This 3D-printed chair was made from biodegradable plastic.
A 3D printer that could re-create itself from lunar material is in development at a university in Canada.
The technology could one day enable humans to 3D-print lunar bases, as well as conduct in-space manufacturing of satellites and solar shields on the moon that could help fight global warming, according to Alex Ellery, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Carleton University in Ottawa, who is leading the project.
“I believe that self-replicating machines will be transformative for space exploration because it effectively bypasses launch costs,” Ellery told Space.com. [How Moon Bases and Lunar Colonies Work (Infographic)].
This could lead to a small 3D printer used by soldiers to quickly make anything needed in the field.
Cazza’s 3D printing robots has introduced a new way of construction, which is more eco-friendly and cost-effective than traditional methods.
Posted in 3D printing
Manufacturing is dirty, dull, and outmoded. It’s a slow-moving industry stuck in the past as new technologies out of Silicon Valley threaten to upend it. Stereotypes are fun, and misleading.
Let’s not forget manufacturing is the industry that made the modern age.
While many were musing about robots in science fiction, manufacturers were putting them to practical use. As tech news headlines hyped up 3D printing, manufacturers had been prototyping with it for decades. And though information technology is the source of the latest revolution, manufacturing is the source of the source. No chip fab facilities, no chips.
Equipped with 3D printers, CNC machines, computers, digital tools and other equipment, a fabrication laboratory, otherwise known as a Fab Lab, is a facility set up to enable people to ‘make anything’. In a bid to provide these capabilities to missions for deep-space exploration, NASA are accepting FabLab proposals from corporate, institutional and charitable teams in the private-sector, due to be reviewed late 2017.
Major advancement in 3D printing:
Cytosurge AG, based in Zurich Switzerland, presents their revolutionary FluidFM µ3Dprinter which is world’s first 3D sub-micron direct metal printing machine.
Bioprinting new organs and tissues could make transplants available and affordable for all, but is still decades away. In the meantime, scientists have re-purposed the technology to 3D print biocompatible high-precision silicone implants instead.
Soft materials like biological material or silicone are difficult to 3D print because they can’t support themselves like the more rigid plastics typically used by 3D printers. In 2015, Tommy Angelini’s lab at the University of Florida developed a new way of 3D printing soft materials by injecting them into a granular gel similar to hand sanitizer that supports them as they are deposited.