Research & Education
Additive manufacturing is transforming how products are designed, produced, and serviced. AM lets us produce on-demand, without dedicated equipment or tooling. This unparalleled flexibility enables new digital design and production tools that can create components and products with breakthrough performance: in order to truly unlock the potential of AM, research & education is of fundamental importance.
Knowledge of the fundamentals of AM, its design principles, applications, and implications is one of the greatest barriers to its wider adoption. In recent years the key importance of integrating additive manufacturing in educational curricula has begun to be considered worldwide.
Additive manufacturing centered research & education initiatives by both governments and corporations – as well as individuals – have begun to focus on raising the next generation of additive manufacturing designers and engineers.
The main areas of exploration for educational activities are in software and hardware. While AM hardware learning is currently mostly limited to exploring the current additive production process and its applications, the software offers some of the most significant opportunities in terms of learning to fully exploit the AM process in the future.
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Scientists at Russia’s National University of Science and Technology used oil waste to strengthen aluminum alloys used in aluminum powder. The new alloy reduces aluminum’s propensity to residual porosity. “Porosity” refers to gaps between molecules in the alloy that weaken its structure. In other words, the scientists have found a…
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Chinese researchers working out of Xiamen University have used additive manufacturing to create more precise magnetic resonance systems. They have published the results of their work in the journal Nature, a premier scientific journal. The research focused on fabricating magnetic resonance probeheads, which are devilishly difficult instruments used in medical imagining,…
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A paper released by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Work of the Future department encourages industrial training in additive manufacturing. Major American news sources have picked up the story, which bodes well for the AM industry. The policy paper reviews AM technology and its future impacts on the…
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The Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association (AMGTA), a global trade group created to foster and promote the environmental benefits of additive manufacturing (AM), published its first commissioned university research project, a literature-based systematic review of the environmental benefits of metal AM. The paper, titled, “State of Knowledge on the Environmental…
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The Biopixlar bioprinting platform, developed by Swedish firm Fluicell, has shown it is possible to directly print primary neurons with high precision. This enables the design and construction of neuronal patterns that better resemble connections between neurons in vivo compared to conventional cell cultures and that constitutes a powerful tool…
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The Digital Bamboo pavilion explores the innovative combination of a naturally grown material with digital fabrication. It was developed via a collaboration between the Swiss university ETH and Korean firm HS HI-TECH, combining natural bamboo, extruded recycled thermoplastics on textiles, multijet fusion and metal powder bed fusion processes. Mostly, though,…
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Microlight3D, a French specialist in microscopic 3D printing, created the smallest Millenium Falcon spaceship in the galaxy, as a celebration of the Star Wars brand. The 3D printed version is 400,000 times smaller than the original spacecraft In honor of the Jedi Masters, the Microlight3D team used green rather than…
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The Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) installed a MELD solid-state metal additive manufacturing machine, the first such system in the European continent. The AMRC selected MELD’s newest model system the L3. The L3 model offers 14.2 cubic feet or .4 cubic meters with a table size for printing new or…
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Scientists at the University of Leeds have created synthetic soft surfaces for biomimetic tongue textures for the first time using 3D printing. This opens new possibilities for testing oral processing properties of food, nutritional technologies, pharmaceutics and dry mouth therapies. UK scientists led by the University of Leeds in collaboration…
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Cyient and SR University entered an educational partnership that promotes an industry-oriented curriculum focused on advanced digital manufacturing systems. The partners, both based in India, aim to fill the skill gap between the need and availability of professionals in areas such as additive manufacturing. The partnership helps build AM in…
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