3D Printer
Introduction: In the medical field, carrying out those complex surgeries related to the brain or skull is a very difficult thing to do even under the best medical conditions. However, when the surgical subjects involve infants and children, especially newborns, the difficulty of the operation increases exponentially.
On August 13, 2022, in a recent surgical case abroad, doctors used 3D printing technology to successfully help save a newborn baby with a similar condition. The newborn reportedly needed surgery immediately after birth to repair an occipital defect in his skull, as it had not developed properly. To address this challenge, Polish deep tech company Sygnis SA (which recently acquired Zmorph) used additive manufacturing technology to create a 3D printed model that was critical to the success of the newborn baby's neurosurgery.
In addition to being used in prosthetic and orthotic manufacturing, another major way 3D printing is being used in the medical field is for training and preparation prior to surgical procedures. Doctors can do this by printing an exact replica of the area to be surgically treated, in the case of this article, a model of the patient's skull made from a scan of the patient. Surgeons are able to practice before surgery, thereby reducing mortality, especially for complex procedures like this one. To help save this particular baby girl, Pawel Ozga, a medical image segmentation specialist and volunteer with the Polish e-Nable Foundation led by Dr. Kryzstof Grandys, approached Sygnis to create the model as soon as possible and in as much detail as possible to increase the likelihood of survival. This child was diagnosed with an occipital defect immediately after birth, which also meant that part of her brain was exposed, a dangerous condition that can be fatal if left untreated.
Creating a 3D printed model of the skull
The creation of the pre-surgical skull model took place in February 2022. After the baby was born, she was diagnosed at the University Children's Hospital in Krakow. the 3D printed skull was a key part of the pre-surgical plan as a way to practice with an accurate model of the baby's skull in a short period of time. In fact, Sygnis actually created two models, one using SLA and the other using SLS. they turned to these two different technologies to take advantage of the benefits of both.
For the model created using SLA, it was done on a SygnisFlashforge 8.9s 3D printer. the benefit of SLA is that the doctor is able to get a more detailed and accurate reproduction of the skull based on MRI and CT scans. However, the material used is not as strong. That's where SLS comes in, this model was created on a Sinterit Lisa Pro 3D printer. SLS also produces highly detailed and accurate parts, but they are much stronger due to the use of PA12. This means that doctors are able to actually practice with their tools before surgery. In addition, because SLS 3D printing does not require a support structure, but rather a powder blank to fill this role, doctors were able to perfectly reproduce geometrically complex bone structures. By being able to practice with both models beforehand, the doctors were able to prepare quickly and efficiently for this difficult procedure.
In addition to the ability to perfectly reproduce the baby girl's skull from the scan alone, the doctors chose 3D printing technology because of its ability to create this 1:1 scale 3D printed model of the skull at an efficient manufacturing speed. Since the defect was not diagnosed during the pregnancy, time was of the essence to complete the procedure in the shortest possible time. In fact, according to Sygnis' case study, they only had 96 hours to create the model, deliver it, and have the surgeon perform pre-surgical testing. Thankfully, the skull printed with SLA was completed in just eight hours, while the skull made with SLS was completed in 24 hours.
The surgery was successfully completed on February 28 and the little girl was able to be discharged from the hospital. Professor Lukasz Krakowczyk, the surgeon in charge of the operation, concluded: "Imaging studies are useful to identify cranial defects. However, they don't exactly match the skin defects, which is why printing the model is so important. 3D printing will also be essential at the stage of reconstructing the cranial defects, when the bone reconstruction needs to be perfectly aligned and planned."
Although the final outcome cannot be known, as this child will need more treatment in the future, it is clear that this surgery was able to be successful thanks to the intervention of 3D printing. sygnis also expects more such collaborations, as they further use hand preoperative models to improve the success rate after surgery.
Continue reading
By 2020, additive manufacturing has finally become a mature technology that can be used in more and more areas of production. Over the past decade, it has completed the entirety of the technology hype cycle, finally reaching peak productivity.
Custom fixture system produced by Pankl Racing Systems using Formlabs technology
Despite the recent advances in 3D printing technology, many 3D printer owners are still not as profitable as they thought. One of the biggest reasons for this is low equipment utilization: equipment is not used frequently enough. Underutilization can be caused by a lack of applications or inadequate technology, and a serious lack of design skills for additive manufacturing in-house. When designers and engineers don't know how or when to use additive manufacturing, they create expensive parts of poor quality.
In addition, there are three reasons why additive manufacturing is difficult to make profitable.
1. Additive manufacturing processes are still misunderstood
Although 3D printing equipment manufacturers continue to introduce industrial 3D printing equipment with better efficiency and performance, part design will never truly be optimized for 3D printing design (DFAM, design for additive manufacturing ) if users are not familiar with the basics of the additive manufacturing process.
For example, DLP and FDM 3D printing are getting faster and better materials every year. However, neither technology can overcome the need for support materials. By redesigning with the goal of eliminating support materials, Blueprint engineers have a new design that is only 33% of the original cost to produce. While it does not differ in performance from above, it is much faster to produce due to some simple understanding of 3D printing design optimization.
Designs with self-supporting structures are just one way to reduce time and material consumption and can be performed on many technologies including DLP, FDM, DMLS, stereolithography, and more.
Many 3D printing service providers find low return on investment for their machines, frequent print failures, difficulty removing support materials or excess powder, and complaints about the inadequacy of 3D printing technology.
2. Lack of availability of additional design software
The design of complex geometric shapes originates from the world of digital art: concept design, video game design and illustration. The software and engineers used to make these designs are completely different from the engineering CAD software used to make the parts. Additive manufacturing introduces a new design discipline that brings manufacturability to optimal design, breaking the limitations of traditional manufacturing design processes.
To fill this gap, many software companies are faced with the challenge of designing geometrically manufacturable parts. Here are a few examples of these products and their current limitations.
Autodesk Generative Design is a simple tool that generates geometry to connect anchor point features. To this day, it still does not enable 100% manufacturable designs and the output needs to be adjusted or completely redesigned based on the generated results.
Materialize 3-Matic offers a variety of 3D printing design optimization modules ranging from part lightweighting to digital texturing. The process of using it can be complex as it relates to the manufacturability and file integrity of the output mesh file, so it remains a concern.
nTopology introduced nTop, a promising new software that combines the generation of design shapes with easy-to-understand geometric patterns. It is a fairly new software that has not yet been tested for widespread adoption.
Users must accept the fact that there is no perfect design software yet, and we should focus our efforts on selecting the type of software needed to create value and use it.
3. No additive manufacturing mindset
Unless additive manufacturing is introduced at the beginning of the product lifecycle, it will not generate much value. Without support from all departments to embed additive thinking from the beginning of a project, the necessary CAD data, requirements analysis, or design resources are not available, leading to failure and wasted effort.
Thinking about additive manufacturing for prototypes, designers should embrace the "agile" nature of additive manufacturing at all stages of product development, assuming that each part needs to be 3D printed twice: once for testing and once for use.
Additive manufacturing is often seen as too expensive or too fragile for fixtures and tools. Adding auxiliary parts to increase strength and reduce material use is a way to improve design performance and economy.
Additive manufacturing thinking must drive two things in the design of production 3D printed parts: guaranteeing functionality (including surface quality, mechanical loading, and economy), and goals (weight reduction, cost reduction, and improved functionality). Designers should abandon traditional manufacturing assumptions and start anew with these two considerations.
3D printing requires new thinking and collaboration across multiple departments. While traditional manufacturing methods have tied designers to manufacturability, the flexibility of additive manufacturing liberates designers in ways never before possible. And, while 3D printing shifts control from the manufacturing process to the engineer, it can make designers miserable due to waste (whether it's time, materials or iterations).
This is why 3D printing optimizes design skills and is so important to achieving the desired benefits.
Continue reading
November 10, 2021, Massivit 3D (Tel Aviv Stock Exchange: MSVT), a leading supplier of large-scale 3D printing systems, has introduced two new materials. One is Dimengel 20-FR (DIM 20-FR), a new flame-retardant 3D printing material that meets basic safety and performance requirements related to combustion, and the other is Dimengel 300 (DIM 300), a translucent material with high light transmission. The development of these new printing materials significantly broadens the existing applications for Massivit 3D customers.
DIM 20-FR is a flame retardant photopolymer gel developed for 3D printing that meets UL94-V0, the highest standard for flame retardant materials.
Formulated by Massivit 3D's chemistry development team, DIM 20-FR is a premium print material for use in the recently launched large format 3D printer, the Massivit 5000. the Massivit 5000 offers a dual material system that allows Massivit 3D operators to print separate parts simultaneously, using separate materials on each of the system's two print heads. using different materials.
This new material has a certification issued by UL, ensuring that Massivit 5000 operators can produce flame-retardant applications with the assurance that the material has been tested and continues to be regularly monitored by UL. The new DIM 20-FR material supports a wide range of applications, including automotive, railroad and military manufacturers, who are increasingly using the composite material to produce tough, complex parts.
DIM 300 introduces a new 3D printing translucent material to the market, which customers in various industries can use to produce prototypes, design verification, interior design, architecture, scenic displays and a range of advertising applications. Currently, Massivit 3D's customers have five proprietary printing materials, including DIM 90, DIM 100, DIM 110, DIM 20-FR™ and DIM 300. users can tailor the material to specific usage requirements, such as production speed, size, clarity, Massivit 3D CEO Erez Zimerman said, " Dimengel is at the heart of Massivit 3D's patented gel dispensing printing technology. We are continually developing innovative materials to expand the range of applications for our customers, whether they are manufacturing railroad parts, automotive aftermarket parts, or amusement park displays."
"In addition, it is of utmost importance to ensure that our materials and technologies comply with industry regulations, particularly those related to safety. The new UL94-V0 certification meets customer requirements and the industry's growing demand for flame-resistant parts and models." Like Massivit 3D's existing proprietary materials, DIM 20-FR and DIM 300 enable the rapid production of large custom parts that can be cured in an instant, enabling solid objects to be printed directly on the printer. Unlike other commonly used additive manufacturing materials, Dimengel facilitates the production of complex parts that require little to no support structure.
Continue reading
Introduction: In recent years, research fields including aerospace, marine, biomedical and sports have made use of innovative and advanced materials. Among the many new materials developed recently, polymer foam materials stand out because of their good mechanical and physical properties.
Polymer foams are microporous materials based on polymers (plastics, rubber, elastomers or natural polymers) that have numerous air bubbles inside, and can also be considered as composite materials with gas as filler.
In August 2022, a team from Italy used carbon dioxide for 3D printing to make microfoamed wires. Their work has been published online in the journal Polymer under the title Microfoamed Strands by 3D Foam Printing.
These new microfoam materials have a hierarchical porous internal structure that controls their structure-property relationship. These materials have enhanced mechanical properties and more active surfaces compared to non-hierarchical structures. In nature, many organic structures with hierarchical internal organization exist. These structures are capable of achieving the best efficiency and performance with the least amount of material. These include honeycomb, bone and bamboo. These natural structures have properties such as high stiffness-to-weight ratio, good energy reflection and low thermal conductivity, and are now of great interest to scientists, who are also conducting a variety of studies for this purpose.
The fabrication of 3D polymer microfoams is currently the focus of research. 3D printing has been widely used for a variety of technological solutions and offers several advantages over traditional manufacturing techniques. Researchers have made several efforts to form layered lattices and foam structures from polymers. Filamentary struts with macro- and micro-scale pores can be 3D printed. Limitations in the density and inter-chain porosity of extruded struts have been encountered in the current study due to limitations in printing resolution.
Researchers have attempted to improve the process by foaming each single strand to produce foams with high intra- and inter-strand porosity structures. A two-stage approach in which interstrand pores are printed on the structure and the material is then bulk foamed or free dried to produce intrastrand pores.
One of the latest proposed methods is the discontinuous or in-line solubilization using foaming agents in a one-step process. However, designing 3D polymeric microfoams with innovative and fine-tuned morphologies remains problematic due to current technological and process limitations. 3D foam printing itself is a recent technological innovation in additive manufacturing that is still poorly understood and faces several technical challenges before achieving full commercialization. The foaming mechanism in the printer nozzle is not yet properly understood and there are difficulties in controlling the process.
Designing polymeric microfoams with finely controlled morphology and pore structure is key to their commercial application in several frontier research and engineering fields. Achieving this will help scientists take full advantage of the rich potential of layered structures and provide a wide design space for materials scientists.
Researchers have used carbon dioxide to synthesize porous, layered 3D polymer microfoams to produce materials with specific bubble morphologies. The design, production and characterization of the materials were explored in depth in the study. The relationship between bubble morphology and process parameters, namely CO2 concentration and temperature, was highlighted. Microfoams were produced using biodegradable and sustainable polymers and PLA. These polymers were then blown into CO2 to create a green and sustainable synthesis process.15 wt.% CO2 produced low density foams (40 kg/m 3 ) with micro- and macro-scale porosity. The crystallinity content of the produced foams ranged from 5% to 45% depending on the CO2 concentration, showing a linear relationship.
The authors observed that the elastic modulus of the foamed wires was strongly influenced by the crystallinity content. The authors propose a modified Egli equation, which explains the relationship between mechanical properties and foam density. Thus, an innovative model is shown in the study which demonstrates the relationship between crystallinity and properties.
The researchers found that adiabatic cooling is the main solidification mechanism of polymer strands. This cooling is due to the rapid adiabatic expansion of the polymer microfoam during its formation. The authors suggest that understanding this effect will help to adjust the operating parameters of the process to optimize the final foam density.
Polymeric microfoams are innovative bionic materials that can provide numerous benefits to industries such as biomedical, aerospace and textile. They have a complex, porous, layered internal morphology and are superior to traditional non-layered materials. There is growing interest in applying 3D printing methods to produce these materials, but the field is still in its infancy and poorly understood, making the process difficult to control. New research in polymers has demonstrated a simple green synthetic route that could revolutionize the field of 3D printed polymer microfoams. While many challenges remain, this is an area that researchers should continue to explore.
Continue reading
Introduction: With everything we use coming from natural resources, and with natural ecosystems often considered models of sustainability, does this mean that every nature-inspired 3D printed product is actually more environmentally friendly?
Exploring nature makes a lot of sense for inspiring 3D printing. In fact, many 3D printing companies have begun exploring the concept of bionics and have revealed some cool nature-inspired designs in the process. Today, we are still exploring the concept of sustainability and the feasibility of translating it into industrial applications.
Researcher and Associate Professor Flavia Libonati's research works at the intersection of nature, materials, 3D printing and engineering. Her research focuses on the design of toughened and novel composite materials from molecular to engineering scales for biostructural materials such as bone and pearl layers. She uses an enumerative design approach that combines natural and engineering principles, including 3D printing, to improve the mechanical properties of materials in order to successfully combine them in the best possible way.
From the beginning, Libonati says, "We are dealing with a two-way process. 3D printing can change bionics and vice versa. On the one hand, 3D printing has revolutionized everything, including the bionic design approach. The technology and its principles have opened up the design space, broken down geometric manufacturing barriers, and now enable designers to 3D print components with very complex shapes. On the other hand, bionics has transformed 3D printing, opening up new perspectives and variations on a functional level. For example, it helps explore new material possibilities. For example, 4D printing allows for new functions in printed components by adding new dimensions, so it goes beyond the simple manufacturing of parts. "
The professor further explained the natural principles that engineers utilize: "Nature is a divine carving knife that creates a variety of materials that are versatile, efficient and sustainable. If you think about the basic materials you see in nature - layers of pearls, bamboo, bones, etc." They have a very complex structure and are very diverse, and this structural and functional diversity can be seen in the same materials. For example, bone is a material with many substructures composed of minerals and proteins. These structures are mixed together at different length scales to produce different complex macroscopic structures capable of performing different functions in the body.
Bone tissue, although it has the opposite mechanical strength of a similarly structured sponge, is made of similar building blocks for both. We can do the same thing with 3D printing. We start with these building blocks, and then we study how natural and specific local shapes affect and enhance the performance of the whole part. After that, we try to combine these building blocks and diversify the various substructures to highlight composites with different properties.
The way materials work in nature is just one particular example, Libonati notes, "Every industry in the 3D printing value chain can see their work influenced by the bionic approach. This includes designers, materials specialists, and even part manufacturers." In the designer's work, the bionic approach will influence the creative part and help provide the best solutions inspired by nature. Materials specialists, on the other hand, need to understand how these solutions work and how to translate them into synthetic materials, keeping in mind that the latter are not living materials like biological materials.
As part of the research project, Flavia Libonati worked with researchers to gain a deeper understanding of the "structure-property" relationships of lattice-inspired materials. While the research started with a single unit cell inspired by the cubic Bravais lattice, the team used their knowledge from nature on the one hand, and a set of methods including 3D printing and mechanical testing on the other, to study the effects of different printing parameters and numerical modeling to design lightweight construction materials. A perfect illustration of "careful design from natural sources to create lightweight structures that withstand specific local loads and meet different functional needs".
By looking to the future, mimicking the characteristic microstructure of crystalline materials will allow to replicate the typical behavior of crystals on a larger scale, combining the hardening properties of natural structures with the advantages of lightweight architectural structures, resulting in new materials with multiple functions.
What we will conclude from Libonati's explanation is that "nature does everything from the nanoscale, in a hierarchically organized way, and we need to find a way to translate the process into fabrication while maintaining multi-scale precision. In this way, we will find better ways to develop new high-performance materials. bionic approaches within the field of 3D printing will lead to the creation of new materials and structures in the future.
Continue reading
English
German
Italian
Russian
Spanish