If your GIF appreciation hasn’t already been saturated by your social media contacts, we daresay you might enjoy Peeqo, a 3D printed robot that communicates using only GIFs. The small robot, developed by New York-based Abhishek Singh, could be a perfect (not to mention cute) desk companion for anyone looking for a bit of topical fun.
Most people agree that 2016 was a terrible year in virtually every respect: the conflict in Syria worsened, all of your favorite celebrities died, and Britain voted to leave the European Union. In the 3D printing world, however, things were moderately better: companies like XJet, Nano Dimension, Carbon, and Rize did exciting things; printing giant HP entered the additive manufacturing market; and specific 3D printing technologies like 3D bioprinting reached new levels of sophistication. Here are the most important 3D printing stories of the year 2016:
System from Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab 3-D prints hydraulically-powered robot bodies, with no assembly required.
One reason we don’t yet have robot personal assistants buzzing around doing our chores is because making them is hard. Assembling robots by hand is time-consuming, while automation — robots building other robots — is not yet fine-tuned enough to make robots that can do complex tasks.
While it is one of the world’s most beautiful cities, Istanbul is also one of cities with the youngest average population and is rapidly emerging as a global center for design and creativity. This is reflected in the new ICONIC 3D store that just opened in Akmerkez, one of the biggest shopping malls in the city on the Bosphorus.
Last year, around this time, I posted a blog entry comparing a FabLab in Sicily to a modern version of the mythological forge that the Roman God of Hell had deep inside the Mt. Etna Volcano, where he manufactured metal components and weapons for Jupiter and the other Gods. I am now back in Sicily and that myth is presenting itself even more clearly, as I ventured up to the volcano, to a small town called Aci San Antonio, lost among wild vegetation and spent craters. Here, a company called Mt Ortho is taking the myth of Volcano into the future, with two Arcam Q10 electron beam melting (EBM) 3D printers manufacturing state-of-the-art, titanium prosthetic implants.
In a first for the country, surgeons in Brazil have announced that they have successfully implanted 3D-printed titanium plates into the skull of a 23-year-old woman who had fractured the bones across the right side of her head.
While revolutionary medical applications are constantly being developed through 3D printing technology, most of these life-saving achievements are taking place in academic hospitals in China and the West. Fortunately, doctors from the Brazilian medical hospital UNICAMP (Universidade Estadual de Campinas) in Campinas show that 3D printed medical applications are also being developed elsewhere. In their academic hospital in the greater São Paolo region, they have recently completed the first ever surgery involving a 3D printed titanium implant in Brazil.
The risk, when writing about 3D bioprinting is that the “over-simplification” that is necessary to convey the news article’s message in the title gives an over-hyped idea of what has been achieved, with the inevitable let down that follows when we focus in on the actual facts. So, the recent video published by Popular Mechanics, which shows human heart cells made from skin cells (which were first transformed into plenipotentiary stem cells), assembled together through a 3D bioprinting process and beating autonomously is a fascinating step forward and, yet, it is only a tiny part of the incredible work on tissue engineering carried out by Dr. Anthony Atala, Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, that holds amazing possibilities for the future and even for the present.
In additive manufacturing processes, it’s all about speed and precision, and a group of researchers at Northwestern University think creating ceramic fuel cells with 3D printing technology will lead to new fuel cell designs capable of converting a gas into electricity.
While serving in the military in Afghanistan, Taylor was an unfortunate victim of an IED blast that led to the loss of all four of his limbs. From then on, the quadruple amputee had to make do with the somewhat-better-than-a-hook prosthetic limbs available to returning war veterans. With the billions of dollars that go into making the next generation smartphone, it’s amazing how little is put into the development of prosthetics or bionic extensions for amputees.
The BIOFABRIS is a National Institute of S&T in Biomanufacturing of multidisciplinary,
located at the Chemical Engineering Campus of UNICAMP, character that aims to integrate computational tools, synthesis and development of new biomaterials and application of engineering techniques to obtain biomedical devices (prostheses and orthopedic orthoses) and substitutes for live biological tissues or defective or missing human organs.