3D PRINTech

On average, over 8,000 people die each year in the U.S. because they can't get an organ transplant. But, what if we could actually rebuild our failing organs? That possibility of creating anything you want from home could be just around the corner with a 3D printer. Right now, our bodies face the possibility of breaking down. But, what if we could wipe out that risk by creating medical devices that can help us, like hearing aids, pacemakers, or new dentures. Imagine if we could actually 3D bioprint our vital organs. 3D printing, also known as Additive Manufacturing is a manufacturing process that takes a digital file known as computer-aided design or CAD and brings that 3D model to life. The most common 3D printing process is known as it works the same way as your standard ink-jet printer, except instead of ink, it uses thermoplastic material, which gets pushed through a nozzle, like a hot glue gun. A spool of filament is loaded into a printer and gets heated up. It keeps layerin...

The polymer foam material refers to a microporous material based on a polymer (plastic, rubber, elastomer, or natural polymer material) with numerous bubbles inside, and can also be regarded as a composite material using gas as a filler. At present, polymer foam materials are mainly prepared by directly expanding and foaming the resin with a foaming agent. How to accurately control the micro-cell shape, the appearance and macro-foam structure are still a difficult problem. In order to solve some problems in the process of preparing polymer foam by direct expansion foaming method, Professor Jennifer A. Lewis and co-workers describe the fabrication of architected polymer foams by "direct bubble writing". In this process, bubbles are ejected into the air, deposited onto a substrate, and then photopolymerized with UV light, and open-and-closed-cell foams with locally graded densities can be printed into 3D objects such as 3D lattices, shells, and out-of-plane pillars.  The resea...