Recently, in the case of a team of researchers based at UK Nottingham Trent University,
A model of the modified Leapfrog Printer used in production. 4d printing can be defined as the combined use of advanced 3d printing technology and the change of form over time.
With their own version of 4d printing, Fergal B. Coulter and Anton Ianakiev are exploring the fabrication of artificial muscle by creating a system for producing seamless tubular silicone membranes with dielectric elastomer actuators (DEA
a form of electroactive polymer that induces a change in form. Coulter and Ianakiev describe the DEAS as ssentially flexible capacitors sending low energy electric signals to the flexible tubular structure
and causing it to change its form. The team believes that the 3d printed muscles can eventually be used within soft biorobotic devices,
creating flexible muscle-like functions at the cost of little energy. The UK-based research team has created low-power artificial muscles with a customized Leapfrog Creatr 3d printer,
The material used was a tough and flexible silicone material called Shore 73a which is composed of thixotropic, a bit of kaolin mineral filler (10),
%and alumina trihydrate (5%).The modified 3d printing system was engineered to print multiple layers of the silicone rubber material at a consistent rate,
Each surface layer of the 3d printed silicone was coated with graphite, capable of acting as a DEA electrode.
The team inflicted mechanical strain on these silicone muscles during the process by inflating the balloon-like mandrel structure,
the team was able to show the varying shapes from pre-to post-inflation with a Grasshopper plug-in. Once the printed material was cured
and the balloon was deflated, the silicone was able to make an evenly distributed return to its original shape.
The energy used in the shape change was kept to a minimum because of the compression within the 3d printed tubular structure.
Using robust silicone material, DEA electrodes, and a modified 3d printing system, the research team was able to not only replicate the structure of the muscle,
but also prove that the printed object could function like one, too. Soft robotics is only one of the few industries that 3d printing technology has influenced,
& Car 3d printing is a technology that people are only beginning to understand. And, because of that, its true potential has begun only to be explored.
So, when a company like Local Motors 3d prints a car or Winsun, in China, 3d prints a complete mansion, theye really only demonstrated a proof of concept,
a simple exercise that proves to the world that 3d printing can be used to fabricate cars or houses.
as Oak ridge National Laboratory today unveils their first experiments in the Additive manufacturing Integrated Energy (AMIE) project,
Described in the most basic way possible, the AMIE project is a 3d printed car and a 3d printed house.
As an engineer focused on energy, Roderick wants to see how those two modern living essentials can consume,
produce, and share energy to form a symbiotic relationship that could grow into a fruitful energy future.
little more than a year ago, we started down this pathway in the lab of looking at how do we deal with the challenges that our nation has with energy.
With buildings consuming about 40%of energy use and transportation consuming another 28%or so, how are we going to get from here to there,
And, if you also look at the fact that we have these extreme events we have these 100 year storms it seems like every year and theye very disruptive to our energy needs.
Look at Hurricane sandy, at Hurricane katrina. There a need for an energy solution that goes beyond the traditional approach to doing energy.
Jackson solution, co-developed by ORNL and about 20 industry partners, was a home and a car that could feed energy to one another.
On display at ORNL EERE Industry Day, is integrated a complete energy system, consisting of a 3d printed home with a small kitchenette,
entertainment area, and murphy bed with an accompanying Printed Utility Vehicle (PUV). The home, on the one hand, receives energy from solar panels affixed to its roof,
but, when the sun can provide electricity to the dwelling, the PUV, equipped with a natural gas-powered generator, generates that power.
This energy is passed from home to car or vice versa through a bidirectional wireless power transfer system, a pad besides the structure over which the PUV parks.
Both the habitat and the auto also house their respective batteries for long-term storage, allowing one to feed off the energy supply of the other. n essence, most of the time,
wee not at home, Jackson says, hen the sun is out. Sun is available during the day,
when wee at work. So, electricity storage is needed. What wee doing is taking a different approach to battery storage where the batteries wee using for this project were once a part of a vehicle.
And, when theye expended their useful life for a vehicle, theye still useful for home energy storage,
something else wee demonstrating as well with this project. The work that went into all of this,
and the technology underlying it, is hard to imagine. Even more difficult to imagine is that all of this was conceived
plotted out, and created in just one year. year ago, none of the partners were acquainted with each other or this project.
This project evolved in less than a year. To produce the AMIE system that quickly was no easy task and,
in fact, required taking an entirely new approach to both design and construction. See, as a species,
Fortunately, through their work with Local Motors, to develop the crowdsourcing auto manufacturer electric roadsters, Oak ridge had the Big Area Additive manufacturing (BAAM) machine.
the BAAM was capable of printing the frame for a complete vehicle live on the floor of the IMTS trade show in Chicago about a year ago,
extruding ABS-carbon fiber composite over the course of 40 hours, before the body was milled to achieve a more refined look.
capable of extruding 100 pounds of material per hour with a 8x 20x 6build volume, even more massive than the original BAAM 7x 13x 3envelope.
was perfect for demonstrating the potential of an additively manufactured, integrated energy system. Not only would Bertha be able to 3d print a complete auto body, necessary for the AMIE project,
without any of the waste that goes into mass manufacturing parts. e used over 20,000 pounds of material for this project,
With the size of the structure, you need that kind of throughput to meet the structural needs of the building.
To do the actual design and assembly of the 3d printed home, ORNL partnered with two of the biggest names in the construction industry.
without corners, we have rounded edges that you can really stress. And we were able to print them in half-rings.
and the material supplier for the ABS-carbon fiber composite we were able to reduce the material
ell, wee trying to make it to Industry Day first, before going on to explain that they seek out the appropriate venues in
Jackson has attained a number of degrees, all the way up to a doctorate, in energy and construction, all before joining Oak ridge and playing a key role in the landmark Campbell Creek study.
This is true of cement extrusion, as well as any food-paste extrusion, silicon, alginate, resins and, yes, cellular hydrogels for bioprinting.
A team of scientists at the University of Florida, which includes Thomas E. Angelini from the University Soft Matter Research Lab,
have found that a particular type of granular gel offers the best solution to this issue.
According to a paper published in Science Advances the UFL team were trying to find a way to deal with the problems of low surface tension
and structure deterioration that occurs when printing soft materials. The gel offers the unique combination of being liquid
especially in the case of biomaterials. olding material within the gel negates the effects of surface tension, gravity,
including silicones, hydrogels, colloids, and living cells. For example, they have used this process to create complex multi-scale structures using PVA hydrogels and fluorescent colloids.
and tissues that the surgeons are going to operate on. Other applications include tissue engineering, flexible electronics, particle engineering, smart materials,
and encapsulation technologies. In order to demonstrate the possibilities of this new 3d printing method, the UFL researchers created several objects including even a soft artificial octopus,
#Freedee Printing Solutions Launches Hungary First 3d Academy 3d Academy may be one of the top trends in European 3d printing lately.
One of the reasons may be that most European schools systems do not dedicate enough resources to those subjects that the American school system defines as STEM
one of them is Freedee Printing Solutions, one of Hungary first 3d printing and 3d scanning service and retailer.
Several university decision makers, company partners and other Hungarian 3d printing ventures participated at the opening ceremony held last week.
Besides offering workshops and trainings the classroom it will also serve as a reference for those interested in implementing an innovation center themselves.
They also aim to provide universities and other institutions a chance to experience owning and using a Makerbot Innovation Center.
scalable 3d printer farm using Makerbot hardware and software, developed especially for schools and universities. At the 3d Academy, Freedee will have 10 Makerbot Replicators
and one Replicator Z18, complemented by several 3d scanners and educational materials. These will be used as a base for the courses aimed at the general public and for collaborations with public schools.
The very first class was held the day after the opening for students of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest.
Freedee recently merged with Gigamax3d and Peter Szabo, who is also well known as an artist
and creator of 3d printed parametric art, will contribute to the classes with his own experience as well as through exercises from the Makerbot in the classroom handbook.
Some feel learning about 3d printing could be useless since 3d printing, as we know it today,
is destined to change radically in the upcoming years. So, incidentally, have done always other subjects such as history and science
and tampering with the natural environment, we may soon reach a point where we can no longer enjoy the pleasures that lay within the world waters.
But a team of engineers from the University of California Riverside are trying to help clean up the mess with an amazing 3d printed concept called the Spongesuit bikini,
which works by using a unique material that absorbs pollutants while the wearer is swimming.
The material was produced by UC Riverside electrical engineering professor Mihri Ozkan along with the help of her husband/fellow engineering professor Cengiz Ozkan and a couple of former and current Ph d students.
The team calls this material ponge a reusable material derived from heated sucrose, which is a form of sugar has a highly porous structure that is simultaneously water-repellant and pollutant-absorbent.
The material is both cost-effective and environmentally friendly, but Ozkan and her team still needed a fashionable way to house the pongethat they had developed.
The 3d printed elastomer body of the Spongesuit bikini has a unique, spiderweb-like design, and acts as the structure for the pongetechnology filler.
while the material itself is able to absorb up to 25 times its own weight in pollutants
the pollutants are trapped within the pores of the material, ensuring that the absorbed material never makes contact with the wearer.
#Turning plastic waste into a resource What if we were to stop thinking about plastic waste as something to be disposed of,
and instead started thinking of it as a potential resource? Plastics are made essentially polymers from long chains of carbon and other elements.
They are relatively inexpensive to manufacture and their versatility, durability and imperviousness to water means they are used everywhere, from packaging to cars and furniture and toys.
But, because polymers and plastics are so cheap to manufacture the economic benefit of recycling can be marginal.
This 2004 story from ABC-TV's Catalyst program looked at the research of Professor Veena Sahajwalla of the University of NSW
and her idea that the carbon and hydrogen in waste plastics might be a useful resource for the manufacture of steel.
For this to work the use of the waste polymers needed to be more cost-effective than traditional methods,
while still resulting in a product of the same or even higher quality than before. 2015 update Veena's research has proven to be highly successful.
On the path to commercialisation, her team found an even more effective approach was to use the polymers in another type of waste used car tyres.
Most of the existing uses for old tyres involve making low value secondary products such as asphalt, aggregate for cement, artificial reefs, footwear, plastic and rubber composites,
or cushioning material in playgrounds. Together with technology partner One Steel Veena's team perfected the technique of'polymer injection'for electric arc furnaces.
In Australia alone, this technology has resulted so far in over two million used car tyres being converted from waste into a valuable feedstock for steel production.
The technology has also been licensed to steel makers in South korea, Thailand and the UK enabling high quality steel products to be produced more economically and with less energy,
while at the same time reducing the environmental problems of waste tyre disposal s
#Deep-sea fish found to be warm-blooded Calling someone a cold fish may not hold any more after scientists today revealed a deep-sea fish that is warm-blooded.
While it was known previously that the opah (Lampris guttatus) could heat its eyes and brain, a paper published today in Science shows it can also heat its entire body.
This makes the opah the only known fish species to be whole-body endothermic, or warm-blooded.
Dr Nick Wegner, who co-authored the study, says this trait gives the opah distinct advantages as a deep-sea predator."
"It will increase its performance in cold environments-it can swim faster, has faster reaction times
and better visual resolution than a lot of its prey,"says Wegner, a fisheries research biologist at the National Marine Fisheries Service in California.
The opah Lampris guttatus has a global range that includes the southern waters of Australia and swims at depths between 10 and 450 metres.
which warms up the body core. As the warm blood leaves the core and travels toward the surface of the gills, it transfers its heat to the cold blood that is travelling back from the gills where it has absorbed oxygen from the water.
Wegner likens the system to a car radiator and says the exchange stops the heat from nearing the gill surface where it would be cooled by the water flow through the gills.
Further fatty tissue surrounds the gills heart and muscle tissue where the opah generates much of its internal heat,
Taking out wisdom teeth when you don't need to costs Australians millions of dollars say experts.
Researchers writing recently in The british Dental Journal argue dentists shouldn't remove impacted wisdom teeth that are not giving any symptoms.
and saves money by leaving alone wisdom teeth that were never going to cause a problem in the first place."
"The core message is using evidence to drive healthcare reform, "says Professor Marc Tennant of the University of Western australia,
who worked for 20 years in public health dentistry.""In Britain when they started to apply some evidence-based criteria,
Dentists often remove impacted wisdom teeth to avoid the risk of problems such as pain, gum inflammation and decay.
they advise dentists keep a close eye on the teeth to see if they develop problems.
surgery itself can lead to complications such as nerve damage, damage to other teeth, infection, swelling,
bleeding, pain or affect a patient's ability to open their mouth fully. Tennant and colleagues, including graduate student Abed Anjrini,
previously found 527 per 100,000 Australians were admitted to hospital for impacted wisdom teeth removal in 2008/09--a rate seven times higher than in the UK
and continuing to increase. In the new paper, the team calculate the savings that would result
including indirect costs (for example time off work). Most of the costs involved in wisdom tooth removal in Australia are borne by individuals,
usually drawing on their private health insurance. But Dr Rick Olive, president of the Australian Dental Association, argues the approach taken by the UK,
by their dentists, to decide whether they want to take the risk of keeping their impacted wisdom teeth.
when you have your wisdom teeth out the more likely you will suffer complications from the surgery,
and will result in an increasing rate of surgical complications. Although, he adds, we won't know
The cloak, 80 nanometers in thickness, was wrapped around a three-dimensional object shaped with bumps and dents.
said Xiang Zhang, director of the Materials sciences Division of the US Department of energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley."
But much more work needs to be done, "said Dr Zhang, whose research was published in the journal Science.
The technology involves metamaterials, which possess properties not present in nature. Their surfaces bear features much smaller than the size of a wavelength of light.
"said study lead author Professor Xingjie Ni of Penn State university. The researchers said they overcame two drawbacks of previous experimental microscopic cloaks that were bulkier and harder to"scale up,
Dr Ni said the technology eventually could be used for military applications like making large objects like vehicles or aircraft or even individual soldiers"invisible".
could lead to developments in areas as diverse as high-powered"tractor beams";"or manipulating drug delivery in the human body.
Professor of Ultrasonics at the University of Bristol, said while other groups had levitated successfully objects,
However, Professor Drinkwater and colleagues managed to move the tiny objects-less than one millimetre in size-using a single-sided array of loudspeakers.
Professor Drinkwater said. He said their new study built on the work of researchers at the University of Dundee.
The Dundee team had shown there was a force attracting some acoustic waves back to their sound source."
Success lies in'brute-force inversion'Ironically, Professor Drinkwater said the team's success lay in the absence of a mathematician amongst them."
They then used the computer's predictions to run practical experiments to test the results.
Professor Drinkwater said the successful sound wave configurations had interesting characteristics.""The successful ones were all either tweezer,
"Tractor beams, delivering cancer drugs and other new potentials Professor Drinkwater said the importance of developing a single-sided device was expanded that it the potential of the technology
and paved the way for the development of'tractor beams'that could pull objects toward the sound source."
"Single-sided devices potentially enable in vivo manipulation since the device could be applied directly on to the skin with the manipulation taking place inside the body;
"Professor Drinkwater said the development could also lead to"non-contact production lines"for handling delicate or dangerous materials without contact.
However he was excited most about the technology's potential in treating diseases such as cancer by delivering drugs more efficiently."
#AFRL providing cost-effective inspection solutions for turbine engine aircraft Aircraft engine inspections are an essential part of maintaining a healthy and reliable fleet.
The Air force Research Laboratory Materials and Manufacturing Directorate is working to change this. In an effort to improve the turbine engine inspection process,
AFRL researchers have recently transitioned the Sonic Infrared nondestructive evaluation inspection method for turbine engine airfoils.
This system, developed for AFRL by Florida Turbine Technologies, Inc.,can replace traditional inspection methods for crack detection,
such as Fluorescent Penetrant Inspection, which can be costly and time-consuming. Through SIR, ultrasonic waves are used to vibrate the part,
and efficient alternative to FPI for whole-field, engine airfoil inspection. According to AFRL project engineer Siamack Mazdiyasni,
Most notably, the increased level of reliability of SIR inspections over FPI means aircraft maintainers can often return engine airfoils to service
The initial target application for this technology is turbine engine compressor blades. Mazdiyasni and AFRL project engineers estimate that keeping these engine components in service can result in at least $5 million in annual savings.
AFRL recently transitioned this inspection method to the Oklahoma city Air Logistics Complex at Tinker Air force base
The Air force Life cycle Management Center has expressed plans to merge the technology into their automated airfoil inspection and repair initiative.
Studying SIR inspection for engine airfoils is only the first step. Mazdiyasni says future plans include investigating the technology for other engine components including coated parts and fracture critical parts s
#Floating Solar panels: A Viable Solution? Since 2011, French Company Ciel & Terre has been developing large-scale floating solar solutions.
Their innovative Hydrelio Floating PV system allows standard PV panels to be installed on large bodies of water such as:
drinking water reservoirs, quarry lakes, irrigation canals, remediation and tailing ponds, and hydro electric dam reservoirs.
This simple and affordable alternative to ground-mounted systems is particularly suitable for water-intensive industries who cannot afford to waste either land or water.
The main float is constructed of high-density thermoplastic (HDPE) and is set at a 12 degree angle to support a standard 60 Cell PV solar module.
fully recyclable, has low environmental impact and is cost effective. To date the system has been installed in the UK,
#Spot Glaucoma With Your Smartphone Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, have developed a method to diagnose glaucoma from smartphone images.
Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bangalore, have announced the development of a new and simple method to detect glaucoma early enough to prevent blindness.
Glaucoma is usually the result of increased pressure in the eye, resulting in damage to the optic nerve,
which carries information to the brain. Since the symptoms of glaucoma do not show up until very late stages,
early detection by a procedure called fundus imaging is advised. Fundus imaging involves taking photographs of the retina
Software developed at the IISC greatly simplifies the procedure by using software to rapidly analyse images which can be taken with a handheld fundus camera
or even with a smartphone camera. e calculate parameters like cup-to-disc ratio to identify potentially glaucomatous conditions,
professor of electrical engineering at the IISC and leader of the team that developed the new method. his pre-screening tool can detect glaucoma with 90 percent accuracy,
Seelamantula says mass screening of fundus images by semiskilled people is possible with pre-screening software. he software allows rapid screening of the images and highlights those that need the attention of the specialist.
This is useful when hospitals, government healthcare units or NGOS conduct healthcare camps, he says. The IISC team has not,
but there is interest in making it suitable for mass application by converting the Java-based software into an Android app for example,
Sudipto Pakrasi, chairman of the ophthalmology division at Medanta, Gurgaon, Haryana, tells Scidev. Net that currently available technologies for detection of glaucoma are expensive
while the new method is not only cheap, but will also help with mass-screening for glaucoma.
About 12 percent of India 1. 2 billion people are estimated to be affected by glaucoma. amage to the optic nerve due to glaucoma is not reversible.
If we detect it early then it is possible to halt the progression of glaucoma by appropriate medications or surgery,
Pakrasi says. ision may be preserved at nearly normal levels if glaucoma is detected and treated early. c
#ab-In-A-Needledetects Liver Toxicity In 30 Minutes The researchers are currently working on a prototype that miniaturizes a test lab into the size of a needle.
This ab-in-a-needledevice will be effective, for example, in quickly detecting liver toxicity, a common side effect of chemotherapy.
Current tests entail multiple steps and results could take several days. Instead, the compact kit can take patient samples,
evaluate toxicity and display the results in one simple process. Dr. Wang Zhiping, Director of research Programs at Agency for Science, Technology and Research's (A*STAR) Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTECH
while the second chip runs the various tests on the purified blood sample. It is the brainchild of a joint research team from Singapore Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore), SIMTECH and the Houston Methodist Hospital Research Institute.
NTU Professor Joseph Chang, who is involved in the design and construction of the prototype, said,
hat our prototype shows is that samples can be prepared and analysed through it, eliminating the need for wet laboratory work
and manpower. ur new method significantly reduces time, manpower and costs and yet has the same accurate results as the gold standards of current liver toxicity tests, added Chang,
who is also the Director of VIRTUS Center of Excellence in Integrated circuit Design at NTU School of Electrical and Electronic engineering n
#Predicting Which Combinations Will Yield Metallic Glass Materials scientists have created an nstruction manualfor developing metallic glassn ultra-tough yet flexible alloy described as the most significant materials science innovation since plastic.
Their results have been published in Nature Communications. Just like something from science fictionhink of the Liquid-Metal robot assassin in the Terminator filmshese materials behave more like glass or plastic than metal.
While still being metals, they become as malleable as chewing gum when heated and can be molded easily
or blown like glass. They are also three times stronger and harder than ordinary metals on average, and are among the toughest materials known. hey have been described as the most significant development in materials science
since the discovery of plastics more than 50 years ago, says study author, Dr. Kevin Laws from the University of New south wales (UNSW).
Most metals are crystalline when solid, with their atoms arranged in a highly organised and regular manner.
Metallic glass alloys, however, have disordered a highly structure, with the atoms arranged in a non-regular way. here are many types of metallic glass, with the most popular ones based on zirconium, palladium, magnesium, titanium or copper.
But until now, discovering alloy compositions that form these materials has required a lengthy process of trial and error in the laboratory,
says Laws. In the present study, Laws and his colleagues describe the first model of the atomic structure of metallic glass
which allows scientists to predict the metal combinations that will have glass-forming ability. They have used their model to successfully predict more than 200 new metallic glass alloys based on magnesium, silver, copper,
zinc and titanium in the past few years. ith our new instruction manual we can start to create many new useful metallic glass-types
and begin to understand the atomic fundamentals behind their exceptional properties. We will also be able to engineer these materials on an atomic scale
says Laws. etallic glass alloys are expensive to manufacture and to date have only been used in niche products,
such as ejector pins for iphones, watch springs for expensive hand-wound watches, trial medical implants,
They are planned also for use in the next Mars rover vehicle. ut if they become easier and cheaper to make,
they could be used widely in many applications including as exceptionally strong components in personal electronic devices, in space exploration vehicles,
and as hydrogen storage materials in next generation batteries. i
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