News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
What’s better than one 3D printing construction robot? Scientists from NTU Singapore would likely say two construction robots. And seeing what the research team has been capable of, I can’t say I disagree.
Despite having released its first resin-based 3D printer last month, Polish 3D printer manufacturer Zortrax has not forgotten its roots in the deposition world. In fact, the company has just released its newest 3D printer model, the M300 Plus, a large-format desktop machine. With a build capacity of 300 x 300 x 300 mm, Zortrax’s new 3D printer boasts the same build volume as its existing M300 model with a handful of new features.
Frustum, a Boulder, Colorado-based software company, is releasing Windows OS Frustum GENERATE, its industry-leading interactive generative design solution. Previously available as a web-app or add-on, GENERATE represents a new paradigm for design, interactive generative design, which fundamentally alters how products are modeled for manufacture by allowing engineers to interact and iterate in real time with generative design models. As a result, engineers can develop multiple perfectly designed and optimized models to identify the best solution in a matter of minutes versus hours or days previously.
Ingersoll Machine Tools, Inc. long-awaited “largest 3D printer in the world” is now ready. With a gargantuan work envelope measuring W 23’ x H 10’ x L 46’, the WHAM composite 3D printer was originally announced as a partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2016. The goal was to develop massive 3D printers leveraging the Department of Energy’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at ORNL.
Most industries would agree that there is no going back on additive manufacturing. The technology, which is opening up new avenues and possibilities for manufacturing across the board, is here to stay. Still, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still hurdles and challenges that manufacturers have to overcome, including driving costs down for the technology, establishing standards and, perhaps most crucially, increasing process automation.
The idea of DfAM (Design for Additive Manufacturing) explores how parts can be designed specifically to leverage the expanded geometric possibilities afforded by additive manufacturing technologies. Until now this approach – implemented primarily by forward-thinking engineers – has focused on lattices and trabecular structures to reduce a part’s weight. However, this may be just a scratch on the proverbial surface as many other possibilities exist to exploit mold-less production. For example, the creation of “without-end” designs to replace complex multi-part assemblies. This is exactly what designer Steve Jenkins did in the Continuous Loop Bicycle project recently published on the Yanko Design network.
BigRep, a leader in large-scale thermopolymer extrusion 3D printers, and Bosch Rexroth, one of the world’s leading suppliers of drive and control technologies, are partnering to equip state-of-art CNC control systems and drives on its next generation of BigRep-Bosch Rexroth powered systems.
A bioengineering PhD candidate from the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering has been developing a 3D printed phantom head which so closely resembles a human head that it can be used to test the 7 Tesla magnetic resonance imager (7T MRI), one of the strongest clinical MRI devices in use.
Always at the cutting edge, MIT’s Mediated Matter lab has developed a new, experimental additive manufacturing technique that uses a swarm of small robots to build up tubular structures. The process, called FIBERBOTS, can enable the digital fabrication of large-scale architectures with high spatial resolution.
Safran Electrical & Power, a French company specializing in electrical systems for commercial and military aircraft, is the latest company to reap the benefits of additive manufacturing and design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) in its design and production processes. The company was spurred to explore the benefits of 3D printing after a growing number of clients enquired about the technology for part production.