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3D Printing News Briefs: February 21, 2020

In today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, we’re talking about new products and materials, an industry event, 3D printed electronics, and education. 3Doodler announced a new product, and Essentium will be showcasing two new materials at RAPID + TCT. The 4th annual AM Cluster of Ohio conference is coming up in July, and nScrypt is microdispensing 50um dots for 3D printed electronics. Finally, Penn State University is investing in Roboze technology.

3Doodler Introduces New 3D Build & Play

At the New York Toy Fair, February 22-25 at Manhattan’s Jacob Javits Center, 3Doodler will be showcasing its latest device – the 3D Build & Play, perfect for preschoolers and kindergartners to use. The pen was designed for users as young as four years old, and introduces growing children to 3D printing technology in a way that promotes cognitive and fine motor skills development, hands-on learning, story telling, and three-dimensional thinking. The 3D Build & Play is kid-safe, extruding low-heat, BPA-free, non-toxic, biodegradable plastic, and comes with a story-based Activity Guide so parents and kids can create together. Currently available for pre-order, 3D Build & Play will have an MSRP of $29.99, and major retailers, like Amazon, are also expected to carry the product in Q2 2020. Visit 3Doodler in Booth #2771 at the New York Toy Fair to learn more.

“3D Build & Play brings the creative fun of our Start pen without the learning curve for the youngest users. The system we have developed, that lets kids crank and create in 3D, is a major benefit for parents looking to improve their children’s basic motor skills. The included molds make it easy to create 3D objects by simply filling and popping them out. There’s nothing on the market today that makes 3D creation this simple or fast for young creators,” said 3Doodler’s CEO Daniel Cowen.

Essentium’s New Materials for High-Temperature Applications

At RAPID + TCT 2020 in Anaheim this spring, 3D printing solutions provider Essentium will introduce new ULTEM AM9085F and ABS materials for high-temperature industrial AM applications. These high-performance materials, which will be showcased on the company’s High Speed Extrusion platform at the event, provide high strength and have excellent resistance to heat and chemicals at high temperatures, so they can be used for applications in the aerospace, automotive, industrial, and medical industries.

According to a survey commissioned by Essentium, 51% of executives believe that the high cost of materials is a major obstacle when it comes to adopting 3D printing for large-scale production purposes. The new ULTEM AM9085F and ABS materials were created to give manufacturers a more cost-effective solution when compared to expensive closed-system materials. Learn more at Essentium’s Booth #3400 at RAPID + TCT in Anaheim, CA, April 20-23, 2020.

4th Annual Additive Manufacturing Cluster of Ohio Conference

The Additive Manufacturing Cluster of Ohio, powered by organizations such as America Makes and the Youngstown Business Incubator, has announced that its 4th annual conference will take place this summer in Cleveland. Cluster members work together to create a supply chain of interconnected institutions and businesses to advance regional growth in 3D printing. This conference, to be held on Thursday, July 30, at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Cleveland Rockside, will be the first cluster event of 2020, and will give Ohio manufacturers of multiple business models and sizes perspectives on available opportunities for adopting 3D printing into their process chain over the next five years.

The website states, “The program will look at similarities and differences across several selected manufacturer types and will identify strategies ranging from low to high risk. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies and information about regional resources to help them remain competitive in the evolving manufacturing landscape.”

nScrypt Working with 3D Printed Electronics

Orlando company nScrypt is working with precision microdispensing, an additive method of dispensing pastes, inks, and other fluid materials, to create adhesive dots with volumetric control, in the 50 micron range, for 3D printed electronics and flexible hybrid electronics (FHE). Microdispensing gets much closer to the substrate surface when compared to methods like jetting, and the closer the nozzle is to the surface, the finer the features of the 3D printed parts. The team used the nScrypt SmartPump, a silicone adhesive, a conical pen tip, and Heraeus SAC305-8XM8-D Type IX solder paste, and tested the consistency and repeatability of ~50µm Type IX solder and adhesive dots.

These tests showed a consistent average dot diameter of 51.24 microns, with a 6.42 micron (13%) standard deviation. These results support the fabrication of 3D printed electronics through the use of direct digital manufacturing (DDM), which allows printing to both planar substrates and the non-planar world of Printed Circuit Structures, which prints the housing or structure of an electronic device as well as placing the electronics conformally. In the future, the team plans to conduct a larger solder and adhesive dot study, in order to test required downtime, long-term reliability, and the frequency of clogging.

Penn State University Invests in Roboze Technology 

Penn State, a 3D printing leader through its Center for Innovative Materials Processing through Direct Digital Deposition (CIMP-3D), has invested in a new FFF solution in order to expand its AM capabilities. The ROBOZE One+400 Xtreme 3D printer, which was designed to create high performing, functional finished parts in advanced composite materials, will help the university increase its development of high performance plastics for 3D printing, and will be housed in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Students will be able to test out new polymers on the system, and develop new formulations to provide 3D printed parts with multi-functionality. These parts will be used to advance research in applications like chemical reactors.

“ROBOZE One+400 Xtreme will be used to examine novel polymers to help to fundamentally understand the 3D printing process and as a tool to enable custom equipment more cost effectively than can be obtained with machining metals while also allowing for designs not possible with traditional manufacture. The ROBOZE One+400 Xtreme will allow Penn State to leverage its expertise in materials science, engineering and characterization to enable new solutions to problems through additive manufacturing,” said Professor Bryan D. Vogt from the Department of Chemical Engineering.

“The ability to use custom filaments and control the print processing was a critical factor in selecting ROBOZE. The flexibility allowed by ROBOZE along with its excellent printing capabilities is well aligned with the discovery-oriented research mission of the university to expand knowledge and its application. Moverover, our prior 3D printer had issues printing high temperature engineering plastics like PEEK with severe deformation of the structure generally observed. After challenges with printing PEEK with standard belt driven systems, the novel direct drive approach with the ROBOZE was an added bonus.”

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The post 3D Printing News Briefs: February 21, 2020 appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

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Penn State researchers integrate ‘Embodied Logic’ into 3D printed smart objects

Engineers from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) have created bioinspired 3D printed structures that move and react to its environment. Such objects do not require electronically-integrated systems, but, much like the venus fly trap, uses atmospheric stimuli to operate; the Penn State team have dubbed this as “embodied logic”. The […]
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Penn State Researchers 3D Print Porous Tissues

3D bioprinting still has a lot of issues that need to be worked out before we can see anything like a 3D printed organ transplant. One issue is figuring out how to grow blood vessels in printed or engineered tissue, but researchers at Penn State have found an alternative to that idea, creating tissues with micropores that allow nutrient and oxygen diffusion into the core.

Ibrahim T. Ozbolat

“One of the problems with fabrication of tissues is that we can’t make them large in size,” said Ibrahim T. Ozbolat, Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics. “Cells die if nutrients and oxygen can’t get inside.”

Creating tissue building blocks with micropores is an alternative to vascularization, or growing blood vessels inside the tissue, according to the researchers. They refer to the building blocks as “porous tissue strands.” They began with stem cells derived from human fat and mixed them with sodium alginate porogens. Sodium alginate, which is derived from seaweed, can be printed into tiny particles that leave holes, or pores, behind in the fabric of the tissue when dissolved. The researchers used the stem cells and sodium alginate to 3D print strands of undifferentiated tissue, which were then combined, by 3D printing them next to and on top of each other, to form patches of tissue.

The researchers then exposed the tissue to the chemical cocktail that causes stem cells to differentiate, allowing the cells to turn into bone or cartilage. The pores allow the fluid to flow to all of the stem cells. According to the researchers, the strands were able to maintain 25 percent porosity and 85 percent pore connectivity for at least three weeks.

“These patches can be implanted in bone or cartilage, depending on which cells they are,” said Ozbolat. “They can be used for osteoarthritis, patches for plastic surgery such as the cartilage in the nasal septum, knee restoration and other bone or cartilage defects.”

Cartilage tends to be easier to produce than bone because in the human body, cartilage does not have blood vessels running through it. Some bone is naturally porous, however, so porosity in engineered tissue means greater potential for repairing or replacing natural bone. Only tiny patches of tissue can currently be made, but they are still easier to fabricate than growing artificial tissue on scaffolding.

The research was documented in a paper entitled “Porous tissue strands: avascular building blocks for scalable tissue fabrication.” The work has a lot of potential for bone and cartilage regeneration, and the researchers are also considering applying their technique to muscle, fat and other tissues as well.

Authors of the paper include Yang Wu, Monika Hospodiuk, Weijie Peng, Hemanth Gudapati, Thomas Neuberger, Srinivas Koduru, Dino J. Ravnic and Ibrahim T. Ozbolat.

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Penn State Startup Trimatis LLC Hopes to Help the Planet with Recycled Filament

(L to R) Jason Lehrer, Marietta Scanlon and Tito Orjih [Image: Trimatis via Facebook]

A common concern with 3D printing is how efficient it really is. The technology can produce parts locally saving on CO2 when compared to other technologies that have to be centralized. 3D printing also potentially creates parts that use up less material since the process builds the part up as needed along with perhaps some support. This in contrast to other technologies that cut away large amounts of material to create parts. What if we could make it greener and more efficient still? What if we could use plastic waste to make 3D printed parts? There are plenty of conscientious people out there, from startups to the military, putting forth efforts to create ways to reuse and recycle that waste plastic. There’s always a need for more recycling resources in the 3D printing world, and startup Trimatis LLC is ready to help.

Trimatis was formed at Penn State University by recent mechanical engineering graduate Jason Lehrer, current electro-mechanical engineering technology student Tito E. Orjih, and engineering faculty member Marietta R. Scanlon. The three of them were inspired to create the startup after seeing how much waste 3D printers generated – as well as how much waste was on the streets of Philadelphia.

“During my environmental stewardship internship, I witnessed a copious amount of plastic waste littering the streets of Philadelphia,” said Orjih. “Where people saw trash, I saw an opportunity to build a business and help the environment.”

After starting the company, Orjih and Lehrer applied for the 2018 PennTap Inc.U competition.

“We had to turn an idea that was proven in a lab into a business in a short period of time,” said Lehrer. “A lot of time was spent looking into the market to see if this would be a viable business.”

“We prepared by doing a lot of pitch practices in front of different people with different perspectives,” Orjih added. “Each practice pitch helped us address our mistakes and helped us understand how to adjust our pitch based on the audience.”

Penn State President Eric Barron, right, awards $2,000 at the 2018 Invent Penn State Venture & IP Conference to Orjih and Lehrer. [Image: Penn State]

After Inc.U, the pair pitched the company at the 2018 Invent Penn State Venture and IP Conference.

“Another humbling experience,” Orjih said. “The best part was networking with people from the crowd who generally loved what we were doing and wanted to support us.”

Invent Penn State has allowed many students to get businesses off the ground; in the past three years 21 innovation hubs have been funded in Pennsylvania as part of the initiative.

“The education and resources Penn State has provided have been instrumental to the development of the company,” said Scanlon. “The research Jason conducted during his participation in the Multi-Campus REU program sparked the idea. In addition, the Langan Launchbox, Penn State Berks’ innovation hub funded by the Invent Penn State grant, has provided countless resources to ensure the team’s success.”

Trimatis was recently selected as one of 10 finalists in the Great Social Enterprise Pitch, an idea incubator and business plan competition for startups aiming for a positive social or environmental impact. Trimatis has been participating in the incubator all summer and is now in the crowdfunding part of the competition.

[Image: Trimatis via Facebook]

“We plan to keep progressing, improving on our process, marketing and developing connections with people who will be assets to the company,” said Lehrer.

“Our eyes are on the official launch day,” Orjih said. “Our goal is to launch by Jan. 31, so we are taking the proper steps needed to finally be in business.”

If you’d like to support Trimatis, you can check out its crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.

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[Source: Penn State]