Materials

Concrete is one of the most widely used man-made building materials and one of the world’s most consumed substances, second only to water. It is cheap, abundant, and capable of heavy loads, but, it is also brittle and tends to…

In the EU, the BARBARA project, part of Horizon 2020, aims to develop new bio-based materials with innovative functionalities. These materials are designed to be used during material extrusion, otherwise known as Fused Filament Fabrication, to create parts. This project,…

Material scientists from the University of California San Diego have developed liquid crystal material that can shift its form. Researchers demonstrated that by controlling the printing temperature of liquid crystal elastomer, or LCE, it is possible to control the material’s degree…

Material extrusion, also known as Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) technology is still the most widely used technology in the AM market. In recent years, this segment of AM has undergone many changes: in particular, there has been an increase in…

There is a lot going on with 3D printing materials! Recently, a team of researchers has succeeded in 3D printing with silica aerogel, the most insulating material of all. Known for being rather brittle, this material is often reinforced with…

A team of researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has developed a material that can be 3D printed into any shape and pre-programmed with reversible shape memory. In other words, once a…

The authorized intermediary for the U.S. Department of Defense, TechLink, announced that U.S. Navy scientists had been issued a 20-year patent for a 3D printable material made of a marine-base biodegradable polymer which breaks down over time. This is very…

At the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems (IKTS) in Germany, researchers have developed a Multi Material Jetting system that is capable of additively manufacturing parts that integrate multiple materials, including high-performance materials such as ceramics and metals. What…

Innovation is second nature to the additive manufacturing sector, and one recent project that illustrates exactly this is Illusory Material. Conceived by industrial designer Jiani Zeng and computational designer Honghao Deng during their time at MIT, the aim of this…

It started with two innovation-oriented companies deciding to become partners: a manufacturer of ultrafast stereolithography 3D printers, Nexa3D, and an international conglomerate Henkel, who is also a leading supplier of high impact additive materials. A few days ago, they announced…

Today’s additive manufacturing sector is characterized by a wide variety of materials, from plastics and metals to ceramics and concrete. If we look at the family of polymers, the diversity is great, with many thermoplastics that are more or less…

At the University of Cambridge, researchers have just started a three-year research programme to accelerate the manufacture of 3D printed metal parts using computer-generated holography. This photographic process makes it possible to reproduce the relief of objects using the interference…