Category Archives: News
Designed to Win: 3D Printing Could Help Athletes Break World Records
Will 3D printing make a difference at the next Olympics?
French designer Luc Fusaro has developed a new technique for custom-fitted track shoes using 3D printing. His project, called “Designed to Win”, produces the lightest sprint footwear ever made at just 96 grams and is fitted to match the physical properties of the runner’s foot.
3D printing is the only way to create shoes this light and with such a perfect, custom fit.
Fusaro’s approach utilises a similar approach using bespoke manufacturing processes. Following 3D scanning of the athlete’s feet, a “one shot” full sprint shoe is produced, complete with traction elements and shoelace features, and is the very first sprint shoe fully made with additive manufacturing. The SLS (selective laser sintering) process, known for being ideal for a constantly changing design process, is also one of the strongest in the range of additive manufacturing.
Fusaro claims that the shoes can improve running performance up to 3.5%, which should enable top athletes to break world records in track.
The video below shows how the shoes are made and depicts athletes testing the shoes.
Via Luc Fusaro and PSFK.
Top 3D Printing Headlines Last Week: Dinosaurs, Action Figures, Organs, Olympics
A roundup of the top news On 3D Printing brought you from July 2 to July 8.
Monday, July 2
- Video: 3D Printing for Dummies; A Very Basic Introduction
- Top 10 Countdown: Most Popular 3D Printing Stories in June 2012
Tuesday, July 3
Wednesday, July 4
Thursday, July 5
- How Leading Scientists Across Fields are Embracing 3D Printing
- Always Wanted Your Own Action Figure? 3D Print Your Face [Video]
Friday, July 6
Come to London for the Olympics, Stay for the 3D Print Show
The Internet changed the world in the 1990s. The world is about to change again.
That’s the tag line for the next big event in London after the 2012 Olympics: the 3D Print Show in October. Stay tuned for more coverage from us leading up to the show.
Below is an excerpt from a preview of the 3D Print Show by the UK publication The Telegraph.
Kerry Hogarth, the organiser of the show, said the show would introduce people to the entire process involved in 3D printing: scanning real world objects to make replicas, designing new objects using computer software and then printing the results.
“The people who will come to the show are probably early adopters,” she said. “Over the last three to six months a lot of people have been enquiring about what to do.”
Among the companies exhibiting at the show will be EuroPac 3D, a scanning company whose work includes scanning the Harry Potter set for use in computer-generated imagery and scanning decaying sculptures on the roof of Blenheim Palace so that they can be accurately preserved.
John Beckett, EuroPac’s managing director, said: “We’ll have scanners there that will be able to scan, say, jewellery. We’ll have a complete body scanner which will be able to make a complete scan in about five seconds.”
Although printers capable of producing large objects are still outside the price range of most people, Ms Hogarth predicts that prices will fall over the next couple of years.
Via The Telegraph.
London Olympics photo by UK in Italy used under Creative Commons license.
Scientists Create Blood Vessels Using Sugar and 3D Printing
University researchers have discovered a way to 3D print blood vessels, using sugar as the “ink” and a RepRap 3D printer. UPenn and MIT researchers collaborated on the study.
The research was conducted by a team led by postdoctoral fellow Jordan S. Miller and Christopher S. Chen, the Skirkanich Professor of Innovation in the Department of Bioengineering at Penn, along with Sangeeta N. Bhatia, Wilson Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and postdoctoral fellow Kelly R. Stevens in Bhatia’s laboratory.
The researchers published their findings in Nature and summarized their results in a UPenn statement.
Rather than trying to print a large volume of tissue and leave hollow channels for vasculature in a layer-by-layer approach, Chen and colleagues focused on the vasculature first and designed free-standing 3D filament networks in the shape of a vascular system that sat inside a mold. As in lost-wax casting, a technique that has been used to make sculptures for thousands of years, the team’s approach allowed for the mold and vascular template to be removed once the cells were added and formed a solid tissue enveloping the filaments.
The formula they settled on — a combination of sucrose and glucose along with dextran for structural reinforcement — is printed with a RepRap, an open-source 3D printer with a custom-designed extruder and controlling software. An important step in stabilizing the sugar after printing, templates are coated in a thin layer of a degradable polymer derived from corn. This coating allows the sugar template to be dissolved and to flow out of the gel through the channels they create without inhibiting the solidification of the gel or damaging the growing cells nearby. Once the sugar is removed, the researchers start flowing fluid through the vascular architecture and cells begin to receive nutrients and oxygen similar to the exchange that naturally happens in the body.
Below is a video showing their amazing discovery.
Read more from the UPenn summary.
Blood vessel photo by shoebappa used under Creative Commons license.
Infographic: Go On, Print a Liver – The Evolution of Bio 3D Printing
We have covered the emergence of 3D printed organs and other scientific feats made possible by 3D printing.
This infographic, created by Printerinks, shows the journey from humble origins in 1984 to today’s scientific breakthroughs by companies such as Organovo.
Webpronews commented on the infographic:
As we learned back when researchers were creating working blood vessels with a 3D printer, the process is as simple as it is complex. It starts with the growth of cells. The 3D printer comes into play when they are used to create a layered structure that’s then layered with cells that attach to the structure and turn it into the organ.
With our current technology, it’s estimated that it would take 10 days to print a liver. As technology improves, it’s estimated that scientists could print a liver in three hours. That’s great news for the thousands of people who are waiting for a live transplant to save their life.
The creation of organs through 3D printing has another, less talked about function, as well. If we could test drugs on 3D printed human livers, it would save millions of dollars and years of time that it takes to develop and test new drugs on animals before it’s even considered for human testing.
As you can see, 3D printing is seriously the most important invention of the 20th century.
Go on, print a liver.
Via Webpronews.
