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Tasked with building a new data center in an urban area of Germany, the team behind the Wave House harnessed the benefits of 3D printing technology to inject a sense of style into the unglamorous world of cloud-computing infrastructure, creating Europe’s largest 3D-printed building in the process.

The Wave House is located in Heidelberg and was designed by SSV and Mense Korte, and created by Peri 3D Construction for developer KrausGruppe. It measures 600 sq m (6,600 sq ft). As mentioned, its unusual appearance comes from an attempt to spice up what could otherwise have been a rather boring building.

“Due to the typical absence of windows and large openings in all or the main areas of data centers, for safety and other reasons, data centers tend to look quite dull and uninspiring,” explained a press release by COBOD. “As long as such data centers are placed far outside the cities this problem is perhaps of less concern, but the trend towards making data centers more in the vicinity of the users and therefore locate them in suburban areas and cities has created a need to make the data centers more visually appealing.

Science: In future maybe wounds be cured and closed in seconds by 3D printing regeneration.


Fat tissue holds the key to 3D printing layered living skin and potentially hair follicles, according to researchers who recently harnessed fat cells and supporting structures from clinically procured human tissue to precisely correct injuries in rats. The advancement could have implications for reconstructive facial surgery and even hair growth treatments for humans.

The team’s findings were published March 1 in Bioactive Materials. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted the team a patent in February for the bioprinting technology it developed and used in this study.

“Reconstructive surgery to correct trauma to the face or head from injury or disease is usually imperfect, resulting in scarring or permanent hair loss,” said Ibrahim T. Ozbolat, professor of engineering science and mechanics, of and of neurosurgery at Penn State, who led the that conducted the work.

Inspired by the color-changing ability of chameleons, researchers have developed a sustainable technique to 3D-print multiple, dynamic colors from a single ink.

“By designing new chemistries and printing processes, we can modulate structural color on the fly to produce color gradients not possible before,” said Ying Diao, an associate professor of chemistry and chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a researcher at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

The study appears in the journal PNAS.

The proliferation of wearable devices—from smart watches to AR glasses—necessitates ever-smaller on-board energy solutions that can deliver bursts of power while remaining unobtrusive.


Scientists leverage additive-free 3D printing process to construct exceptionally customizable and high-performing graphene-based micro-supercapacitors tailored for on-chip energy storage.

Imagine being able to build an entire dialysis machine using nothing more than a 3D printer.

This could not only reduce costs and eliminate manufacturing waste, but since this machine could be produced outside a factory, people with limited resources or those who live in remote areas may be able to access this more easily.

While multiple hurdles must be overcome to develop that are entirely 3D printed, a team at MIT has taken an important step in this direction by demonstrating fully 3D-printed, three-dimensional solenoids.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) have developed a novel approach for 3D printing functional human brain tissue.

The 3D printing process can create active neural networks in and between tissues that grow in a matter of weeks.

The researchers believe that their 3D bioprinted brain tissue provides an effective tool for modeling brain network activity under physiological and pathological conditions, and can also serve as a platform for drug testing.

Scientists from medical tech company Fluicell have partnered with clinical R&D firm Cellectricon and the Swedish Karolinska Institutet university to 3D bioprint neural cells into complex patterns.

Using the microfluidic printheads featured on Fluicell’s Biopixlar platform, the researchers were able to accurately arrange rat brain cells within 3D structures, without damaging their viability. The resulting cerebral tissues could be used to model the progress of neurological diseases, or to test the efficacy of related drugs.

“We’ve been using Biopixlar to develop protocols for the printing of different neuronal cells types, and we are very pleased with its performance,” said Mattias Karlsson, CEO of Cellectricon. “This exciting technology has the potential to open completely new avenues for in-vitro modeling of a wide range of central and PNS-related diseases.”

A new laser-based approach has been introduced to produce artificial cartilage using 3D printing technology.

In this approach, researchers from TU Wien printed living cells within tiny football-like spheroids.

The team hopes this technique could be used to cultivate lab-grown tissue capable of replacing damaged cartilage in humans. It is a strong connective tissue found in various parts of the body that protects our joints and bones.