3D printing is about
much more than homemade figures for war games. Here, our in-house expert Jack
Dempsey takes a look at the latest cool developments in the world of 3D
printing
Science shows its
heart
Hot off the press is news that researchers at Tel Aviv
University in Israel claim to have made the first ever 3D-printed heart with
human tissue and blood vessels.
It's only the size of a cherry and it cannot pump blood, but
it is being hailed as a major medical breakthrough all the same.
This amazing little print out has cells, blood vessels and
chambers. Scientists now hope to begin work on a heart which can pump blood
within a year.
It is possible, we are told, that fully working printed
hearts could be being routinely transplanted into patients within a decade.
A preposterous oesophagus
But 3D printing is not just about hearts - the race is
apparently on to try and print every part of the human body.
A team of Japanese researchers has now successfully
transplanted a 3D bioprinted oesophagus into rats.
The oesophagus not only maintained its structure after the
transplant, it even grew to be covered by natural tissue.
Take off for 3D
printing
One of the big advantages of 3D printing is how strong
finished product can become due to the mixture of materials that can be used,
and the way they are compounded together.
This makes 3D printing very interesting to NASA, which has
worked with the Glenn Research Center (GRC) and Marshall Space Flight Center
(MSFC) to develop GRCop-42, a copper-based high strength alloy with high
conductivity.
Using powder bed fusion (PBF) 3D printing, NASA researchers
successfully 3D printed near-fully-dense GRCop-42 components that are resistant
to deformation and remain strong even at elevated temperatures.
Further tests will follow, but it could be a major
breakthrough for engine performance.
Wolf dog back from
the dead
A historical group in Scotland has used 3D printing to
reconstruct a 4,000-year-old Neolithic dog found in a tomb in Orkney.
The skull was scanned and printed to reveal a creature which
looks similar to a European grey wolf.
It's believed the dog was ritually buried along with eight
humans and 22 other canines.
And finally…
A Boston company believes it has come up with a way to
drastically increase the speed of 3D printing by 100 times.
It has the potential to open up 3D printing into mass
production.
Normal 3D printers melt metal with the laser, but the
process is too slow. The new Desktop Metal system uses metal powder from vats.
The powder is laid down in thin layers - printing one layer every two to
two-and-half seconds.
The powder is fixed with a glue to create a 3D object. It's
a way to mass produce metal objects in a cost-effective way.