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Category: 3D printing

New Technique for 3D Printing Artificial Muscle Paves the Way for More Freaky Robots

While 2026 has been an objectively terrible year for humans thus far, it’s turning out—for better or worse—to be a banner year for robots. (Robots that are not Tesla’s Optimus thingamajig, anyway.) And it’s worth thinking about exactly how remarkable it is that the new humanoid robots are able to replicate the smooth, fluid, organic movements of humans and other animals, because the majority of robots do not move like this.

Take, for example, the robot arms used in factories and CNC machines: they glide effortlessly from point to point, moving with both speed and exquisite precision, but no one would ever mistake one of these arms for that of a living being. If anything, the movements are too perfect. This is at least partly due to the way these machines are designed and built: they use the same ideas, components, and principles that have characterised everything from the water wheel to the combustion engine.

But that’s not how living creatures work. While the overwhelming majority of macroscopic living beings contain some sort of “hard” parts—bones or exoskeletons—our movements are driven by muscles and ligaments that are relatively soft and elastic.

3D-weaving tech that uses body-scan data from shoppers could mean a better fit, fewer returns, and a zero-waste future for fashion

3D-printed designs and 3D-woven clothing by tech startup Unspun hints at what the fashion industry’s sustainable, zero-waste future could look like.

Levi’s® Tests 3D Printing Technology

Over 50 years ago, the classic Levi’s® Trucker jacket was introduced. But we are not one to rest on past accomplishments.

Now, the brand is turning to futuristic modes of innovation in manufacturing, pioneering a new approach in denim design.

Fast Company joined Levi’s® Head of Global Product Innovation, Paul Dillinger, at the Autodesk Pier 9 Workshop in San Francisco to witness how Levi’s® has been experimenting with 3D printing, creating digital renderings of the denim jacket which is essentially a shell of what the “real” thing could look like.

New sound-based 3D-printing method enables finer, faster microdevices

Concordia researchers have developed a new 3D-printing technique that uses sound waves to directly print tiny structures onto soft polymers like silicone with far greater precision than before. The approach, called proximal sound printing, opens new possibilities for manufacturing microscale devices used in health care, environmental monitoring and advanced sensors. It is described in the journal Microsystems & Nanoengineering.

The technique relies on focused ultrasound to trigger chemical reactions that solidify liquid polymers exactly where printing is needed. Unlike conventional methods that rely on heat or light, sound-based 3D-printing works with key materials used in microfluidic devices, lab-on-a-chip systems and soft electronics that are hard to print at small scales.

This work builds on the research team’s earlier breakthrough in direct sound printing, which first showed that ultrasound could be used to cure polymers on demand. While that earlier method demonstrated the concept, it struggled with limited resolution and consistency. The new proximal approach places the sound source much closer to the printing surface, allowing far tighter control.

Harvard researchers develop novel 3D printing method for soft robotics — rotational multi-material method creates muscle-like structures that can be programmed to twist, lift, or bend

A new spin on robotics, thanks to a novel 3D printing method

Toward regenerative bioprinting: Magnetic mixer enables scalable manufacturing of 3D-printed tissues

3D bioprinting, in which living tissues are printed with cells mixed into soft hydrogels, or “bio-inks,” is widely used in the field of bioengineering for modeling or replacing the tissues in our bodies. The print quality and reproducibility of tissues, however, can face challenges. One of the most significant challenges is created simply by gravity—cells naturally sink to the bottom of the bioink-extruding printer syringe because the cells are heavier than the hydrogel around them.

“This cell settling, which becomes worse during the long print sessions required to print large tissues, leads to clogged nozzles, uneven cell distribution, and inconsistencies between printed tissues,” explains Ritu Raman, the Eugene Bell Career Development Professor of Tissue Engineering and assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.

“Existing solutions, such as manually stirring bioinks before loading them into the printer, or using passive mixers, cannot maintain uniformity once printing begins.”

New 3D printing ink uses 70% lignin and recycles with water

Additive manufacturing (AM) methods, such as 3D printing, enable the realization of objects with different geometric properties, by adding materials layer-by-layer to physically replicate a digital model. These methods are now widely used to rapidly create product prototypes, as well as components for vehicles, consumer goods and medical technologies.

A particularly effective AM technique, called direct ink writing (DIW), entails the 3D printing of objects at room temperature using inks with various formulations. Most of these inks are based on fossil-derived polymers, materials that are neither recyclable nor biodegradable. Recently introduced lignin-derived inks could be a more sustainable alternative. However, they typically need to be treated at high heat or undergo permanent chemical bonding processes to reliably support 3D printing. This prevents them from being re-utilized after objects are printed, limiting their sustainability.

Rocket science? 3D printing soft matter in zero gravity

What happens to soft matter when gravity disappears? To answer this, UvA physicists launched a fluid dynamics experiment on a sounding rocket. The suborbital rocket reached an altitude of 267 km before falling back to Earth, providing six minutes of weightlessness.

In these six minutes, the researchers 3D-printed large droplets of a soft material similar to the inks used for bioprinting —a developing technology that shows huge potential for regenerative and personalized medicine, tissue engineering and cosmetics. Bioprinting involves 3D-printing a mix of cells and bio-inks or bio-materials in a desired shape, often to construct living tissues.

The experiment was called COLORS (COmplex fluids in LOw gravity: directly observing Residual Stresses). Using a special optical set-up, the researchers could see where the printed material experienced internal stresses (forces) as the droplets spread and merged. Stressed regions stand out as bright colors in the experiment. Investigating how and where these stresses emerge is important because they can get frozen in a material as it solidifies, creating weak points where 3D-printed objects are most likely to break.

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