Tag Archives: MIT
Top 3D Printing Headlines Last Week: HP and Stratasys, Olympics, Toys
A roundup of the top news On 3D Printing brought you from July 30 to August 5.
Monday, July 30
- Shapeways Turns Four, Parties Like 3D Printing Rock Stars
- Bringing Woolly Mammoths and Dinosaurs Back to Life With 3D Printing
Tuesday, July 31
- Video: MIT’s Neri Oxman and Biologically-Inspired 3D Printed Systems
- 3D Printed Fractal Art Turned Into Beautiful Jewelry and Sculptures
Wednesday, August 1
- Stratasys and HP Part Ways on 3D Printer Manufacturing
- With Sites Set on LEGO, 3D Systems Cubify Launches Robot Toy Line
Thursday, August 2
Friday, August 3
Saturday, August 4
Sunday, August 5
HP CEO Meg Whitman photo by TechShowNetwork used under Creative Commons license.
Video: MIT’s Neri Oxman and Biologically-Inspired 3D Printed Systems
MIT Media Lab researchers Neri Oxman and Steven Keating are creating biologically-inspired 3D printing systems.
Oxman explains the mission of their lab, “Our goal here is to explore processes for digital fabrication like 3D printing that are inspired by nature with the belief that we are going to emerge on the other side generating and making things that are more efficient and more effective.”
An MIT news piece covering their work describes how nature can inspire better industrial design:
To illustrate this, Keating uses the example of a palm tree compared to a typical structural column. In a concrete column, the properties of the material are constant, resulting in a very heavy structure. But a palm tree’s trunk varies: denser at the outside and lighter toward the center. As part of his thesis research, he has already made sections of concrete with the same kind of variations of density.
The video below includes interviews with both Oxman and Keating.
Neri Oxman photo by poptech used under Creative Commons license.
Fab Lab of the Week: Fab Lab Dublin Brings Ideas to Life in Ireland
This week’s featured Fab Lab is Fab Lab Dublin in Ireland, your own personal factory in the city with all the equipment and expertise to make it easier, faster, cheaper and more fun to create things. 3D printing is one of the key technologies at Fab Lab Dublin.
From their website:
We are a collective of designers, entrepreneurs and makers who are setting up Fab Lab Dublin. A Fab Lab is a digital fabrication lab equipped with computer-controlled machines like 3d printers, laser cutters, 3d scanners and precision milling machines. The lab acts as a personal factory in the city where you can design and produce your own inventions, prototypes and designer products.
Design and manufacture is fundamentally changing. Designs (physibles) can be shared digitally and collaborated on at a global scale. Manufacturing is being reinvented by the ability to ship digital data more efficiently than products. Digital information is now at the forefront of manufacture and design. A fab lab is equipped with computer-controlled tools that take digital data to create physical products. The lab includes technology-enabled products generally perceived as limited to mass production – meaning individuals can now compete with large-scale manufacture.
We want to empower individual designers, entrepreneurs and makers with access to the tools of invention. Fab Lab Dublin is a space where you can share your passions, designs and ideas. It is a space where collaboration and invention take place. Life is about the people you meet and the things you create with them. So come join us and share your passion.
Dublin recently hosted a mini Maker Faire. Here is a video showcasing some of the ideas at the faire.
Learn more about Fab Lab Dublin at their website, or follow them on Twitter @FabLabDublin.
See all of our featured Fab Labs in our weekly series.
Dublin at night photo by infomatique used under Creative Commons license.
Fab Lab of the Week: 2nd Fab Lab Opens in the UK, Fab Lab Airedale
This week’s featured Fab Lab is called Fab Lab Airedale. Located in Dalton Mills, Keighley, it is the UK’s second Fab Lab. The first Fab Lab in the UK was opened in Manchester in 2010.
About Fab Lab Airedale:
Fab Lab is the first stage of an ambitious project to create a Centre of Manufacturing Excellence within Airedale serving Bradford District and the surrounding parts of the Leeds City Region. Fab Lab Airedale is a collaborative venture between the Airedale Partnership, Bradford Council and Leeds City College, with support from The Manufacturing Institute. The Fab Lab Airedale will operate as a not for profit company limited by guarantee. Any profits generated through the running of the Fab Lab will be reinvested in the aims of the project which are to promote innovation and excellence within the local manufacturing and related sectors.
Dalton Mills offers the perfect mix of old and new, blending the opulence of Victorian splendour with modern facilities ideal for today’s fast-paced working environment.
Dalton Mills is a former textile mill, located by the side of the River Worth, on Dalton Lane in Keighley, near Bradford. The majestic mill, which has been a landmark of the town for more than 140 years, was acquired by Magna Holdings Ltd in 2004.
It is now having a multi-million pound make-over to restore it to it’s former glory, and with massive regeneration taking place in Airedale over the next decade, there has never been a better time to relocate to Keighley.
Learn more about Fab Lab Airedale at their website, or follow them on Twitter @FabLabAiredale.
See all of our featured Fab Labs in our weekly series.
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.
