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3D-printed organs: The future of transplantation
CNN —
What if doctors could just print a kidney, using cells from the patient, instead of having to find a donor match and hope the patient’s body doesn’t reject the transplanted kidney?
The soonest that could happen is in a decade, thanks to 3D organ bioprinting, said Jennifer Lewis, a professor at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Organ bioprinting is the use of 3D-printing technologies to assemble multiple cell types, growth factors and biomaterials in a layer-by-layer fashion to produce bioartificial organs that ideally imitate their natural counterparts, according to a 2019 study.
This type of regenerative medicine is in the development stage, and the driving force behind this innovation is “real human need,” Lewis said.
In the United States, there are 106,075 men, women and children on the national organ transplant waiting list as of June 10, according to the Health Resources & Services Administration. However, living donors provide only around 6,000 organs per year on average, and there are about 8,000 deceased donors annually who each provide 3.5 organs on average.
47-year-old Steve Verze is to become the first man in the world to be fitted with a 3D printed eye, according to Moorfields Eye Hospital.
He tried the eye for size earlier this month, as photographed here.
British man given 3D printed eye in world first, hospital says
The cause of this discrepancy is “a combination of people who undergo catastrophic health events, but their organs aren’t high enough quality to donate, or they’re not on the organ donor list to begin with, and the fact that it’s actually very difficult to find a good match” so the patient’s body doesn’t reject the transplanted organ, Lewis said.
And even though living donors are an option, “to do surgery on someone who doesn’t need it” is a big risk, said Dr.
Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. “So, living related donors are usually not the preferred way to go because then you’re taking an organ away from somebody else who may need it, especially now as we age longer.”
Atala and his colleagues were responsible for growing human bladders in a lab by hand in 2006, and implanting a complicated internal organ into people for the first time – saving the lives of three children in whom they implanted the bladders.
A bladder scaffold is seeded with cells at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
Courtesy Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine Every day, 17 people die waiting for an organ transplant, according to the Health Resources & Services Administration.
And every nine minutes, another person is added to the waitlist, the agency says. More than 90% of the people on the transplant list in 2021 needed a kidney.
“About a million people worldwide are in need of a kidney. So they have end-stage renal failure, and they have to go on dialysis,” Lewis said. “Once you go on dialysis, you have essentially five years to live, and every year, your mortality rate increases by 15%. Dialysis is very hard on your body. So this is really motivating to take on this grand challenge of printing organs.”
“Anti-hypertensive pills are not scarce. Everybody who needs them can get them,” Martine Rothblatt, CEO and chairman of United Therapeutics, said at the Life Itself conference, a health and wellness event presented in partnership with CNN.
United Therapeutics is one of the conference’s sponsors.
“There is no practical reason why anybody who needs a kidney – or a lung, a heart, a liver – should not be able to get one,” she added. “We’re using technology to solve this problem.”
To begin the process of bioprinting an organ, doctors typically start with a patient’s own cells. They take a small needle biopsy of an organ or do a minimally invasive surgical procedure that removes a small piece of tissue, “less than half the size of a postage stamp,” Atala said. “By taking this small piece of tissue, we are able to tease cells apart (and) we grow and expand the cells outside the body.
”
This growth happens inside a sterile incubator or bioreactor, a pressurized stainless steel vessel that helps the cells stay fed with nutrients – called “media” – the doctors feed them every 24 hours, since cells have their own metabolism, Lewis said. Each cell type has a different media, and the incubator or bioreactor acts as an oven-like device mimicking the internal temperature and oxygenation of the human body, Atala said.
“Then we mix it with this gel, which is like a glue,” Atala said. “Every organ in your body has the cells and the glue that holds it together. Basically, that’s also called ‘extracellular matrix.
’ ”
Richard Roth with Samira Jafari
Courtesy Samira JafariLiving organ donations save lives. This is how you become a donor
This glue is Atala’s nickname for bioink, a printable mixture of living cells, water-rich molecules called hydrogels, and the media and growth factors that help the cells continue to proliferate and differentiate, Lewis said. The hydrogels mimic the human body’s extracellular matrix, which contains substances including proteins, collagen and hyaluronic acid.
The non-cell sample portion of the glue can be made in a lab, and “is going to have the same properties of the tissue you’re trying to replace,” Atala said.
The biomaterials used typically have to be nontoxic, biodegradable and biocompatible to avoid a negative immune response, Lewis said. Collagen and gelatin are two of the most common biomaterials used for bioprinting tissues or organs.
From there, doctors load each bioink – depending on how many cell types they’re wanting to print – into a printing chamber, “using a printhead and nozzle to extrude an ink and build the material up layer by layer,” Lewis said. Creating tissue with personalized properties is enabled by printers being programmed with a patient’s imaging data from X-rays or scans, Atala said.
“With a color printer you have several different cartridges, and each cartridge is printing a different color, and you come up with your (final) color,” Atala added. Bioprinting is the same; you’re just using cells instead of traditional inks.
How long the printing process takes depends on several factors, including the organ or tissue being printed, the fineness of the resolution and the number of printheads needed, Lewis said. But it typically lasts a few to several hours. The time from the biopsy to the implantation is about four to six weeks, Atala said.
A 3D printer seeds different types of cells onto a kidney scaffold at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
The ultimate challenge is “getting the organs to actually function as they should,” so accomplishing that “is the holy grail,” Lewis said.
“Just like if you were to harvest an organ from a donor, you have to immediately get that organ into a bioreactor and start perfusing it or the cells die,” she added. To perfuse an organ is to supply it with fluid, usually blood or a blood substitute, by circulating it through blood vessels or other channels.
Depending on the organ’s complexity, there is sometimes a need to mature the tissue further in a bioreactor or further drive connections, Lewis said.
“There’s just a number of plumbing issues and challenges that have to be done in order to make that printed organ actually function like a human organ would in vivo (meaning in the body). And honestly, this has not been fully solved yet.”
Once a bioprinted organ is implanted into a patient, it will naturally degrade over time – which is OK since that’s how it’s designed to work.
“You’re probably wondering, ‘Well, then what happens to the tissue? Will it fall apart?’ Actually, no,” Atala said. “These glues dissolve, and the cells sense that the bridge is giving way; they sense that they don’t have a firm footing anymore.
So cells do what they do in your very own body, which is to create their own bridge and create their own glue.”
Atala and Lewis are conservative in their estimates about the number of years remaining before fully functioning bioprinted organs can be implanted into humans.
“The field’s moving fast, but I mean, I think we’re talking about a decade plus, even with all of the tremendous progress that’s been made,” Lewis said.
“I learned so many years ago never to predict because you’ll always be wrong,” Atala said.
“There’s so many factors in terms of manufacturing and the (US Food and Drug Administration regulation). At the end of the day, our interest, of course, is to make sure the technologies are safe for the patient above all.”
Whenever bioprinting organs becomes an available option, affordability for patients and their caregivers shouldn’t be an issue.
They’ll be “accessible for sure,” Atala said. “The costs associated with organ failures are very high. Just to keep a patient on dialysis is over a quarter of a million dollars per year, just to keep one patient on dialysis. So, it’s a lot cheaper to create an organ that you can implant into the patient.
”
The average kidney transplant cost was $442,500 in 2020, according to research published by the American Society of Nephrology – while 3D printers retail for around a few thousand dollars to upward of $100,000, depending on their complexity. But even though low-cost printers are available, pricey parts of bioprinting can include maintaining cell banks for patients, culturing cells and safely handling biological materials, Lewis said.
Some of the major costs of current organ transplantation are “harvesting the organ from the donor, the transport costs and then, of course, the surgery that the recipient goes through, and then all the care and monitoring,” Lewis said.
“Some of that cost would still be in play, even if it was bioprinted.”
Relativity is 3D printing rockets and raising billions. Will its technology work?
New York CNN Business —
Astra, a startup building small rockets that launch out of rural Alaska, notched its first successful test flight on Friday night, putting a dummy satellite into orbit. The flight sent the company’s stock price on a tear — soaring more than 30% at one point after trading hours opened Monday morning.
Relativity Space, the rocket startup Ellis co-founded in 2015 after he left Jeff Bezos’ space company, plans to build fairly small rockets that can blast satellites into orbit cheaply and quickly.
If that sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same business plan touted by dozens of rocket startups all over the world.
Relativity stands out in some respects. The company raised about $1.2 billion in just eight months, a level of investment frenzy enjoyed by few in the space industry outside of Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Relativity’s massive factory in Long Beach, California, teems with activity as rocket parts are hauled from one area to another, workers compete for oversubscribed desk space, and massive hangar doors conceal some of the largest 3D printers in the world at work.
That is the company’s defining trait.
Relativity plans to 3D print almost every single component of its 200-foot-tall orbital rockets, called Terran 1. And Ellis says this is why investors are so intrigued, drawn in by the promises that Relativity’s methods will allow them to build a rocket in less than a month, while labor-driven rocket manufacturing can take months to more than a year. Using robots will also allow Relativity to quickly integrate small changes into its rockets’ design, potentially allowing the company to develop a far better product in less time, according to Ellis.
Relativity Space 3D Printer Stargate
Relativity Space The catch is that Relativity has never actually launched a rocket.
And because it hasn’t launched, it’s not yet clear if 3D printing really can prove to be an effective alternative to the traditional rocket-building method, which requires tens of thousands of components. Much of a traditional rocket is also welded or assembled by hand — a process that can be both very expensive and very time-consuming.
But taking a rocket idea from the drawing board and turning it into a towering, fuel-guzzling machine that can tear away from Earth’s gravity and safely deliver a satellite into orbit is the notoriously difficult litmus test that every would-be rocket company must pass. And whether Relativity’s ideas actually translate to market efficiencies is an open question.
Ellis says he understands the stakes.
“I think all the momentum is there,” he told CNN’s Rachel Crane. “We’ve got to show what we’ve got. But major parts of the rocket have already flown a simulated mission on the ground, and [we’re] quite confident we’ve gotten over the hump where the 3D printed rocket is now inevitable — truly inevitable.”
Relativity has backing from a who’s who of high-profile investors, such as Fidelity and BlackRock. It has soared to a $4 billion-plus valuation — one of the most valuable companies in the burgeoning commercial space sector — by attracting the type of backing most startups only dream of.
The cash windfall has given the company a gleam that belies its inexperience. The company is in the process of moving out of its current home in Long Beach into a 1.1 million-square-foot hangar where Boeing used to build C-17 cargo planes down the road. The company’s workforce has ballooned from about 100 people to roughly 600 in just a couple years. It’s hired key engineering brass away from SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin and big tech firms such as Microsoft.
The fact that Relativity has drawn so much investor attention while its rockets were still essentially showroom objects is a testament to the fact that private investing markets are awash with record amounts of cash, and the moneyed are anxious to park their extra bucks where they stand to make big returns — high risk, high reward.
Ellis says investors also have good reason to be confident in his technology.
Other rocket factories use 3D printers to quickly draft up certain components, but most components are brought in from suppliers via a complex supply chain. At Relativity, the rocket parts are almost entirely constructed by one-armed robots, spewing metals into intricately designed pieces that can replace hundreds of tiny parts. About 90% of its rockets are 3D printed. Because of this, Relativity says it can use less than 1,000 parts where traditional rockets use more than 100,000.
Relativity Space Stargate
Relativity SpaceThe cornerstone of these 3D printing efforts is Stargate — a towering 3D printer that Relativity says is the largest in the world, and it prints with proprietary metal alloys. The machines can churn out an entire rocket fuselage in just a few days.
Ellis also told CNN’s Crane that he envisions his 3D printers can prove to be a game changer for manufacturing across several industries, including aircrafts, oil and gas refineries, wind turbines, and more.
He added in an interview with CNN’s Crane that he envisions that “3D printing with AI and robotics [are] how things are going to be built on another planet.
”
“I’m really long-term bullish,” he told Crane.
Relativity laid out a plan to get its rockets off the ground by the end of 2021. But, as is common in the space industry (see: Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, etc.), schedules don’t often hold. The debut launch of Terran 1 was pushed to 2022. Ellis said this week that it’ll be ready for launch in a “few months.”
There will be plenty of stakeholders waiting to find out whether it works.
Relativity says it’s rockets are already booked to haul satellites to space years into the future (Ellis would not specify how many or the financial terms). And the company has a $1 billion deal with the US military’s Space Force, inked in August, as part of a broader slew of investments the military has made in the rocket industry. Relativity has also won several other military launch contracts.
Relativity Space Launch Pad Cape Canaveral
Relativity SpaceRelativity has the funds to keep trying if it fails out of the gate, but time is of the essence. Several competitors in the small-launch vehicle arena — namely, Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit and Astra — have already successfully gotten their vehicles off the ground.
Ellis said 95% of the Relativity team is currently focused on ensuring that its first Terran 1 mission is a success.
But it’s not the company’s sole focus. It’s already planning to build a far larger rocket, called Terran R, that it hopes to launch by 2024. And recent files released by NASA show the company bid for the chance to develop a space station in low-Earth orbit. (Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, and Nanoracks were eventually awarded contracts.)
Ellis, for the record, said the company is already selling rides for satellites aboard Terran R, though the rocket itself is currently little more than a digitally rendered idea.
Space is proverbially “hot right now” and standing out from the crowd, as in proving what sets a company apart from the rest is an actual game changer, will be essential.
Relativity’s approach to 3D printing has certainly given it cache. The company has proven itself in the private fundraising markets, giving it the leeway to forgo a rushed stock market debut that so many of its competitors have embraced.
But as with most things in the aerospace industry, it can be difficult to discern the hype and bluster from the truly transformative. And in that case, Relativity’s true proving ground will be on the launch pad.
“We have a lot to deliver and a lot of value we’ve signed up to create,” Ellis told CNN Business.
“I’m super humbled by it. Like, these people are lining up for Relativity, and other rocket companies can’t say that.”
RELATIVITY - 3D PRINTING ROCKETS AND ATTRACTING BILLIONS. WILL THIS TECHNOLOGY WORK?
New York (CNN Business) -- Tim Ellis, 31, walks his sprawling rocket factory in designer sneakers, wearing glasses, and has what every space company founder craves: a seemingly endless well of investors ready to invest to his company.
Relativity Space, a rocket startup founded by Ellis in 2015 after he left Jeff Bezos' space company, plans to build fairly small rockets that can launch satellites into orbit cheaply and quickly. If this sounds familiar, it's because it's the same business plan advertised by dozens of rocket launches around the world.
Relativity stand out in some ways. The company raised about $1.2 billion in just eight months, a level of investment frenzy that has delighted few in the space industry outside of Elon Musk's SpaceX.
The huge Relativity factory in Long Beach, California is teeming with active rocket parts moving from one area to another, employees compete for the most competitive positions, and massive hangar doors hide some of the largest 3D printers in the world.
This is the defining feature of the company.
Relativity plans to 3D print almost every component of its 60.96-meter orbital rockets, called Terran 1. And Ellis says that's why investors are so intrigued by the promise that Relativity's methods will allow them to build a rocket in less than a month, while production of missiles with labor can take anywhere from a few months to over a year. The use of robots will also allow Relativity to quickly integrate small design changes into its rockets, potentially allowing the company to develop a much better product in less time, according to Ellis.
Stargate 3D printer by Relativity Space
The catch is that Relativity never launched rockets.
And since there are still no launches, it is not yet clear whether 3D printing can really be an effective alternative to the traditional method of creating rockets, which requires tens of thousands of components. Much of the traditional rocket is also welded or assembled by hand, a process that can be very expensive and time consuming.
But taking the idea of a rocket off the drawing board and turning it into a towering, fuel-guzzling machine that can break away from Earth's gravity and safely lift a satellite into orbit is the infamous ordeal that every would-be rocket company must pass. And whether Relativity's ideas really affect market performance is an open question. Ellis says he understands the stakes.
"I think all the dynamics are there," he told CNN's Rachel Crane. "We have to show what we have. But the main parts of the rocket have already launched a simulated mission on the ground, and [we] are quite confident that we have passed the maximum, where a 3D rocket is now inevitable - indeed inevitable.
"
FUNDING THE FUTURE
Relativity is backed by renowned investors such as Fidelity and BlackRock. They soared to $4 billion plus valuation, one of the most valuable companies in the growing commercial space sector, attracting the backing most startups dream of.
The unexpected cash income gave the company a shine that belied their inexperience. The company is in the process of moving from its current home in Long Beach to a 102.19 sq.4 m², near which Boeing C-17 cargo planes were built. In just a couple of years, the number of employees of the company has grown from 100 to 600 people. They hired key engineers from SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket company, and big tech firms like Microsoft.
The fact that Relativity got so much attention from investors while their rockets were still essentially demonstration objects is evidence that the private investment markets are flooded with record amounts of cash, and those with money are eager to leave theirs there.
where they can make big profits – high risk, high reward.
Ellis says investors have reason to be confident in his technology, too.
Other rocket factories use 3D printers to quickly prepare certain components, but most components come from suppliers through a complex supply chain. In Relativity, rocket parts are constructed almost entirely by one-armed robots spewing metals into thin parts that can replace hundreds of tiny parts. About 90% of missiles are produced in 3D printing. Because of this, Relativity claims to be able to use less than a thousand parts, where traditional rockets use over a hundred thousand.
Stargate is a huge 3D printer, the cornerstone of this 3D printing, Relativity claims is the largest in the world, and it prints with proprietary metal alloys. Machines can stamp an entire rocket fuselage in just a few days. Ellis also told CNN's Crane that he believes his 3D printers could be a game-changer in manufacturing in several industries, including aircraft, refineries, wind turbines and more.
He added in an interview with CNN's Crane, he presents "3D printing with artificial intelligence and robotics is the creation of everything on another planet."
"I'm really long-term optimistic," he told Crane.
AND WHAT'S NOW
Relativity has laid out a plan to take off rockets from the ground by the end of 2021. But, as is common in the space industry (see: Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, etc.), schedules are not often adhere. Terran 1's debut launch has been pushed back to 2022. Ellis said this week it will be ready to launch in "a few months."
There will be many interested parties to find out if it works. Relativity says rockets are already booked to deliver satellites for space years in the future (Ellis won't specify how many or financial terms). And the company has a $1 billion deal with the United States military Space Force, signed in August, as part of a broader set of investments the military has made in the rocket industry.
Relativity also won several other military launch contracts.
Relativity Space launch pad, Cape Canaveral
Relativity has the means to keep trying if it fails, but time is of the essence. Several competitors in the small launch vehicle arena - Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit and Astra - have already successfully lifted their rockets off the ground.
Ellis noted that 95% of the Relativity team is currently focused on making their first Terran 1 mission a success. But that's not the company's only goal. They are already planning to build a much larger rocket called the Terran R, which they hope to launch by 2024. And the latest files released by NASA show the company has applied to develop a space station in low Earth orbit. (Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman and Nanoracks ended up getting contracts.)
Ellis said for the record, the company is already selling satellite rides aboard the Terran R, though the rocket itself is currently a bit more of a digital idea.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Space is said to be "hot right now" and stand out from the crowd as proof of what sets the company apart from the rest - a real game changer that is essential going forward.
Relativity's approach to 3D printing has certainly given them a cache. The company has proven itself in mobilizing private sector resources, enabling them to back away from the hasty debut on the stock market backed by many of their competitors.
But, as with most things in the aerospace industry, it can be hard to tell the difference between empty boasting and truly transformative pride. And in this case, the real Relativity evidence base will be on the launch pad.
"We have a lot to do and a lot of value that we signed up to create," Ellis told CNN Business. "It's very embarrassing to me. These people are lining up for Relativity, and other rocket companies can't say that."
Source: CNN
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3d printers.
Achievements in 2012 / Habr Molecules and aircraft, weapons and blood vessels, prosthetics and integrated circuits, food and buildings, a cancer cure, an ear, a beak and a rocket engine, all this was printed in 2012 on 3d printers.
This article is a partial translation of 3D Printing in 2012: Year In Review.
Pictures (70 pieces) are clickable - a reference to the original source.
January
3D Systems completed the acquisition of Z Corp and Vidar for $135.5 million in cash.
Makerbot announces the Replicator.
“3D Systems announces Cube 3D at CES2012.
Essential Dynamics introduced the 3d food printer to the public and announced that they are accepting orders for such printers.
Pirate Bay has opened a new section with 3d models for free download and printing on 3d printers.
"Factory on wheels".
For a whole month, Alex Hornstein and Bilal Ghalib traveled across America with four 3D printers in the trunk.
They started the Pocket Factory project (pocket factory) with the aim of developing and selling goods made on cheap 3d printers.
February
Fifteen-year-old Laura played a 3D printed violin on CNN.
This is one of three violins of this type, but only this one is fully stringed. Laura, a student at South West Music School, made her premiere performance on the CNN news channel. This amazing performance perfectly illustrates the potential of 3D printing, which can be used to recreate almost anything.
An 83-year-old woman received a 3D printed prosthesis.
Belgian and German scientists have successfully implanted a 3D printed lower jaw.
Scientists have created a dinosaur robot using a 3d printer.
For the first time in 150 years, paleontologists are able to test hypotheses about how dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals moved and interacted with their environment.
3d printed human tissue for drug testing.
A San Diego "bioprinting" company has used 3D bioprinting to create a variety of body tissues from human cells.
The world's largest museum will go digital thanks to 3d scanners and 3d printers.
The world's largest museum and research institute, the Smithsonian, has created a reproduction of the statue of Thomas Jefferson using a high-tech scanner and 3D printer.
March
General Electric Co invests in manual labor labs for ordinary people.
General Electric Co launched the GE Garages project, manufacturing craft centers equipped with laser cutters, 3d printers, injection molds. Visitors will be able to learn the basics of prototyping and the manufacturing process.
Sensation: High speed 3d printer with nano precision.
The Vienna University of Technology has announced a major breakthrough in 3D printing technology: it is now possible to print 3D objects in incredible detail using "two-photon lithography".
7000 pieces 3d printed for The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
April
The MIT team used nano-robots to reproduce rough 3d objects.
MIT developers at Distributed Robotics Laboratory (DRL) have demonstrated "smart sand", nano-format robots equipped with the simplest processors.
Stratasys and Objet have agreed to the merger. The total cost is 1.4 billion dollars.
Man vs 3d printer.
The battle between a human and a 3d printer: create an object with your own hands or draw on a computer and print it on a 3d printer?
Hobbyists 3D print circuit boards.
May
Fujitsu has proposed a technology that reduces design time by 90%.
The US government has launched a $60 million education and research program - a new 3d printing institute.
Printing spare parts for military equipment - F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Smart bandage.
University of Illinois researchers have developed a wound healing bandage.
DreamVendor is an interactive 3D printing station at Virginia Tech.
Students can now print prototypes of their projects. The station works like any other vending machine on the street.
DARPA creates new technologies through crowdsourcing.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced a $3.5 million investment in TechShop as part of DARPA's new Adaptive Vehicle Make to "establish a factory for rapid design and reconfiguration of manufacturing capabilities to support the production of a wide range of military vehicles."
June
The world's first 3D printed floating humanoid robot.
Researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed a robot that can mimic a swimmer's movements to measure water resistance. This robot is named
SWUMANOID (Swimming Humanoid) is the first robot designed exclusively for swimming.
The first 3d printer assembled by children.
The School in Geldermalsen,NL gave the kids challenging projects to teach them how to handle challenges. One of the tasks was to build an Open Source 3D printer.
Shapeways startup raised $6.2 million in funding.
Users upload files via the Internet, and the company prints them on 3d printers from various materials. By June 2012, Shapeways had printed and sold over a million items.
Record: Objet broke the barrier of 100 materials.
Objet has expanded its range of materials to 107, including 39 new "digital materials" for Objet Connex Multi-Material 3D Printing Systems
Molecule Printing.
Personal medicine has appeared using a 3D molecular printer.
Lee Cronin, professor of chemistry at the University of Glasgow, used a 3D printer to create reagents directly in a 3D reaction matrix to initiate chemical reactions.
Researchers have developed a 3d printer to print 3d silicon micro- and nanostructures.
Researchers from KTH Microsystem Technology have demonstrated a new technology for 3D printing silicon micro- and nanostructures.
July
Penn researchers have created a vascular network in living tissue using a RepRap 3D printer and sugar.
Thus, the problem of creating a 3d structure of blood vessels was solved.
Researchers have created a new method for producing 3d aluminum composite parts.
Researchers at the University of Exeter in the UK have developed a Selective Laser Melting process to produce 3d aluminum composite parts from inexpensive metal powder.
Chinese scientists used a 3D printer to print an ear.
Dr. Yang and his team used a 3D scanner to scan a patient's ear and sent the data to a 3D printer. An hour later, the work was completed.
Airbus is working on an airplane concept built using a giant 3D printer.
The aircraft is planned to be built by 2050.
3D printing will help create the fastest car in the world.
The first 3D printed AR-15 weapon successfully passed the test firing.
The creator and tester, a user with the pseudonym "HaveBlue", posted the part in the public domain on Thingiverse.
August
3D printing gave two-year-old Emma "Magic Hands".
Two-year-old Emma was born with a serious illness. The researchers used a Stratasys Dimension 3D Printer to print the plastic prototype WREX that Emma now wears at home, in prep, and during treatment.
An Israeli student built the world's largest ceramic 3D printer.
Russia is building the world's largest network of FabLabs.
The national symbol of America, the bald eagle, has its beak printed.
The Thiel Foundation announces a grant for meat 3d printing technology.
Together with Breakout Labs, they plan to apply the latest fabric developments to an edible meat prototype that can provide a humane and sustainable source of animal protein to consumers around the world.
The Wiki Weapon Project raises funds through crowdfunding to develop open source 3D printed weapons.
A group of young volunteers, engineers and designers from Arkansas and Texas are using 3D printing on an unprecedented project. A group called Defense Distributed is developing a plastic civilian self-defense system, the Wiki Weapon.
“The first 3D printed racing car reached a speed of 140 km/h.
Acceleration from 0 to 100 km / h - in 4 seconds.
A giant laser 3D printer has transformed local manufacturing.
This printer is able to create complex shapes from titanium, nickel, steel, chrome, etc. The printer is about the size of a small wagon.
September
For the first time, 3D printed wheelchairs were used at the Paralympic Games.
8 players (4 men and 4 women) played basketball at the UK Summer Paralympics.
Wheelchairs have been created taking into account the individual parameters of the players.
Inventor Kai Parthy has developed a fiber for RepRap that can print wood.
LAYWOO-D3 fiber is a wood-polymer composite containing recycled wood and harmless plastic.
Recreated an ancient sea creature.
American scientists and German specialists have recreated the mollusc "Protobalanus spinicoronatus" that lived 390 million years ago.
Nanoengineers are able to print three-dimensional microstructures in seconds.
Lab-made leather goods will be on sale in the next 5 years.
According to the forecast of the bioprinting company Modern Meadow, in the next five years, leather products: bags, belts, boots, etc., created in laboratories, will be sold in supermarkets. The market is valued at $2.5 trillion.
Formlabs announces the Form 1 "consumer" 3d printer.
Funding was raised through KickStarter. The initial request was 100,000 dollars, and 3 million were raised.
October
Trying to protect things from being copied.
Shapeways opens the world's largest 3D printing factory.
The company plans to return production to New York with the help of the “Factory of the Future”.
The British government is investing 7 million euros in 3D printing technology.
Science Minister David Willetts: “We believe the new investment will help UK companies take the necessary step to create new markets and gain a competitive edge.”
3d printed rocket engine.
How often do you think about printing your own rocket engine?
November
Printed by Aston Martin for James Bond.
The world's first 3d photo booth was opened in Japan.
Liver printed from stem cells.
Scottish scientists create liver tissue.
LulzBot: a 3d printer will be sent to Mars.
3D Systems is suing Formlabs and Kickstarter.
The University of Warwick has created an inexpensive conductive plastic.
