La impresión tridimensional comienza a aparecer en el horizonte de las cadenas de suministro de múltiples compañías. Entre esos nombres sobresale el de Ford Motor Co., que experimenta con una nueva forma de impresión 3-D que, según afirma, podría resolver un defecto estructural que ha impedido que la tecnología sea ampliamente adoptada en la manufactura.
Today’s leading athletic footwear companies — including Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, and New Balance — have come to rely on 3D printing to speed up the process of designing and prototyping new shoe designs. Moreover, these companies have been slowly revealing plans for using 3D printing beyond prototyping to print the finished shoes themselves. At the Boston Marathon this week, both New Balance and Under Armour released their first 3D printed shoes, and things seem to be moving fast. Here’s a quick breakdown of who’s in the race and why it matters.
A new way of making these tough materials could be a key step in producing better airplane engines and long-lasting machine parts.
Left: In addition to printing individual parts, the process can yield lattices like this one, which can be flexed and twisted to make more complex shapes or to fit a surface such as an airplane wing.
Ceramics are some of the hardest materials on Earth. They can withstand extreme temperatures, and some are impervious to friction, scratching, and other mechanical stresses that wear out metal and plastic. But it can be difficult to make complex shapes out of the materials.
Metal 3-D printing, which has been around for nearly two decades, is finally coming into its own as a genuine mass manufacturing technology: sales of machines that print metal objects have risen rapidly as manufacturers, especially in the aerospace industry, gear up for commercial production of additively made parts they’ve been developing for years (see “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2013: Additive Manufacturing”).
Having your blood pressure taken by a cuff that inflates and deflates around your upper arm is reliable, but it’s not very fast or portable, and it isn’t able to give you continuous measurements over time.
A startup called Blumio is trying a different tactic. It’s building blood-pressure measuring technology that uses radar—typically employed for things like tracking ships or speeding cars by monitoring the phase changes in electromagnetic waves as they reflect off of them—to make it easier and faster to measure blood pressure continuously without needing to squeeze your arm.
Metal 3-D printing, which has been around for decades, is finally coming into its own as a genuine mass manufacturing technology: sales of machines that print metal objects have risen rapidly as manufacturers, especially in the aerospace industry, gear up for commercial production of additively made parts they’ve been developing for years (see “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2013: Additive Manufacturing”).
GE’s new Center for Additive Technology Advancement (CATA) looks like a futuristic set for a Stanley Kubrick movie. Everything seems to be white: the walls, the gleaming floors, even the noise from rows of laser-powered 3D printers near the entrance, quietly making everything from jet engine blades to oil valves.
Located by a new highway exit just minutes from the Pittsburgh airport, the center, which opened on Tuesday, is so new even Uber drivers require human navigation. But the center is no mirage.
Scottish startup eeGeo has raised $5 million from a range of investors, including NetSol Technologies, as it looks to continue growing its 3D mapping platform globally.
When four-month-old Lucy Boucher needed a kidney transplant, her 35-year-old father donated her a kidney. The transplant surgeons’ challenge was figuring out how to fit an adult kidney in an infant, connecting it with Lucy’s tiny blood vessels, making a complex procedure even more complicated and risky. It was recently revealed that Lucy was the first to have an adult-to-child kidney transplant aided by 3D printing. Realistic models of Lucy’s anatomy and her father’s kidney were essential to the procedure’s success.
3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, has been around since 1984. But it wasn’t until recent advances in the technology that people really began to take notice.
