Space is hard. Every time a rocket crashes or a probe goes silent, someone invokes the mantra that it’s hard to reach for the stars. Rockets are complicated machines, often with thousands of parts that can doom a mission if just one fails. Relativity Space, a California-based startup, is trying a new approach—3D printed rockets […]
Three days before astronauts left on Apollo 8, the first-ever flight around the moon, NASA’s safety chief, Jerome Lederer, gave a speech that was at once reassuring and chilling. Yes, he said, America’s moon program was safe and well-planned—but even so, “Apollo 8 has 5,600,000 parts and one and one half million systems, subsystems, and […]
Flying 3D-printing robots modeled after wasps and birds may one day repair and build structures at remote sites beyond the reach of standard construction teams, a new study finds. Construction robots that can 3D-print structures on sites may one day prove faster, safer and more productive than human teams. However, construction robotics currently mostly focus […]
The energy we spend on cooling indoor spaces has tripled since 1990, and it’s going to triple again by 2050 as developing and middle-income countries embrace air-conditioning. Researchers are putting a lot of sweat into innovative cooling technologies that consume less energy, but none seem ready for prime time in the near future. “Air-conditioning innovation […]
More than a quarter-century after scientists first grew a humanlike ear on the back of a mouse, surgeons in San Antonio have successfully used a 3D printer to reconstruct an outer ear made of living cells for a young woman with a congenital ear deformity—no creepy-looking mice required. Researchers hailed the pioneering transplant as a […]
One month into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a group of more than 100 makers from all over Ukraine manufactured and supplied a number of 3D-printed products to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Territorial Defense Force, and the Air Forces. For security reasons, this group does not disclose most of their work. But they […]
In recent years, scientists have been using biomimetic tissue models—reconstructed tissues designed to replicate the attributes of living tissue—to study disease and development in the human body. The heart, however, is a different story. Even though advances in stem cell research now make it easier to grow cardiac tissue, replicating a functioning human heart in […]
In the first of a series of blogs from speakers at this summer’s Additive International summit (Nottingham, 13 – 14 July) Professor Martin Wegener from Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) discusses recent advances in micrometer and nanometer scale 3D printing Throughout the last decade, a plethora of different commercially available 3D printers has hit […]
Graphene and other two-dimensional (2D) materials have offered tantalizing promise in the field of printable electronics. Part of this appeal has been that graphene has an innate advantage of being more easily solution processed than existing electronics materials. And graphene along with other 2D materials can typically offer greater flexibility, allowing them to be deposited […]
This July, leading researchers from the world of additive manufacturing will gather at Nottingham’s Additive International Summit to share insights into the technologies that are shaping the future of the sector. Summit co-chairs – Professors Richard Hague and Chris Tuck – celebrate the welcome return of an event that is key for a sector which […]