News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
Superstrata, a Silicon Valley-based bicycle brand linked with composite AM service provider Arevo, just unveiled its flagship product: the world’s first made-to-measure 3D-printed e-bicycle with an impact-resistant unibody carbon fiber frame.
Motorsports, and Formula 1 in particular, is considered one of the driving segments for AM adoption. But one thing is the ability to rapidly produce lighter AM car parts and an entirely different thing, especially in F1, is the ability to actually use them. That’s because the regulations for additive manufacturing in Formula 1 are very (very) strict and sometimes block AM materials and applications.
LEHVOSS North America, a provider of thermoplastic 3D printing materials, has signed a formal agreement with Forward Engineering North America (FENA), a Michigan-based division of global engineering and consulting firm Forward Engineering GmbH that is focused on the use of fiber-reinforced polymer composite materials for the serial production of automotive structures.
Last April – in the midst of the first leg COVID-19 outbreak in the US, General Motors was tasked with building 30,000 COVID-19 ventilators for the national stockpile for a total of $489.4 million, the first contract under the Defense Production Act invoked by the US President Donal Trump.
Today, the emerging construction 3D printing sector is being pioneered by a relatively small number of companies, each of which is presenting its own technology and vision for disrupting the global construction industry. Amongst them is CyBe, a Netherlands-based company that has taken an encompassing and holistic approach to construction AM.
ICON, known for 3D printing homes and communities in Mexico and central Texas, has been prototyping various structures with DIU (the Defense Innovation Unit) and USMC utilizing the technology that combines 3D robotics, software and advanced material. In January 2019, Marines were trained on the software, robotics and material delivery sub-systems at ICON’s lab with the goal of a future field demonstration to build structures important for expeditionary construction.
Construction 3D printing is booming, with hundreds of new applications emerging all over the world. The variety of solutions sometimes makes it challenging to understand exactly how materials need to behave to enable large structures to be 3D printed. In a recent video published on his channel, Jarett Gross, a Youtuber specializing specifically in this area, explains in a very clear and highly documented manner the rheology of construction 3D printing involved. If you have a direct interest in construction AM, as many of our readers do, or if you are just curious, it’s definitely worth watching.
In yet another fascinating demonstration of the capabilities of construction 3D printing to rebuild marine habitats, architects and marine scientists at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) have jointly developed a novel method for coral restoration making use of specially designed, 3D printed reef tiles. The elegant looking structures can be used by corals to enhance their chance of survival in the Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park in Hong Kong waters.
There’s a new player in the construction 3D printing market: Mighty Buildings, an Oakland, California-based startup with a focus on automated home building solutions has just progressed beyond stealth mode. The company, which has raised an impressive $30 million from investors (including Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, SV Angel and CoreVC), was born through the Y Combinator seed money startup accelerator in 2018.
Since significantly expanding its 3D printing capacity – by installing 17 production-grade Stratasys systems – at the end of 2019, automotive giant GM has transformed many of its production lines, leveraging the technology for faster and most efficient tooling and more. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the technology has come particularly in handy, helping the company to transition towards the production of ventilators.