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A 3D printing company is using technology to bring fast, flexible and affordable housing to Englewood. The company called 3D Build Systems plans to start printing homes by the summer of 2019. The printing process can assemble a home in a matter of hours. “It simplifies in many ways the way we construct a wall, but we can do it very quickly and with a pattern that can’t be done manually,” said Don Musilli, the CEO of 3D Build Systems. The building process would require a robot to sit in the center of the home and pour concrete or other...

Erik Gatenholm first saw a 3D bioprinter in early 2015. His father, Paul, a professor in chemistry and biopolymer technology at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, had bought one for his department. It cost somewhere in the region of $200,000. “My father was like, ‘This thing can print human organs,’” Gatenholm recalls, still awestruck. “I said, ‘Bulls#*+!’ Then it printed a little piece of cartilage. It wasn’t cartilage, but it was like, this could be cartilage. That was the moment when it was like, ‘This is frickin’ cool!’” Gatenholm, who had long owned a regular 3D printer, decided then...

Australian company Titomic has unveiled what it claims is the world's largest metal 3D printer at its fully automated Melbourne facility. Utilizing a patented process co-developed with Australian federal scientific research agency the CSIRO, the 3D metal printer boasts a build area 9 m long, 3 m wide and 1.5 m high (29.5 x 9.8 x 4.9 ft), however the printing process isn't constrained to this booth size, meaning it could be used to print even larger objects. The unit prints layer by layer like existing 3D printers, but rather than relying on metal powders that are fused using extreme...

EXPERTS say 3D-printed houses will be "mainstream by 2025", and could put an end to Britain's housing crisis. A new report details how Brits are less than a decade away from enjoying lower house prices thanks to a robot revolution in the construction of homes. 3D printing, or "additive manufacturing", is a process of layering up a material to build complicated structures. It works just like regular home printers – but instead of ink, a 3D printer will use materials like plastic or metal. Using giant 3D printers, it's been proven possible to quickly and cheaply build homes. Sadly the...

Imagine a world where anyone with access to a simple and affordable piece technology could produce their own deadly weapons on demand. This hypothetical future is the focus of a new report from the RAND Corporation think tank, which looks at the potential threats to personal, national and global security posed by the proliferation of 3D printing—also known as additive manufacturing (AM). Additive manufacturing is a term used to describe various technologies which produce three-dimensional objects by “printing” layer-upon-layer of a given material, while following a digital blueprint. Although the technology is currently fairly limited in some respects, it is...

If you build it, they will come. And if you 3D-print it, they will come faster, cheaper and more sustainably. We live in an era of overpopulation and mass housing shortages. Yet we also live in a time of phenomenal digital innovation. On the one hand we have major crises affecting the health, liberty and happiness of billions of people. But look at the other hand, where we have potential for life-changing technological breakthroughs at a rate never before seen on this planet. Our challenges are vast, but our capabilities to produce solutions are even greater. In the future, we...

Aether, the biotechnology company behind the multi-tool Aether 1 3D bioprinter, is developing an artificially intelligent (AI) program for 3D printing organ models. Described as the “missing piece” in the wider, 3D bioprinting puzzle, Aether’s Automatic Segmentation and Reconstruction (ASAR) process will be capable of identifying different tissues in CT Scan data and converting the results into a mutlimaterial, 3D printable file.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)According to Aether CEO Ryan Franks, “AI is the only way bioprinting can reach its full potential.” With AI, the file preparation process is automated, bringing 3D printing closer to the “click of a button” usability which is essential...

3D printing technology has been used multiple times to help create drug delivery and release systems, from programmable release capsules and cancer drug-emitting implants to micro-rockets that deliver drugs inside the body and even a biomaterial sleeve that can reduce the risk of infection after a body piercing. Some researchers are working to develop 3D printed pills and vaccines that will combine multiple medications into one, and an Israeli drug delivery company will soon seek FDA approval for its 3D printed medical marijuana inhaler, which can control the doses a person inhales. But I would bet you $20 that none...

On Wednesday morning, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., introduced legislation banning bump fire stocks — accessories that transform semi-automatic rifles into machine guns. Already 20 Senate Democrats have co-sponsored the bill and even some wayward Republicans have promised to consider it. If successful, the bill could land on President Trump's desk, and it could become the first new gun control law in decades. And, more than likely, it could be obsolete. Bump fire stocks are made from relatively cheap polymers that can be 3-D printed. Hobbyists have posted videos of their homemade stocks in action, at least one manufacturer has actually...

Markforged, a 3D printer manufacturer based in Boston, has just announced two new models — the X3 and the X5. Both of these printers are designed to create carbon fiber-infused objects using a standard filament printing system and both can produce items that can replace or are stronger than steel objects. Both printers have auto-leveling and scanning systems to ensure each printed object is exactly like every other. Further, the printers use Markforged’s special thermoplastic fiber filament, while the X5 can add a “strand of continuous fiberglass” to create objects “19X stronger and 10X stiffer than traditional plastics.” This means...

Desktop Metal – remember the name. This Massachussetts company is preparing to turn manufacturing on its head, with a 3D metal printing system that's so much faster, safer and cheaper than existing systems that it's going to compete with traditional mass manufacturing processes. We've been hearing for years now about 3D printing and how it's going to revolutionize manufacturing. As yet, though, it's still on the periphery. Plenty of design studios and even home users run desktop printers, but the only affordable printing materials are cheap ABS plastics. And at the other end of the market, while organizations like NASA...

Hampton Creek, a plant-based food startup headquartered in San Francisco, recently announced that it will be moving into the lab-grown meat industry, and plans to have its clean meat products on shelves as soon as 2018. According to Spanish tech site ABC.es, Hampton Creek is considering using 3D printing to realize this goal. Since its founding in 2011 by Josh Balk and Joshua Tetrick (the company’s current CEO), Hampton Creek has gained a lot of attention for its plant-based food products—both good and bad. On the good side, the company has been recognized as a unicorn startup and has done...

Norsk Titanium has become a huge source of pride for people in Plattsburgh. It's a Norwegian aerospace company that makes airplane parts using high-tech, industrial, 3-D printing machines. The plant opened last year, and recently Norsk delivered its first federally approved parts for Boeing commercial airplanes. The 3-D printing technology is at the cutting edge in the aerospace industry. Business leaders have called this the next industrial revolution. We visited the company's research and testing facility to see how it works. The 3-D printers looked like long, supersized computer towers. A mechanical arm with little torches on the end shot...

Innovations in the technology of 3D printing and scanning have been tremendous. The hype that was already being created in 3D printing is huge and the R&D is happening to fulfil the expectations in different parts of the world. Though the technology erupted in 1980’s, 3D printing for healthcare has been getting familiar in the last decade. Let us see how, across all areas, 3D printing of healthcare can have a bigger impact in coming years. Bio-printing Whenever the words “3D printing in healthcare” are uttered, most people will ask, “is it possible to 3D print an organ like heart...

Nanotechnologists from Rice University and China's Tianjin University have used 3-D laser printing to fabricate centimeter-sized objects of atomically thin graphene. The research could yield industrially useful quantities of bulk graphene and is described online in a new study in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano. "This study is a first of its kind," said Rice chemist James Tour, co-corresponding author of the paper. "We have shown how to make 3-D graphene foams from nongraphene starting materials, and the method lends itself to being scaled to graphene foams for additive manufacturing applications with pore-size control." Graphene, one of the...

One company sees 3D print technology evolving into a product lineup of affordable and scalable printers, with the “blade server” concept for volume manufacturing where printers on a rack will scale up or down to meet customers’ needs. Discussions of additive manufacturing invariably turn to prototyping for a good reason: economics. While it may make sense from a cost perspective to 3D print functional new parts with plastic or metal during the design process, additive manufacturing (AM) techniques cease where mass production begins. Few manufacturers are discussing replacing traditional production methods for parts with AM techniques, as it would simply...

Three-dimensional (3D) printing has gained traction in recent years and is now used across a wide range of industries for the quick and easy fabrication of complex materials. 3D printing is now set to revolutionise the medical industry, especially in regenerative medicine, as it enables cells, tissues and organs to be printed on demand. These biological components are traditionally cultured for long periods of time, using various gaseous and chemical environments so that they grow. Aside from the timescales, standard culturing methods can easily go awry if there is even a small, and often accidental or unavoidable change in the...

Building a house completely by hand can be both time-consuming and expensive. A number of home-builders have chosen to automate part of the construction process (i.e. by printing the home's parts) instead. A new Ukrainian homebuilding startup called Passivdom uses a 3D-printing robot that can print parts for tiny houses. The machine can print the walls, roof, and floor of Passivdom's 380-square-foot model in about eight hours. The windows, doors, plumbing, and electrical systems are then added by a human worker. When complete, the homes are completely autonomous and mobile, meaning they don't need to connect to external electrical and...

Kniterate, the 3D printer for Knitwear, has taken Kickstarter by storm with its new crowd-funding campaign. The digital knitting machine, which first crossed our radar back in June 2016, has recently resurfaced, catching the eye of design bloggers, knitters, and knitwear enthusiasts alike. And all the buzz may be just what Kniterate needs to hit the market: with almost $250,000 already pledged, the Kickstarter campaign has more than doubled its initial goal of $100,000. What is Kniterate exactly? It’s a computerized knitting machine that, by “bringing an affordable and compact version of industrial knitting machines to your workshop,” promises to...

XYZprinting is one of the most prolific 3D printer manufacturers active in the market right now. The company has released so many products just in the last year, in fact, that youÂ’d be forgiven for having to stretch your memory to recall XYZprintingÂ’s beginnings. It all started with the da Vinci 1.0 Blue, also known as the da Vinci 1.0 or the da Vinci 1.0A, XYZÂ’s debut 3D printer that was an immediate hit at CES 2014. ItÂ’s hard to believe XYZprinting has been around for just a few years, considering the success theyÂ’ve had since then; a lot can...