3D Printer
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.
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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.
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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.
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Medical 3D printing has spawned a prototype industry chain in medical models, diagnostic and treatment instruments, rehabilitation aids, prosthetic limbs, teeth and artificial joints. There are heavy problems regarding the approval of 3D printing products, national policy decisions on such products, and the technology and materials encountered during the rise of the products. How to break through these bottlenecks and master the entire market direction and core technology has become the key to the long-term foothold of enterprises, and is also a common concern of clinicians and researchers.
The TCT Asia Perspectives team communicated with Professor Wang Jinwu of the Ninth People's Hospital of Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine on this series of issues through an online interview during the epidemic. The interview was conducted by
The digital medicine team of Academician Dr. Kerong Dai and Professor Jinwu Wang has long been dedicated to medical 3D printing research, which mainly includes 3D printing preoperative models, surgical guides, orthopedic implants and biological 3D printing around the clinical needs of bone and joint. In response to the current development trend of the bone and joint field toward minimally invasive, personalized and precise, Prof. Wang's team is also committed to the standard development, registration and regulation of 3D printed medical devices to bring them into the ranks of approval levels and meet clinical needs. The development of metal 3D printing standards, biological 3D printing standards and 3D printing standards for rehabilitation aids have been completed and released as group standards.
"Based on the development of the standards, the team has also obtained the first 3D printing medical device registration certificate in China, and the first medical device registration certificate obtained by a wholly owned subsidiary of a university under the registrar system." Prof. Wang Jinwu introduced, "With the support of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, we established a medical device trial base and set up Shanghai Jiao Tong University Medical Device Registration and Innovation Service Center, which mainly undertakes the work of medical device testing, registration service and regulatory scientific research."
Compared with mass-produced artificial joints as well as traditional medical devices, 3D printed medical devices have relatively high costs in clinical applications and little room for corporate profitability when producing personalized bone and joint products. For this reason, with the support of the key special project of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University has established a medical device intelligent manufacturing cloud platform. Professor Wang illustrated to us the significance of establishing the platform through a simple example: a company may not necessarily make money by printing a tooth for 10,000 RMB, but the situation will be different if 200 personalized teeth are printed at once through 3D printing.
At the beginning of the medical device cloud platform, the personalized patient's disease database and the medical device template database of medical-industrial crossover are established. +The model of "Internet of Things + Artificial Intelligence". On the basis of artificial intelligence, it is possible to quickly and accurately screen out medical-industrial cross-templates that are close to personalized patient needs, after which only some simple planning and design are required. Such an intelligent manufacturing cloud platform can greatly save time, reduce enterprise costs, and facilitate future personalized medical device registration and certification and clinical application translation.
"Bio-3D printing has become an extremely promising technology for clinical translation in creating tissues and organs with physiological structural functions and capable of self-repair." Prof. Jinwu Wang said, "Thanks to bio-3D printing, we can now perform high-throughput drug screening through 3D printed organoids. For example, tumor cells of tumor patients are printed into multiple small units of the same tumor, so that the most effective personalized drug for treating patients with that tumor can be screened." With the support of the Key R&D Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Prof. Jinwu Wang's team has also developed a bio-3D printing robot using the technology combination of bio-3D printing and robotics, which has prepared the experimental research aspect for the future entry of bio-3D printing into the field of minimally invasive treatment for bone and joint cartilage repair.
The main applications of Prof. Wang's team in the medical field are preoperative models and guides, 3D printed endoprosthesis and rehabilitation aids. Prof. Wang Jinwu focused on the application of orthopedic devices in the field of rehabilitation aids, which is summarized as "one old and one small".
The term "one old" refers to the fact that most people will develop inversion or valgus of the knee joint after the age of 60. The two main causes of knee pain are mechanical and inflammatory factors, of which mechanical factors can be treated with orthotics. Personalized 3D printed orthoses are lightweight, safe and effective for every patient who needs treatment. For some patients with early and mid-stage knee pain, it can significantly slow down the time to joint replacement or even eliminate the need for joint replacement. The 3D-printed knee orthosis developed by the team has not only obtained the medical device registration certificate, but also has been clinically applied in some hospitals in Shanghai and other provinces and cities.
The "one small" refers to the skeletal deformities that arise during the development of children can also be treated by 3D printed orthoses. There are two typical examples of orthotic applications, both of which are currently being researched by Prof. Wang Jinwu's team. One is scoliosis orthopedics, scoliosis in children was pointed out in the 2020 session of the two sessions has become the third "killer" after obesity, myopia, China's child and adolescent health, it is recommended that the prevention and control of scoliosis in children and adolescents as soon as possible.
The incidence of scoliosis is 3%-5% in the literature, but in recent years, many scholars have found through research and screening of a large sample of children that the incidence actually exceeds 10%. While it is possible to correct the scoliosis during development with the use of 3D printed orthoses, if left untreated, surgery is required after the scoliosis reaches approximately 40°. Surgery is expensive and traumatic for children and adolescents, and post-operative complications can result in paraplegia, which can have a significant impact on society and families.
Other problems in children are malocclusions, such as misalignment, retrusion, crowding or malocclusion, with a prevalence of over 80%. This condition can also be treated with 3D printed invisible braces. Above, thanks to the 3D printed medical appliance intelligent manufacturing cloud platform developed by the team, 3D printed orthodontic appliances can be made for children and elderly people quickly and easily.
The team of key R&D projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology led by Academician Dai Kerong and Professor Wang Jinwu has also achieved clinical translation through drug screening by bio-3D printing technology, which can clarify whether some drugs are hepatotoxic and nephrotoxic, in addition to personalized screening of tumor and other drugs.
Nature reported the bio-3D printing project by Prof. Wang Jinwu's team of Academician Dai Kerong of the Ninth People's Hospital of Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine. The development of the technology and the realization of the final clinical translation application are inseparable from the digital design, personalized 3D manufacturing and cloud platform of artificial intelligence and intelligent manufacturing. Shanghai Jiao Tong University has completed the initial construction of the disease library and expert template library, which will be maintained by dedicated AI and software engineers, doctors and related researchers.
Bio-3D printing is the crown jewel of the 3D printing field, and it uses a 3D printing material we call bio-ink. Bio-ink contains cells, factors, and some mechanisms composed of biological materials. In the field of cellular drugs, no cellular drugs have been approved in our country yet, and even for stem cells, they are mostly at the stage of clinical trials. Therefore, only when cellular drugs are approved first, bio-3D printing can achieve zero breakthrough in terms of registration certificate. At the same time, the preservation, quality control, pollution prevention and regulation of bio-ink are facing bottlenecks of safety and efficacy, all of which are currently difficult in clinical translation.
Professor Wang added: "Of course, our national Sichuan University academician Zhang Xingdong proposed the use of animal-derived type I collagen or bioactive materials with a certain structure as the main component, without additional growth factors and drugs, to induce the differentiation of stem cells into chondrocyte cell lines, and ultimately achieve the regeneration of articular cartilage, suitable for the treatment of focal articular cartilage defects caused by trauma, degeneration regenerative repair. If we use it as a biomaterial to print through bio-3D printing, it can be clinically translated as a bio-3D printed product in the future. Regarding this research direction, our team is also assisting the participating units of the relevant Ministry of Science and Technology projects to jointly promote the clinical translation work, and we have already completed the relevant animal tests and are also making relevant preparations before the clinical GCP at the Ninth Hospital, which is expected to enter the clinical trial stage soon."
Many stem cell drugs have already entered the clinic in Europe, America and Japan, and Prof. Wang believes that China will soon achieve a breakthrough from zero to one in this area as well. Especially in the field of digital medicine, China has gone from following Europe and the United States to running neck and neck with them, and now we have achieved overtaking in some fields.
With the continuous development of digital technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence and metaverse in recent years, the whole medical field is also developing in the direction of informatization, intelligence and digitalization. In particular, medical devices are developing towards personalization and minimally invasive, especially with the breakthrough research progress of absorbable biomaterials, the development from inactive endophytes to biologically active personalized endophytes will be a major development trend in the future.
Professor Wang believes that digital medical technology, 3D printed medical devices and biological 3D printing will be a future direction in clinical translation, and the rate of future market development will be an accelerated process. With the development of technology and the deepening of aging, the application of personalized medicine will become more and more widespread. In particular, biological 3D printing robots, high throughput screening of 3D printed organoid drugs, and the development of 3D printed personalized medical device intelligent manufacturing cloud platform will all help to realize personalized, minimally invasive and intelligent medical treatment to better benefit the disabled and society.
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Foreword: In the 3 months of the ups and downs of the epidemic in Shanghai, many friends have been asking me when the last two articles on blockchain will be released. Now, with the stabilization of the epidemic, my writing status has gradually returned. I'd like to say sorry to those who have been waiting, and I'd like to thank everyone for their care and help during the epidemic.
When we talk about blockchain today, we often think of bitcoin, ethereum, NFT and the hot meta-universe nowadays. Here I will not talk about their actual investment value, I will only discuss about the prospect and direction of the application of blockchain technology in 3D printing design platform.
First of all, we need to understand how the concept of 3D printing design platform was birthed? There are many 3D printing platforms on the internet today, every 3D handicraft factory has its own 3D printing platform, and there are several mature design platforms such as: CG Model Network and Moore Network. Secondly, because the technical characteristics of 3D printing make printing data models become very fast, so the majority of 3D printing platforms want to add design to their platform services, and thus 3D printing design platforms have emerged. However, I found that the 3D printing design platform on the market today generally exists in a phenomenon: hard combination. 3D printing is part of the manufacturing industry, design is part of the art design range, so the manufacturing platform thinking to build an art design platform will produce some problems such as: less customers, less designers and less models.
The above three "less" problems boil down to one problem, namely: how to attract people to enter and use the platform. Now the 3D printing design platform is a two-way complementary operation logic, the platform hopes to attract customers with design needs through 3D printing and attract customers with 3D printing needs through design, but unfortunately the reality and ideal is often the opposite. Then to solve this problem I think we have to go in two steps.
Step 1: How to attract designers to the platform. First of all, we have to make it clear that the priority of designers is higher than that of customers, and this is the same reason as the drop. Tic-Tac was the first to solve the problem of no drivers, so much so that Tic-Tac was the first company internal staff every day outside the car so that the platform's drivers can receive a single, and give a generous reward. On the contrary, 3D printing design platform, I think the most attractive gold sign for designers today is blockchain technology, because blockchain technology can put design fees directly into the pockets of designers. Now all design platforms and 3D printing design platform, the platform and the designer is a subordinate relationship, because the customer's payment is first played to the platform and then the platform will pay the designer's design fees, this process for the designer there is a fatal risk: the financial disputes caused by the poor operation of the platform, and blockchain technology can circumvent this risk. Blockchain technology converts the traditional up-and-down relationship into a parallel relationship, and the customer payment is no longer paid to a specific account, but to the chain jointly constructed by the platform and the designer.
Of course, blockchain technology is not only limited to currency, its real value lies in the information composed of data can be put into the chain, NFT is the best example, NFT is the picture through a specific port transfer to the chain, so that the picture in the chain has a unique, and now the NFT has been upgraded from two-dimensional data to three-dimensional movable data. It is easy to imagine that in the future all projects from start to finish can be done in the chain, from the communication of the project process to the production and transmission of data, as well as printing and delivery, everything is available in the chain and each party has all the data. This is also beneficial for the platform, for example, the platform no longer needs to worry about designers and clients communicating privately and thus disengaging from the platform. As long as it is on the chain, the platform can be assured that designers and clients can communicate directly to improve the efficiency and completion of the project.
Step 2: how to attract customers to the platform. Design platform and design company are two concepts, the company seeks high net worth customers, the platform is what kind of customers have to be accepted, now the 3D printing design platform is actually more like a company. Blockchain technology can turn the 3D printing design platform into a real platform similar to a certain treasure network, and the designers are the shopkeepers. Under the premise of taking the first step, the platform can ensure that each customer can find the corresponding designer according to their actual needs, and intervene to solve problems when disputes arise between customers and designers, and the platform customer service can make a fair judgment based on the complete data of the blockchain. As long as the platform can do this, I think customers are willing to continue to use it, because there are only three elements that keep customers: price, efficiency and dispute resolution.
In the years I've been making 3D printed artwork, many people in the industry have asked me about 3D printing design platforms. In most cases I don't really give a positive answer, because of the old Chinese saying: a line of work is like a mountain. If the 3D printing platform just provides 3D printing services, then there is no problem with the current model, everyone is doing it very professionally. But when the 3D printing platform to turn into a 3D printing design platform, then the nature of the platform has changed fundamentally. The leading art and design platforms at home and abroad are building their own blockchain such as ARTSY abroad and an art in China, which have opened a digital art platform with blockchain technology as the core structure. In my opinion, technology itself is not good or bad, only advanced and backward. When an advanced technology appears, we need to keep up with the times. Of course the future 3D printing design platform does not have to use blockchain technology, but can a platform whose technology has not kept up with the times attract valuable talents? This is a question worth thinking about.
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