In Australia, where Re:Purpose for Good is based, one in 1,000 people is missing one or more limbs, which equates to more than 20,000 people. Re:Purpose for Good wants to reach as many of those people as they can, while doing something to mitigate the vast amounts of plastic being dumped into the ocean at the same time. The project is also designed to be open source, allowing for interested parties around the world to take on this work.

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Ever since the Brexit vote occurred, everyone has been wondering what the United Kingdom’s economic future will look like. According to Juergen Maier, CEO of Siemens UK, the country should be just fine – as long as it fully embraces and catches up to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In a government-commissioned report entitled Made Smarter, Maier says that the UK could create thousands of jobs and generate £455 billion over the next 10 years – but he also says that the country needs “greater ambition” to take advantage of technology such as 3D printing, robotics, virtual reality and the Internet of Things.

New challenges and higher costs are facing the manufacturing sector after the Brexit vote, but those challenges can be mitigated by incorporating these technologies more thoroughly into the industry, says Maier.

“The good news here is Britain is not starting from nothing,” he says. “The UK has brilliant knowledge, assets and skills in this space but it is sometimes not as organised as it could be. This combined package of measures will boost UK growth and productivity in manufacturing and provide more exports and increased earning potential, which our economy desperately needs.”

Those measures were developed by more than 200 organizations, and include the creation of what the report calls a “digital ecosystem,” which would include support for small and medium-sized businesses looking to adopt industrial digital technologies (IDT). That would include the bringing together a network of Digital Innovation Hubs, implementing Digital Transformational Demonstrator programs to address key challenges and improve productivity and sustainability, and creating a network of Digital Research Centers to advance research and innovation in several focused areas of industrial technology.

Another proposal involves training a million industrial workers in digital technology under the Made Smarter UK commission, which would involve the creation of a digital delivery platform for upskilling and reskilling workers, as well as the establishment of an incentivized program to further digital skills, especially in workers who are at risk of losing their jobs to automation. Further suggestions include creating a national brand campaign to increase awareness of how digital technologies can transform industry, and the development of standards for IDT. Data trusts to ensure the secure exchange of data are also recommended.

Despite some jobs being replaced by robotics and automation, Maier hopes that a net gain in jobs will be possible thanks to positions in IT, analytics, and research and development – which is why a national upskilling/reskilling program is so important. Skills have been in focus in the UK for some time, with many calling for a focus on digital upskilling to enhance adoption of advanced technologies.

“On the one hand it is going to create productivity and more exports and through that we can create more jobs but at the same time robotics and artificial intelligence will displace some jobs,” he says. “The best thing we can do is to make ourselves ready for it in a very proactive way and that means training our people…we need to up skill one million existing workers in the industrial and manufacturing sector…so they can transition from tasks that might be displaced to, for example, managing or programming robots.”

Juergen Maier [Image: Mark Pinder/The Observer]

According to Maier, the Made Smarter review sets forth a goal for the UK to become not only skilled in digital technology, but a leader in the field. Among the broad proposals outlined above are specific plans, such as allowing small to medium-sized engineering companies to go to a space to experiment with new technologies and see how they might be applied within their own facilities, and partnering startups with universities and larger companies like Siemens through the digital innnovation hubs.

The government will now consider the proposals laid out in the report with the goal of agreeing on a sector deal with industry that is likely to include co-investment. A government white paper is expected to be published before Christmas.

“The UK manufacturing sector has the potential to be a global leader in the industrial digital technology revolution,” said Business Secretary Greg Clark. “Government and industry must work together to seize the opportunities that exist in this sector and promote the benefits of adopting emerging digital technologies, as well as cutting edge business models.”

The full report is available here.

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If you have been following 3D printing even for just a short amount of time, then you are probably aware that while one surprising innovation after another seems to pop up from every corner of the world, the technology has also been connected with so many others such as robotics, virtual reality, biotechnology, and far more. Now, scientists are mixing a versatile material with 3D printing filament to achieve a novel result in the form of sensor technology that has the potential to be groundbreaking.

In seeking to embed metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) in one, single, usable material (rather than multiple ones, as seemed to be their only initial choice), a team of scientists working together from both the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and American University have been working on a project that could prove to be useful in the world of sensors.

This view of the molecular structure of the MOF shows the triangular channels that run through the material. The walls of these channels trap the lower-octane components of gas while allowing the higher-octane molecules to pass through, potentially providing a more efficient and cost effective way to refine high-octane gasoline. [Image: Science/AAAS]

With these combinations of metal and organic molecules, the idea is to adapt them for use in sensors, although that is something that has never been done before. The group was attracted to using MOFs because of their lightweight, easy to manufacture quality. The issue is that generally, one MOF is attracted to one chemical only. It latches on as soon as it is exposed to that favorite chemical, but would be difficult to put directly onto a sensor—thus the challenge to one or many of them altogether. On experimenting with 3D printing, the team found that the plastic filament generally used for fabricating different items was a perfect mix with the MOFs. They found they could embed the MOFs through using a 3D printer as the filament allows so many gases to simply pass right through.

The findings were reported recently in their paper “Toward 3D printed hydrogen storage materials made with ABS-MOF composites,” published in Polymers for Advanced Technologies, where the scientists explained more about the mixture. They view the results as having great potential, but in need of further refinement. Currently, the mix holds over 50 times more than plastic can by itself, proving that the MOFs are working from within.

With this new process, the researchers realized that the MOFs may proof extremely helpful in the future in a variety of different industrial applications—especially since they are so buoyant within the mix, not just ending up resting heavily on the bottom.

“The auto industry is still looking for an inexpensive, lightweight way to store fuel in hydrogen-powered cars,” said NIST sensor scientist Zeeshan Ahmed. “We’re hoping that MOFs in plastic might form the basis of the fuel tank.”

The team presses on with improving the process, and a second paper is already being written as they study how MOFs can take in nitrogen and hydrogen.

“The goal is to find a storage method that can hold 4.5 percent hydrogen by weight, and we’ve got a bit less than one percent now,” said Ahmed. “But from a materials perspective, we don’t need to make that dramatic an improvement to reach the goal. So we see the glass—or the plastic—as half full already.”

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3D printing has developed towards a useful tool in laboratories for chemical, physical and biotechnological research. Typical applications for 3D printed objects are stopped flow microreactors, where uniquely optimized geometries of the reactor can be realized easily.

Researchers from the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Clausthal University of Technology operated a 3D printer based on the commonly used Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technology within the oxygen- and water-free inert gas atmosphere of a glove box. Such glove boxes are routinely used to handle highly reactive and spontaneously inflammable reagents.

As a first result, the mechanical properties of FDM printed parts were found to be significantly improved, if the print was performed under inert conditions. Partly due to the suppression of oxidation processes, which leads to a better layer adhesion, and partly due to an impact on the crystallinity of the printed polymers, the elongation at break as well as the tensile strength were improved. These results have been published freely accessible and shall help for the development of improved FDM printers.

Reaction flasks and reaction cuvettes have been printed out of filaments commonly used for the FDM process such as polyamide. With a wall thickness of 0.12 inch, the printed flasks showed up to be highly pressure resistant (tested with 290 psi) as well as impermeable against oxygen and water. Additionally, they were stable against all common organic solvents. The main focus of the research was the 3D print of flasks and attached cuvettes with exactly the same geometry as the original counterparts made of glass and steel. During short pauses of the printing process, all required reagents and solvents had been inserted into the partly completed reaction flask. Subsequently, the printing process was finalized and a completely closed reaction vessel had been obtained. This procedure led to a reaction vessel, in which the whole synthetic procedure could be performed while at the same time analytical measurements could be realized through the 3D printed cuvette. Most common analytical methods such as UV/Vis, IR and NMR spectroscopy could be applied without significant interference from the matrix polymer. The concept and the geometries of the cuvettes have been published in a freely accessible paper.

Operation of an FDM 3D printer under inert conditions inside a glove box.

In summary, it was possible to 3D print reaction cuvettes inside the inert atmosphere of a glove box and to fill them with highly reactive reagents during small pauses of the print. Subsequently, the flasks could be removed from the glove box and the reaction was monitored directly through the 3D printed cuvette without opening the flask or taking samples. After the reaction had been completed, the flasks were opened and the reaction product isolated without contamination from the printing filament. Recently, the application of the concept for modern palladium-catalyzed syntheses has been published.

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Text and images: Eike Hübner

Research undertaken by Eike Hübner and his team, especially first author Felix Lederle