1800s – Early Additive Manufacturing Concepts Begin

As far back as the 1800s, ideas surrounding 3D scanning were taking shape in their own way. In 1859, Francois Willeme developed a method called “photographic sculpture” in which he could capture 3D models of human subjects using 24 cameras placed at different angles. Joseph E. Blanther patented an apparatus that used layering to create three dimensional topographical maps in 1892.

1980s – The First 3D Printing Technologies are Born

It wasn’t until the early 1980s, however, that 3D printing technology really began to kick off. Dr. Hideo Kodama from the Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute was the first to invent a layer by layer photopolymer rapid prototyping process. His method was not commercialized, however, and Charles Hull instead became the first to successfully acquire a patent for his Stereolithography Apparatus and coined the term “stereolithography.” His method involved building three dimensional objects layer by layer with photopolymers, cured by a UV light beam. The first object Hull printed was a black eye-wash cup. Hull was also responsible for developing the STL file format, the file that 3D printers most commonly use today. Hull commercialized the process of rapid prototyping and went on to create 3D Systems.

The late 1980s then gave way to a couple more 3D printing technologies still used today: Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), a method which uses a laser beam to melt powder into a solid object, developed by Carl Deckard at the University of Texas in Austin who would later go on to form Stratasys. His early machine “Betsy” was able to print plastic molds for parts. Fused Deposition Modeling, developed by S. Scott Crump & Lisa Crump, was another technology born in the 1980s in which a material is heated and extruded through a nozzle to create an object layer by layer, inspired by the Crumps’ use of a hot glue gun in making their daughter a toy frog. As of 2020, it is the most commonly used 3D printing technology.

1990s – Technologies Develop and Innovations Grow

The 1990s saw the development of many new technologies including Direct Metal Laser Sintering and Binder Jetting. This is also when 3D printing began paving the way for innovations in the medical field with the development of Bioprinting, which involves precisely positioning layers of cells and their supportive structures to create functional tissue. In 1999, the first organ, a human bladder, was created by scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. They 3D printed a synthetic, biodegradable scaffold to create the bladder which was then coated with the patients’ own cells, thus ensuring the organ would not be rejected. This would allow 3D bioprinting and 3D printing in the medical field to really take shape.

By the 2000s the cost of machines was starting to decrease and 3D printing technology was on its way to becoming more accessible. In 2004, RepRap (short for replicating rapid prototyper), a desktop printer able to print its own components to build another version of itself, was invented by Adrian Bowyer as a way of making the technology more accessible and was the first of the lower-cost printers. The first version of the RepRap printer “Darwin” was released in 2007, and countless new iterations now exist.

2000s – Increase in Accessibility to 3D Printing

3D printing services like Shapeways became more prominent by providing individuals and businesses access to top-tier 3D printing equipment for their manufacturing needs. Our services here at Shapeways allow designers and businesses to upload their own 3D files and have access to a number of cutting-edge 3D printing technologies as well as 75+ materials.

The internet has continued to increase accessibility to 3D printing technology for anyone looking to leverage the power of additive manufacturing. Open source online libraries for 3D printable files are growing constantly and more businesses are transitioning to 3D printing and using Shapeways to produce professional, quality parts.

3D printing has also been incorporated in school curriculums even among young students. Knowledge of 3D printing concepts, technology and software has become a crucial element of STEM education and computer science.

Early Expectations vs. What is Possible Today

Charles Hull began developing his 3D printing technology in the early 80s because he was frustrated by how time consuming prototyping was back then. Almost 40 years later, 3D printing technology has indeed become the fastest and most cost-efficient way of producing prototypes and has evolved to play important roles in the manufacturing process for many industries. In the past decade, there have been countless innovative projects undertaken using additive manufacturing as the technology continues to develop. Equipment costs have decreased while print quality has increased and the printing process is much faster and more efficient.

It is now possible to create thicker layers and more accurate, complex shapes than ever before, which has facilitated a shift from prototyping alone to the production of end parts. Customization is more achievable and affordable with 3D printing than any other manufacturing process, so businesses can more easily offer personalization options to their customers. 3D scanning and printing technology have also allowed for major innovations in the medical field where patient-specific customizations have helped improve and even save lives.

What started as a way of producing plastic prototypes has turned into a dynamic technology whose applications continue to grow. As of 2020 we are seeing more and more companies integrate additive manufacturing into their product development, design and production processes and seeing the scale of new projects and innovations expand. Ready to take advantage of the additive manufacturing for your business? Find out how Shapeways can help!

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3D printed protein models by Biologic Models

3D printing medical applications are gaining tremendous momentum in the medical industry. As technology advances, 3D printers have progressed quickly, and the printing process is so precise that 3D printers can now even replicate the vascular systems needed to make organs viable. This technology is vital as over 114,000 people in the U.S. are on organ transplant waiting lists.

3D printing applications in medicine go well beyond recreating vascular systems. Here’s a look at the current various medical applications for 3D printing.

3D Printing Technology Commercially Available for Medical Applications

There are four primary uses of 3D printing in the medical industry today.

• Tissues and organoids
• Custom prosthetics
• Surgical instruments
• Surgical models that are specific to each patient

Scientists are currently researching how to manufacture organs such as a liver or heart using the 3D printing process. This technology is developing rapidly because of the necessity to find less expensive alternatives to current medical solutions. As a result, complex life-saving procedures are available to more people.

There are several available technologies currently used for 3D printing medical applications. Powder bed fusion is the one most commonly used to 3D print medical devices. Medical 3D printing uses this technology because of its compatibility with many materials used to make medical devices such as nylon and titanium.

Currently, the FDA has 3D printers that help them understand the capabilities of 3D printing for medical applications and how the general public can benefit from the industry’s use of this technology. They have other printing technologies along with 3D printing that they use to evaluate which parts of the workflows and processes of the printing affect the quality of the medical device once it’s finished.

Revolutionary 3D Printing Medical Application

Sometimes known as bioprinting, 3D printing is transforming the medical industry. It’s making surgical procedures faster and providing less-expensive solutions for creating prosthetic limbs and surgical tools.

3D printing is even replicating organoids and tissues, so physicians can learn more about how they function and the diseases that affect them.

Current 3D printing medical applications use imaging such as CT scans, MRI scans, X-Rays, and ultrasounds to create a digital model of the organ or tissue to be 3D printed. Physicians then upload scans to a 3D printer. Per Verdict Medical Devices, 3D printing for the medical field is forecasted to reach $3.5 billion by 2025. The main 3D printing medical applications are revolutionizing the medical field enhancing patient care.

Bioprinting- Organoids and Tissue Engineering

Physicians like surgeon Dr. Jason Chuen of the Austin Hospital in Melbourne say that 3D printing medical organs help doctors practice surgical procedures such as placing a stent in a heart. Dr. Chuen advised that with a model or organoid made from images of the actual patient, he could assess the bioprinted model much easier than the patient’s heart.

Evaluating the bioprinted model allowed him to make sure that the stent he would use was the correct size. Testing the size of a stent in a real patient clearly isn’t possible because of the invasiveness of the surgery. 3D printing technology makes this a viable option.

Organoids mimic actual organs only smaller opening up endless possibilities for everything from testing medical procedures to learning more about diseases. Medical companies such as Organovo are experimenting with 3D printing intestinal tissue and livers to study these organs in vitro and to help develop drug treatments for diseases.

The company announced in May 2018 that they had preclinical information on how liver tissue functions in a study of type one tyrosinemia. Tyrosinemia is a liver condition that affects how the body metabolizes tyrosine, an amino acid, because of its deficiency in the body.

Wake Forest Institute utilized a related approach to develop a brain organoid that could allow scientists to discover new drugs and for disease modeling. “In May 2018, they publicized that their organoids have a fully cell-based, functional blood-brain barrier that mimics normal human anatomy.” Wake Forest is also working on printing 3D skin grafts to apply to burn patients.

Rehearsing Surgical Procedures

Surgical rehearsal using bioprinted organoids helps surgeons’ practice to perform surgeries faster to reduce patient trauma, and the cost savings are substantial. It also allows surgeons to navigate complicated medical procedures.

Surgeries can cost $2,000 an hour so reducing how long it takes to do surgery can decrease the cost of operations considerably. Surgeons have rehearsed a broad range of procedures from spinal operations to full-face transplants. This 3D printing medical application is becoming a routine practice.

In Belfast in January 2019, surgeons practiced before a young woman’s kidney transplant successfully using a bioprinted model of the donor’s kidney. Her father was the organ donor, and there were many complications because his kidney had a dangerous cyst and his blood group wasn’t compatible with hers. Bioprinting allowed surgeons to find the location of the cyst and assess how big it was.

Physicians in Dubai operated on a patient who had a severe cerebral aneurysm using a bioprinted map of her blood vessels to traverse her arteries safely. This surgery was complicated as the aneurysm was in four veins.

3D Printing Helps Find Alternative Drug Treatments for Patients

Patients suffering from a variety of ailments often need to take several drugs each day for treatment. 3D printing allows researchers to customize medicines possibly reducing many pills to one. With 3D printing, scientists can practice embedding more than one drug in a single capsule designed to release each drug at different times. A polypill containing three different medications has already been created to treat patients with hypertension and diabetes. 3D printing medical applications involving pharmacology have the potential to change patient treatment in the future tremendously.

Custom Tailored Prosthetics and Implants for Patients

Researchers at Wake Forest are already 3D printing muscle, bone, and ear structures that they’ve transplanted in animals to see how they would function in humans. These implants have developed blood vessel systems and functional tissues, which means that these bioprinted structures have the correct strength, size, and function to use in people.

These experiments proved that bioprinting living tissue structures to replace those diseased in patients is possible. Wake Forest researchers accomplished this using a conventional inkjet printer that they modified.

3D printing medical applications such as custom-made prosthetics are providing custom-made highly functioning prosthetics for people. It also speeds up the process as often amputees must wait weeks or sometimes months to get their prostheses using traditional methods.

3D printing makes the process quicker and is more cost effective since these products are less expensive. This process is particularly cost efficient for children because they outgrow the prosthetics often.

Patients can now design a limb that works with their needs thanks to a company called Body Labs. They’ve developed an innovative system that lets patients create a personalized model for a prosthetic using a scan of their actual limbs. As a result, they fit and feel better.

Surgical Implements

Another 3D printing medical application is the development of surgical implements. This precise process can create a variety of sterile surgical tools such as clamps, hemostats, scalpel handles, and forceps.

3D printing produces sterile and precise tools because of their roots in the practice of Japanese origami. They can also be made very small because of this practice meaning that surgeons can use them to operate in tiny areas causing less damage to patients.

They also cost much less to make using 3D printing, and there was no increased cost for the faster manufacturing times, surgeon requested modifications or increased complexity. One lab test created fully reproducible surgical sets in an average of 6 hours per set. These sets were made using the SLS Sinterstation HiQ.

These 3D printing medical applications are revolutionizing modern medicine and changing the industry rapidly. They are providing cost-effective solutions to maximizing quality patient care at a lower price. This reduced cost means that additional cutting-edge surgical and medical procedures will become available to more people without decreasing the quality of the products or service.

As technology advances, the precision of 3D printing will be fine-tuned making even more medical inventions possible. Researchers hope to one day make organs to transplant in humans although right now there are many cost and technological obstacles to overcome. For one, research and development of 3D printing are costly. Also, while 3D printing can print miniature organs now, scaling is a problem for actual-sized organs.

However, other problems like using donors for tissue matches might resolve by taking cells from the transplant recipient themselves to develop the replacement organ. Using the donor’s tissue could minimize associated risks such as the need for immunosuppressants for life and transplant rejection. Some predict that the first bioprinted complex organs could be available within 20 years.

Despite problems with future organ replacements, 3D printing medical applications are providing amazing results in the field of medicine today. 3D printing is changing the world one industry at a time and plays a crucial part now in saving lives.

3D Print Your Medical Needs

Learn how you can utilize 3D printing for medical use. Contact us today to let us know how we can help.

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Here are five ways you can revolutionize your business with 3D printing and Shapeways.

Turn a New Idea Into a Business Overnight

3D printing lets you quickly bring your ideas to life, and that’s exactly what Hint Lab did with its Lego-inspired jewelry. With Shapeways, you can launch a new product without spending a bunch of money upfront, while still offering custom sizes and materials.

Mass Produce Your Product and Make Changes on the Fly

As your business expands, Shapeways will be there every step of the way. Our ability to adapt, scale, and implement changes to mass-produced 3D-printed parts in just a few weeks allows a company like Kespry to ship hundreds of drones every quarter.

Use 3D Printing to Prototype A New Product

3D printing is a valuable tool even if your latest idea isn’t ready to hit the market. You can use Shapeways to prototype new products using strong and flexible materials, along with feedback from the community and our great customer service. That’s how the creators of PlingPong came up with their hit party game, and how Gut Shot Games developed its new tabletop game H.E.A.D Hunters.

3D Print The Finished Product Too

Shapeways is perfect for prototypes, but it’s also great for 3D printing your finished product. Design firm Tellart uses our platform to do both, developing new concepts and sometimes relying on us to create the final version too.

Create the Impossible

3D printing makes it possible to create objects that couldn’t exist any other way thanks to low costs and a high level of precision. That’s how Preceyes Surgical Robotics developed the robotics technology to help eye surgeons operate on a small scale that was previously impossible.

LEARN MORE

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Wakanda Forever

Not only did we get to see “Black Panther” this month, we also found out that some important parts of the magic of Wakanda were 3D printed. Working with 3D designer Julia Koerner, legendary costume designer Ruth Carter incorporated 3D printed elements into the film’s regal fashions. Watch the Racked feature on it here.

A still from Racked’s feature on the costumes of “Black Panther”

So many feels

In medical news, we’re going to pull a “This Is Us” and start with… well, you’ll see. That would be this ugly-cry-inducing story from the BBC about rescue doggo Duke, who needed a paw. Luckily, 3D printing was there to give him just that. And in other touching, adorable news, 3D printing is helping visually impaired children in the classroom. Watch the video and feel nothing, we dare you:

But, we’re not done yet with your heart just yet. Ten years ago, professional snowboarder Mike Schultz had an accident that led to the amputation of his left leg. He turned his injury to his advantage, creating a company, BioDapt, that makes the specialty prosthetics sported by this year’s Paralympians — including Mike Schultz himself. Read more about how 3D printing powers his creations at Engadget, and see what adaptive athletes have done with BioDapt’s prostheses, below:

There were a lot of other astounding medical 3D printing accomplishments announced in February. This beautiful brace (the UNYQ Align by Francis Butonti) was displayed this month at the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in NYC. Meanwhile, UK researchers made progress toward creating 3D printed cell tissues, and one startup, BioLife4D, announced that it plans to focus on “building” hearts. Godspeed, BioLife4D.

PROTOTYPE YOUR BIG IDEA

Style is ageless

In up-and-coming style icon news, this month we met incredible teenager Shami Oshun, who taught herself 3D printing for apparel design, which is so much cooler than what I was doing as a teen. See her tweets and bow down:

Hi Twitter, my name is Shami Oshun. I am 18. I taught myself how to 3D print in August 2017. As of today I am the youngest person and first black person to 3D print fashion. I hope this inspires other black girls to pursue careers in tech and fashion #BlackHistoryMonth pic.twitter.com/OST0ScgttM

— Oshun (@bluexheeta) February 8, 2018

And if you follow car news, you’ll know that Porsche has figured out what you have known for so long: 3D printing is great for replacing parts that don’t exist anymore for the classic things that you love. The iconic, stylish carmaker is 3D printing things like a clutch release lever for the 959. Sounds… like a car thing!

Medtech won’t quit

Thanks to scientists at the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne, we are now closer than ever before to something you might not have even dreamed about, which is printing microscopic devices inside the body. And, in the meantime, their technique could simply deliver super-ultra-high-res 3D prints. Merci, y’all.

In Australia, the excellently named Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics has created something equally excellent: a clip-on smartphone microscope that can help people in remote locations analyze water cleanliness, test blood samples, and detect disease at an early stage. So… our iPhone addictions could save our lives? Right?

It’s 2018. Stop watching ‘Encino Man.’

Brits learned this month that their ancient ancestors looked different than many had imagined. With the help of DNA analysis and 3D printing, a team from London’s Natural History Museum and University College London revealed the face of a 10,000-year-old Cheddar Grove, Somerset man. With dark skin, blue eyes, and curly hair, “Cheddar Man” most surprised people who’d seen “Encino Man” too many times.

If we build it…

A Long Island company has proven that they can 3D print a home that’s 70% cheaper and 200% stronger than traditionally constructed homes. While that company’s paperwork clears, Chinese manufacturer WinSun continues to forge ahead with large-scale 3D printed construction, this month unveiling these Shanghai-area bus shelters.

Not to be outdone, Made in Space printed out the world’s longest single 3D printed piece (a beam) in the world — in their terrestrial offices. Next up: condos on the moon (dibs).

See you in March! And in the meantime…

PRINT SOMETHING

The post The (ALL-NEW) Month in 3D Printing: February Amazed Us appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

In your shoes, in your car

It’s everywhere! Mass-manufactured 3D printed products are finally getting into customer hands… or onto their feet and into their garages. That’s because adidas’ long-anticipated Futurecraft 4D shoes with 3D printed midsoles finally dropped this week. And MINI announced that in 2018, customers can personalize their rides through the new MINI Yours Customized program. Hopefully, this will show everyone what we already know: that 3D printing CAN MAKE (almost) ANYTHING.

Carbon tech, adidas hype

The Greatest Show on Earth (but not the only show in town)

CES is paradise for geeks, futurists, audiophiles, 3D designers — basically, anyone who is really into any technologies available to consumers. That’s why it’s a good place to spot the kind of 3D technology that could one day (soonish) be in your house. There were a couple of standouts at this year’s CES, which ended last Friday: Ethereal Machines’ “5D printing,” a 5-axis 3D printer with a rotating build plate, and the HP Z 3D Camera, which turns an easily-mountable camera into a scanner and facial-recognition tool. Some very cool news also came from outside the consumersphere: Another rotating 3D printer part, this time the printhead, was demonstrated by Harvard researchers to increase the strength, stiffness, and resistance of 3D printed parts. And in another leap forward for really, really big 3D printers, a new printer from CEAD is already contracted to print ships. We’ll see that one in action at CES 2030.

The HP Z 3D Camera (source)

Breathe easy and break a leg

It might not solve all our problems, but I mean, 3D printing can now print structures that could regrow lung and brain tissue, plus titanium bone replacement meshes that are often better than bone grafts. It’s not a license to live dangerously, but it might just be there for us when we inevitably do.

3D Print Your Medical Needs

Learn how you can utilize 3D printing for medical use. Contact us today to let us know how we can help.

The post The Week in 3D Printing: Kicks and Cars, New Tech Alert, and Medical Miracles appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

If Star Trek is going to be real, it’s going to start here

I can’t even believe I’m writing this, but here goes: A group of researchers has been able to create 3D prints that cure almost instantaneously in the crosshairs of beams of light. Through this holographic patterning of light fields, resins harden in three dimensions simultaneously, dramatically reducing some of 3D printing’s biggest limitations. Learn more at TechCrunch, and real the whole paper, One-step volumetric additive manufacturing of complex polymer structures, here.

Holoprinting at work

In another leap toward a more Federation-like future, a pair of Dutch designers has successfully turned algae into a bioplastic 3D printing filament suitable for many plastic applications. The algae polymer may end up “eventually entirely replacing plastics made from fossil fuels like oil,” through a series of local 3D Bakeries — if designers Eric Klarenbeek and Maartje Dros get their way. You can read more about this ultra-sustainable future at Dezeen, as part of their excellent Good Design for a Bad World series.

And to complete our transition into a more sustainable world, we’re getting a hand from that most maligned of planet-polluting plastic objects, the plastic water bottle. Forbes has the story of Bottletop, a boutique in London that will have an entirely 3D printed interior, primarily made from Reflow, a filament composed of plastic waste. The flooring? Recycled tires. The finishing touch? 60,000 upcycled plastic bottles. Until all of our plastics are made from algae, here’s hoping Reflow will help us reuse more of that 300 million tons of plastic produced each year….

Practical Magic

OK, holographic 3D printing may be the highest-tech 3D world news in the past week, but technical breakthroughs don’t have to come from such sci-fi, futuristic places. The other big story of the week came from the University of Washington, where researchers were able to create 3D printed, Wi-Fi connected devices that are totally wireless — in other words, non-electronic electronics. Using 3D printed springs, gears, and switches that connect to embedded antennae, the objects reflect ambient Wi-Fi signals. Read the full story at Engadget, and if you get inspired to create your own elaborate, Wi-Fi connected Rube Goldberg devices, please send gifs.

But, what if electricity-free “electronics” weren’t just for Wi-Fi? In other astounding news this week, researchers at MIT have successfully printed bacterial bio-ink-based living computers. By combining lines of printed bacteria with different chemicals, the scientists were able to created interacting networks that could one day be the basis of tech that delivers medicine via ingestible living robots. Quartz has a nice rundown, and you can watch the full story (and feel pretty smart in the process), below.

Now Hear This

Hearing aids have made big advances in recent years, but a totally new road to hearing restoration is now opening up, thanks to 3D printing. As Digital Trends reported, new 3D printed bones will replace the tiny, delicate middle-ear bones that can become damaged, leading to hearing loss. Researcher from Baltimore’s University of Maryland School of Medicine still have a ways to go before this technique is ready for use, but early indications are promising. So far, this makes sternums, tibias, jaws, noses, skulls, and ears that we can or will be able to mend with 3D printing in the near future. Let’s hope that, by the time we all reach our golden years, we’ve perfected replication of every single organ. Music to our ears.

Interested in 3D printing your medical needs? We can help.

Cover image via the Advanced Science News YouTube channel.

The post The Week in 3D Printing: Holograms, Upcycling, No-Electricity Electronics, and Mini Medicals appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Fast-Forward

In techniques and materials this week, MIT unveiled a printing technique that, by melting the plastic much more quickly, results in what can only be described as FDM 3D printing on speed (view it in action below, and learn more at TechCrunch), researchers from the U.K.’s University of Nottingham figured out how to print working circuit boards using UV light (Digital Trends has the full story), and West Africa’s WoeLab has created a 3D printer made of e-waste, turning a massive pollution problem into an economic opportunity (via CNN).

Would you like eyes with that?

Soon, skin and other organs will be replaceable with 3D printing, if two teams of researchers can scale their incredible discoveries. Punny Swedish bioprinting firm Cellink created a bio-ink containing human cells that will be useful for testing cosmetics in the near term and growing organs in the long-term, as the BBC reported. In another leap forward for bio-inks, a team of scientists has developed a bacterial cellulose ink that takes a material that was limited to sheets (great for surface lesions, not so much for organ cancers) into the 3rd dimension, meaning deeper-tissue applications are on the way (get the nitty-gritty details at The Verge).

Up where the air is clear

It might not surprise you that up high, the wind blows stronger. But, for windmill manufacturers on the cusp on a global wind energy revolution, certain heights are unreachable for traditionally manufactured turbines. Imagine a 10-story-tall building with a three-story building slung across the top, cruising down the highway, and the problem immediately becomes clear. California’s RCAM Technologies is looking to bridge the gap between those high-velocity, higher-altitude wind zones and the power-generating windmills that need to reach them. The answer is on-site reinforced concrete 3D printing, allowing windmills to reach almost double the height of the tallest traditionally manufactured turbines. Read more at Green Tech Media, and watch it in action below.

Cover image: Wind Turbines and Mt. Hood by flickr user lamoix, CC BY 2.0

The post The Week in 3D Printing: Magic Materials, Tantalizing Techniques, Printing People, and Winning the Wind appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

We’ve featured biologists who 3D print, and we’ve seen the artists who 3D print. But do you know about the 3D printing BioArtists who combine the best of both worlds?

The term ‘BioArt’ was coined by Eduardo Kac, who is known for the genetically modified Alba, a rabbit implanted with a Green Fluorescent Protein gene that is normally found in jellyfish. As the name would suggest, this would have caused Alba to glow green when exposed to blue light. While it is not confirmed if the photos that exist are real or modified to show the green glow, the significance of Alba is the idea behind it.

You may have inferred from just this one example that BioArt is often seen as controversial for the involvement of living things. While that debate will no doubt rage on, what is certain is that this art practice raises important questions about identity, sustainability, and ethics. It then takes these questions from the lab to the public, allowing scientists to benefit from unique perspectives and outside-of-the-box advances in research.

Today we will introduce you to three BioArtists who take advantage of 3D printing to maximize their practices. They all share their research and processes online, so should you feel inclined, you too can try your hand at these interdisciplinary practices.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg

Probably Chelsea, courtesy of Heather Dewey-Hagborg

Consider cigarette butts and chewed gum wads on the streets of NYC. They might be trash in the eyes of passersby, but in Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s eyes, they are genetic material. By analyzing these items, she is able to extract DNA and generate 3D portraits. As frightening as this sounds, the accuracy of it for identification is actually still highly unreliable. This is a result of not only the technology itself, but also personal subjectivity and stereotypes. What happens when these data get into the hands of policy makers, police, and other powerful actors? Dewey-Hagborg and Chelsea Manning set out to examine all these ideas in their collaborative installation “Probably Chelsea”.

Manning, a transgender artist, advocate, and columnist for The Guardian, was imprisoned for leaking top secret documents from her time at the American military. Paper Magazine commissioned Dewey-Hagborg to create a 3D portrait of Manning for their profile of her, since there was only one photo of Manning pre-transition on the Internet. The two clicked, and began collaborating on projects including “Radical Love,” “Suppressed Images,” and “Probably Chelsea.”

“Probably Chelsea” portrays 30 very different faces, all generated from Manning’s DNA. The artist aims to demonstrate the role of that racial and gender stereotypes play in the creation of portraits. By highlighting the different potential identities of DNA-based portraits of one person, Dewey-Hagborg refutes the “outmoded notions of biologically inscribed identity” to expose “a molecular solidarity that is clearly present even at the cellular level.”

For this exhibit, Dewey-Hagborg entrusted the 3D printing to Shapeways. She tells us that the faces are “generated algorithmically and printed out in full color and full detail by the Project 660 powder printer.” The precision and realistic rendering supplied by 3D printing creates a certain physical presence that allows for a “kind of encounter with another, looking them in the eye, seeing and viscerally feeling this face which is imaginary and yet real.”

Despite Dewey-Hagborg telling us that her work is positioned “more as a warning than as something I would encourage other people to do,” she has made her self-developed system of DNA phenotyping public on her blog with multiple available resources, and gives detailed interviews about her process. Hear from Heather directly in last year’s National Geographic film profile of the artist:

Amy Karle

If you’ve ever thought about redesigning your skeleton, you’re going to love Amy Karle’s biohacking project “Regenerative Reliquary”.

Courtesy of Amy Karle

Karle was driven to explore medical and artistic innovations by two influences: people with limb differences, and her childhood friend who is in need of a double lung implant as well as bone marrow therapy. Her friend continues to be scarred by the medicine that is sustaining her life. This moved Karle to find ways to generate bones and body parts with a person’s own cells.

She started looking into stem cells, which allow a patient to regenerate body parts rather than risking the complications of foreign implantation.

Using the Ember 3D printer, Karle prints her design of a hand skeleton in PEGDA hydrogel, which basically serves as a template for cell growth. Human stem cells are embedded into the hydrogel, and over time it will grow into tissue, and mineralize into bone. The hydrogel itself will disintegrate over time.

If Karle wasn’t going to use the pre-existing human skeleton, how did she go about the extraordinary task of designing a new bone structure? In the artist’s own words, “on the microscopic level, the scaffold mimics the trabecular structure of bone, the shape that triggers stem cells to become bone cells.”

Since this is a project designed for 3D printing, Karle wishes to take advantage of its digital nature and make the files open source in hopes that other researchers and artists may build on her research. The artist explained to Fast Company that the “benefit of making this as art is that I can test some of these theories and technologies, develop materials and processes, and experiment outside of the scope of protocols that would have to be followed if this was to be developed as an implant”.

Jennifer Berry

Think back to when you saw your first 3D printer. This wouldn’t have been in a robotics lab or a makerspace, but rather outside, under the sunshine. Because, according to Jennifer Berry, the OG 3D printers are bees.

As the artist explains, bees “work in a material made from their own bodies, formed at body temperature… a material that is safe to eat and is biodegradable and even recyclable.” The way Berry sees it, the honeycomb-building process is organic additive manufacturing in action. As an ecologist-consultant-designer-bee keeper, it was only natural that she became curious about the possibilities of a 3D printer modeled after these busy bees.

The goal of Berry’s invention, the B-Code Biopolymer 3D Printer, is to encourage sustainable, environmentally-considerate manufacturing. It collaborates with bees to 3D print a biodegradable, edible, and sustainable biopolymer as an alternative to existing materials that require wasteful processes.

So yes, it functions both as a temporary beehive and as a 3D printer. Berry made all material and design decisions to create the best environment for the bees by mimicking their hives as close as possible. Afterwards, Berry uses the honeycombs in her artwork.

The artist outlines her process on Instructables, for those interested in creating their own B-Code.

Are you a BioArtist, or inspired to start a BioArt project? Let us know in the comments about your printing ideas! And don’t miss out on the incredible selection of biology-inspired designs in our Marketplace.

The post BioArt Draws on Bees, Cigarette Butts, and DNA to Change the Way We Think appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Print a New Rulebook

We talk a lot about medical advances enabled by 3D printing, but it’s rare to step back and really take in how transformational it all is. Scientists at the University of Melbourne released a study this week outlining how disruptive 3D printing technology will be to the medical profession, changing everything from how we replace organs and how we rehearse surgeries to the number of pills we’ll have to take and where we’ll get medical care. Read more at Futurity.org, and, in the meantime, contemplate this gorgeous 3D printed tumorous kidney:

So pretty (Credit: Austin Health 3D Medical Printing Laboratory via U. Melbourne)

Crushing It

We’ve been following NASA’s 3D Printed Habitat Challenge like some people follow sports. So, we were super excited that this latest, second phase of the challenge saw two competitors duke it out to create beams, cylinders, and domes for an extraterrestrial building — using 70% indigenous soil. As TechCrunch reported, to complete the circle of creation and destruction, the building elements were then CRUSHED, er, well, “compressed to failure.” If the future means making houses out of mud and then crushing them, it’s basically going to be a day at the beach.

First place winners Foster + Partners looking at their crushed achievement (Credits: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

Steampunk Scientist Solves Prehistoric Mystery

That header was fun to write. Even more fun is watching the impeccably steampunk gentleman in question explain his PhD research into just how a scary/cute ancient sea creature, the Pleiosaur, moved through the water with its very odd flippers. While he may look capable of time travel, it turns out that he wasn’t actually able to go back in time to see how the feat was accomplished. Can you guess what he did? That’s right — he 3D printed it! Watch the video below, delightfully narrated by said gentleman, for the full story on the results of his research and how they might make boats more efficient. Or time machines.

But… Is It Safe?

When you’re working with fused-deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers, you’re doing something pretty unusual for an average person: essentially, melting plastic all day. Researchers recently discovered that this releases volatile organic compounds, aldehydes, and nanoparticles that could, if ingested in high enough quantities, have negative effects on humans. As CE Mag reported, this led one group of researchers to ask, “How do we keep this from hurting anyone?” They discovered that a combination of enclosures around the printers, using low temperatures, and using low-emitting materials like polylactic acid (PLA) eliminates up to 99.5% of emissions. Phew.

The post The Week in 3D Printing: A Medical Revolution, Crushing a 3D Printed Building, a Prehistoric Revival, and Print Safety Check appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Switch to accessibility

The Nintendo Switch has inspired tons of clever 3D printed mods, mostly focused on making the Joy-Con controller easier to use. But, if so many gamers feel the need to accessorize the Joy-Con for accessibility, what about those with disabilities? Josh Zirl of the AbleGamers Foundation, which helps gamers with disabilities access game play, wrote, “it is disappointing to say the least to see Nintendo ignoring accessibility so completely.” Luckily, engineer Julio Vazquez has created two adapter designs that allow for one-handed game play. As The Verge reported, Vazquez developed the designs after a good friend lost the use of one of his hands — and with it, his ability to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Now, we just need to 3D print this guy a medal for being such a solid friend.

White hat/black hat

As more and more critical infrastructure comes to rely on 3D printing, security vulnerabilities inherent in any connected device become more of a problem. Think hacking driverless cars to get a sense of how that can play out. The problem with 3D printing is that a hacker could alter a design, affecting its integrity, without anyone realizing it — until a beam comes crashing down in your Mars mansion. As with any threat, however, the best defense is a good offense. Enter a team from Rutgers and Georgia tech, who published the amazing titled peer-reviewed study “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Feel No Evil, Print No Evil? Malicious Fill Pattern Detection in Additive Manufacturing.” As it turns out, “Just looking at the noise and the extruder’s motion, we can figure out if the print process is following the design or a malicious defect is being introduced,” noted Saman Aliari Zonouz, a co-author of the study. The team came up with three methods: examining the prints carefully (like, CT-scan carefully), tracking the nanoparticle signature of of the print, and, perhaps the simplest, a system of acoustic verification, where the sound of the printing process is recorded for a reference print and tracked against successive prints. Turns out you can learn a lot just by listening.

Mars mansions aside, we’ve already seen what a hacked 3D printed file can do…

Semper Fi, fab-ulously

The U.S. Marines are some of the toughest fighters on earth, and their tools have to be just as tough. So, you might not easily picture a 3D printer embedded in a Marine battalion. But, in places where it can takes weeks or months to replace broken parts, a mobile 3D printing lab could be mission-critical. SpaceDaily reported that the Marine Corps is now testing a mobile 3D printing fab lab, the fabulously acronymed X-FAB (expeditionary fabrication). It’s a 20 x 20 ft. shelter that houses computers and printers in volatile field conditions. Because 3D printing is exactly as badass as we thought it could be.

Get the tissues

We’re all waiting anxiously for the promise of bioprinting to be fulfilled, and we’re now one step closer. Scientists at the University of Oxford have developed a new way of 3D printing living tissue, solving a problem that’s plagued researchers: the movement and collapse of 3D printed cells. By containing the cells in protective nanoliter droplets in a lipid coating, the survival rate of the cells improves, and the tissues hold up. Which organs the tissues become is determined by the stem cells used in the 3D printing process. Now that we have a firmer set of building materials to rely on, we should be able to speed the process of 3D bioprinting the organs that could one day save our lives. And, you know, create new kinds of tasty lab-grown meat.

Could the sausage factory of the future be a fab lab? (Photo by Jun Seita CC BY 2.0)

The post The Week in 3D Printing: One-Handed Switch, Protecting our Printers, a Bioprinting Milestone, and Mobile Marine Machines appeared first on Shapeways Blog.