Lifeboat Foundation

“Our goals were to explore the new sound world created by using new materials”

Only musicians can understand how grueling and challenging it is to play the violin. Violins, even mediocre ones, are worth thousands of dollars. Good news for music students and beginners, they will meet with low-cost and durable 3D-printed violins thanks to The Acoustical Society of America’s AVIVA Young Artists Program.

As stated in the release, today in Nashville, Mary-Elizabeth Brown, director of the AVIVA Young Artists Program discussed the steps taken and the lessons learned in her presentation, Old meets new: 3D printing and the art of violin-making.

Continue reading “Researchers 3D-print low-cost and durable violins for music students” »

Engineers at Caltech have developed a method for 3D printing pure and multicomponent metals, at a resolution that is, in some cases, an order of magnitude smaller than previously possible. The process, which uses water-based chemistry and 3D printing, was described in a paper published in Nature on October 20.

Year 2021 😁

Conducting medical research on lab-printed brains could be better than animal studies.

Construction and 3D Printing. This is a really cool video. There is demand for affordable housing, and it can be built and rented out, or just lived in. Imagine if many people where you live are empowered with simple housing. Would it be a waste of money if it can pay for itself?

This is the cool company that makes these cool machines. The USA sent $1 billions in weapons to Ukraine in one month, to a war that costs $1 billion a month. Elon Musk just paid $44 billion for Twitter when a $50 billion investment in affordable housing could net him how much in rental income if the houses cost $15,000 in materials?

Continue reading “This 3D Printed House Only Cost $13,000 In Materials” »

Volumetric 3D printing is an exciting technology that could lead to extremely rapid production of 3D printed parts by curing every particle of the object at once. Now, researchers from Utrecht University are applying the process to bioprinting and have 3D printed functioning liver units at centimeter scale in less than 20 seconds. The results were published in Advanced Materials.

Circa 2021:3

Surgical management of breast cancer often results in the absence of the breast. However, existing breast reconstruction methods may not meet the need for a replacement tissue. Tissue engineering with the use of emerging materials offers the promise of generating appropriate replacements. Three-dimensional (3D) printing technology has seen a significantly increased interest and application in medically-related fields in the recent years. This has been especially true in complex medical situations particularly when abnormal or complicated anatomical surgical considerations or precise reconstructive procedures are contemplated. In addition, 3D bio-printing which combines cells with bio-material scaffolds offers an exciting technology with significant applications in the field of tissue engineering. The purpose of this manuscript was to review a number of studies in which 3D printing technology has been used in breast reconstructive surgical procedures, and future directions and applications of 3D bio-printing.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed among US women and is second only to lung cancer as a cause of cancer death among women as of 2019. Because ~268,600 (almost six times than DCIS) new cases prove to be an invasive type of breast cancer (1), many women had to choose the removal of the breast, with immediate consideration for a replacement tissue. Although this was satisfactory in many patients, either saline or gel-filled breast implants (2) do carry real risks of complications such as infection, capsular contracture, implant dislocation, or deformities (3, 4). The option of autologous reconstruction can be more texturally natural aesthetically, but it requires a more complex procedure, significant time and expense, and possible muscle weakness or hernia formation at the tissue donor site (5). Tissue engineering intends to address these limitations by combining the 3D printing technology with synthetic or natural structural elements.

Continue reading “3D Printing in Breast Reconstruction: From Bench to Bed” »

A reconstructed ear made of living cells could herald a new era of 3D-printed organs.

It’s all thanks to nanoclusters.

A new nanoscale 3D printing material developed by Stanford University engineers may provide superior structural protection for satellites, drones, and microelectronics.

A dual-phase, nanostructured high-entropy alloy that has been 3D printed by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Georgia Institute of Technology is stronger and more ductile than other cutting-edge additively manufactured materials. This discovery could lead to higher-performance components for use in aerospace, medicine, energy, and transportation.

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Asphaltenes, a byproduct of crude oil production, are a waste material with potential. Rice University scientists are determined to find it by converting the carbon-rich resource into useful graphene.

Muhammad Rahman, an assistant research professor of materials science and nanoengineering, is employing Rice’s unique flash Joule heating process to convert asphaltenes instantly into turbostratic (loosely aligned) graphene and mix it into composites for thermal, anti-corrosion and 3D-printing applications.

The process makes good use of material otherwise burned for reuse as fuel or discarded into tailing ponds and landfills. Using at least some of the world’s reserve of more than 1 trillion barrels of asphaltene as a feedstock for graphene would be good for the environment as well.