News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
Rapid Application Group (RAG), an Oklahoma-based additive manufacturing company, has significantly increased its production capacity with the installation of a 3D Systems’ Figure 4 Standalone 3D printer. The recently added polymer AM platform will enable RAG to improve its services and turnaround times for clients in the aerospace, defense, healthcare, motor sports and oil and gas sectors.
One of the biggest players in industrial additive manufacturing, GE Additive was certainly a big draw for Formnext 2018 attendees. Though the company did not unveil a brand new technology as others did, it did show off the new M LINE Factory systems and made headlines for a range of announcements, including a partnership with Autodesk and innovative applications for its AM technology.
Dutch designer and technologist Rein van der Mast has been disrupting how fountain pens are made. Instead of relying on proven technology, in 2013 he was the first to 3D print a titanium fountain pen, followed, in 2016, by the nibs. Some amazing models followed: the very unique Spica Virginis (also available in solid gold) and, progressively more widely available models, such as the Type One. The latest addition to van der Mast’s collection is Meteor, an exclusive multi-metal fountain pen in which arts and crafts of the past go hand in hand with manufacturing technologies of the future.
Swedish 3D bioprinting company CELLINK has today announced it has acquired German biodispensing tech company Dispendix GmbH for €5 million. The deal will see CELLINK buy all of Dispendix’s shares and add the company’s technologies to its own bioprinting solutions.
If anyone has any objections to 3D printing a wedding, speak now or forever hold your peace.
As creative as they are innovative, MIT researchers are developing a technology that can faithfully reproduce paintings in 3D based on a 2D image. The technique, called RePaint, uses a combination of deep learning and 3D printing to reproduce canvas artworks.
GE Healthcare has announced a partnership with VA Puget Sound Health Care System to accelerate the use of 3D imaging and 3D printed anatomical models for medical applications. VA Puget Sound Health Care System is a government-run healthcare program for veterans serving states in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
Whether or not you consider vinyl to be “back” (or whether it ever “died”), there is no question that audio equipment manufacturer Lenco and Dutch 3D printer company RepRap Universe are up to something interesting in their latest Kickstarter. The parties have pooled their respective expertise in hi-fi equipment and 3D printing to introduce a modular, 3D printed record player.
Proponents of construction 3D printing say the technology could be disruptive in the industry, offering a more flexible and cost-friendly way to quickly construct housing. These benefits, along with the ability to construct buildings in remote locations (by working with local building materials), have apparently caught the attention of the Conference Board of Canada which will explore construction 3D printing for building homes in Canada’s northern and indigenous communities.
UNYQ, a company specializing in custom 3D printed medical devices and wearables, announced that it has appointed the former Head of Design at IKEA, Marcus Engman, as its new Vice President of Design. Engman served as IKEA’s Head of Design for six years; he left in September 2018 to found his own design consultancy business.