Researchers at University of Minnesota have created See-Shell, a transparent skull for studying neural activity in mice. The use of such monitoring tools to measure neural activity in real time is providing massive insight into the treatment of concussions, Alzheimer’s and other neural disorders. The device is as simple as a replacement for the regular […]
The post See-Shell: Printed Transparent Skulls Aid in Brain Research appeared first on 3D Printing.
L-R: Auburn University’s John Mason and Patrick Scheuermann, director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, sign a Space Act Agreement [2015 Image: Auburn University]
Back in 2015, Auburn University and NASA signed a Space Act Agreement for the purposes of exploring and advancing additive manufacturing applications and research together. The university has remained committed to 3D printing, and aerospace, over the years, working with NASA in a public-private partnership to establish its National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence (NCAME) two years ago for the purpose of improve the performance of 3D printed parts, respond to workforce development needs in the AM industry, and share research results with collaborators.
Now, the university’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering has announced that NASA awarded a three-year, $5.2 million contract to NCAME to research and create 3D printing techniques to help improve the performance of liquid rocket engines. The work covered under the contract is part of NASA’s Rapid Analysis and Manufacturing Propulsion Technology (RAMPT) project, and is just the latest development to come out of Auburn’s relationship with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
“This partnership with Auburn University and industry will help develop improvements for liquid rocket engines, as well as contribute to commercial opportunities. The technologies developed by this team will be made available widely to the private sector, offering more companies the opportunity to use these advanced manufacturing techniques,” said Paul McConnaughey, the Deputy Director of Marshall Space Flight Center.
RAMPT is centered around evolving lightweight, large-scale novel and 3D printing techniques for developing and fabricating regeneratively cooled thrust chamber assemblies for use in liquid rocket engines. NCAME already collaborates with more than 70 academic, government, industry, and non-profit organizations, and will now help support the RAMPT project as it works to create a domestic supply chain and specialized manufacturing technology vendors, which will be used by all government agencies, commercial space companies, and academic institutions.
“For decades, Auburn engineers have been instrumental in helping the U.S. achieve its space exploration goals. This new collaboration between NASA and our additive manufacturing researchers will play a major role in developing advanced rocket engines that will drive long-duration spaceflight, helping our nation achieve its bold vision for the future of space exploration,” said Christopher B. Roberts, the dean of the university’s College of Engineering.
Michael Ares, who works in Media Relations for Auburn University, told 3DPrint.com in an email that the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering is a leader in developing and implementing the kind of AM aerospace technology that Auburn and NASA have also been working on “behind the scenes,” which would allow astronauts on long-duration spaceflights to manufacture spare parts when needed.
“Think about how that would have been helpful on Apollo 13…” Ares told us.
GE Avionics is another Auburn partner that’s taken research jointly conducted with the university all the way to production. Additionally, Alabama’s Governor Kay Ivey announced last week that GE Aviation will invest $50 million to expand the additive manufacturing operation at its Auburn facility. All of this goes to show that when it comes to aerospace 3D printing, it seems like Alabama is the place to be right now.
“This contract is a giant leap towards making Alabama the ‘go to state’ for additive manufacturing. We look forward to growing our partnership with NASA, industry and academia as we support the development of our nation’s next rocket engines,” said Mike Ogles, Director of NASA programs in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and the RAMPT Project Manager.
The announcement about the university’s new NASA contract was made at the biannual four-day meeting of ASTM International’s F42 Committee on Additive Manufacturing Technologies, which is hosted by the university at the Auburn Marriott Opelika Resort & Spa at Grand National in Opelika. Nima Shamsaei, the Director of NCAME, will lead Auburn’s team for the RAMPT project as the principal investigator.
Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below.
Disease modeling is an important field to understand in terms of human health for the present and the future. A disease model is an animal or cells displaying all or some of the pathological processes that are observed in the actual human or animal disease. Studying disease models aids understanding of how the disease develops and testing potential treatment approaches. We will take a look at how disease models are constructed currently and how bioprinting will help build disease models in the future.
One must know of some preliminary knowledge before we continue to discuss about bioprinting and disease modeling. Disease modeling utilizes different hosts to study underlying pathology of a disease. We can not experiment on a human due to moral and ethical grounds, so instead we typically use a mouse, rat, a pea plant, fish, nematodes, as well as fruit flies for our host site. We then inject said host with a particular disease and it allows us to study how the disease operates within that host. With disease models, we are able to use the information gathered from experimentation to figure out how we can prevent or reduce the spreading of different diseases within the human race.When animal models are employed in the study of human disease, they are frequently selected because of their similarity to humans in terms of genetics, anatomy, and physiology. Animal models are preferable for experimental disease research because of their unlimited supply and ease of manipulation. We can also utilize in vitro cell assays and inject these with different diseases. This allows us to study cell interaction as well.
Rodent Model of Parkinson’s Disease
With the methodology roughly outlined, we will now explain how bioprinting is important for this field. Conventional two-dimensional (2D) in vitro assays and animal models have been unable to fully recapitulate the critical characteristics of human physiology. Physiology refers to how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical and physical functions that exist in a living system. Alternatively, three-dimensional (3D) tissue models are often developed in a low-throughput manner and lack crucial native-like architecture. The recent emergence of bioprinting technologies has enabled creating 3D tissue models that address the critical challenges of conventional in vitro assays through the development of custom bioinks and patient derived cells coupled with well-defined arrangements of biomaterials.
Bioprinting is usefull because we can derive materials from human cells to see better reactions without needing to mutate an animal host to become similar to the human genome. There are a variety of diseases that humans contrive but are not within different organisms and their respective genomes. This causes one to necessitate mutation within a host. Ideally one would stay away from mutation when studying disease as that may be a variable that causes imperfect interpretation of results and studies of pathology. Also it is important to consider that physiology of a human is very different from the physiology of a rat, mouse, a plant, and etc. With bioprinting we can actually create scaffolds that have physiological properties similar to human tissue. That allows for more accurate studies as well of interaction from a physiology and pathology framework.
There still lies some areas of concern in terms of bioprinting and disease modeling. It is important for a bioprinted material used in disease modeling to have the following properties:
In order to study a disease pathology and physiology one needs to be able to trust that the material we are using will be able to last and live long enough for useful data or information collected from experimentation. There does not seem to be a lot of research done currently on degradation times of bioprinted tissue scaffolds. This level of uncertainty causes disease modeling to shy away from bioprinting currently. It is important to have clinical viability, and uncertainty is not needed in clinical settings.
Cell proliferation refers to the process that result in an increase of the number of cells, and is defined by the balance between cell divisions and cell loss through cell death or differentiation. This can be further understood through mitosis. Mitosis refers to a type of cell division that results in two daughter cells each having the same number and kind of chromosomes as the parent nucleus, typical of ordinary tissue growth. It is difficult at this stage to induce such cell proliferation within bioprinted materials. There are various studies that show proliferation within bioprinted materials, but there is not enough work done to be able to safely control proliferation.
Cellular differentiation is the process where a cell changes from one cell type to another. Usually, the cell changes to a more specialized type. Differentiation occurs numerous times during the development of a multicellular organism as it changes from a simple zygote to a complex system of tissues and cell types. Cellular differentiation must be controllable. The ability to tune bioprinting properties as an approach to fabricate stem cell bearing scaffolds and to also harness the benefits of the cells multipotency is of considerable relevance to the field of biomaterials and bioengineering. Without a regimented method to control differentiation within a disease modeling context, various things may go awry within experimentation.
Proliferation and Differentiation
Overall, disease modelling is ripe for change. With bioprinting, the future is intriguing and will be more accurate in term of studying human pathology and physiology of diseases because of us having the ability to derive tissue from patient derived cells. There are still a number of items that need to be changed in order for bioprinting within the disease modelling context to be used more thoroughly, and researchers are attempting to fix those issues.
This article is part of a series that wishes to make bioprinting more accessible. It starts with bioprinting 101, Hydrogels, 3D Industrial Bioprinters, Alginate, Bioinks, Pluronics, Applications, Gelatin, Decellularized Extracellular Matrices, and Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine.
Digital light processing (DLP) specialist and open platform 3D manufacturing company atum3D, based in the Netherlands, introduced the latest version of its intuitive Operator Station print preparation software, complete with proprietary MAGS AI technology, at formnext 2018. The software makes it easy to duplicate parts, or fill available build volume, and comes with a slicing preview feature, while MAGS AI will automatically adjust a part’s orientation and generate the necessary supports, based on surface markings made by the user.
Now the company has announced its first onsite installation of the newly updated software solution. Sirris, a Belgian industrial collective center started by the technology industry for the technology industry, provides companies with a high-tech testing infrastructure and is also a partner organization in the Family of the Future project. The collective, which also has a DLP Station 5 3D printer from atum3D, will expand its current offering with the updated Operator Station solution.
“A barrier for printing parts are often the high costs related to the monopoly of or restrictions of material suppliers,” explained Maxime Legrand, Engineer Additive Manufacturing at Sirris. “With this equipment Sirris wants to support companies in the development and the production of their new AM applications at an affordable cost due to the higher flexibility in potential printing materials. This will enable new possibilities that couldn’t be met before. This atum3D setup allows us to demonstrate it’s now possible to quickly create high quality prototypes and end-products with a wide range of different material properties in a cost-efficient way, all with an investment around the € 25k mark.”
Sirris is made up of 150 tech experts, who work together to help around 1,300 companies a year achieve success in their innovation projects. By combining atum3D’s updated Operator Station with the open platform of the DLP Station 5, the collective and the companies it assists will benefit from easier print preparation.
“Operator Station guides you through the job preparation steps, from importing and supporting a part to selecting a resin and from duplicating or filling the build platform to slicing and exporting the job for DLP Station,” said Legrand. “It’s incredibly easy to use.”
The latest release of Operator Station, which uses an algorithm to consider not only the part’s geometry but also its resin properties, also includes a new object scaling functionality.
“We are thrilled to add DLP Station 5 with Operator Station to the state-of-the-art solutions offered by this Belgian innovation leader. Preparing for print has never been easier, with Operator Station’s intuitive touch-ready user interface and atum3D’s proprietary MAGS AI technology, which takes an entirely new approach to print job preparation,” said Guy Nyssen, channel manager at atum3D.
By pairing Operator Station software with the DLP Station 5, which features high accuracy, a free selection of build materials, and print speed up to 90 mm an hour, print preparation is a breeze, especially for new users like those at Sirris.
atum3D delivered the Operator Station to the Sirris Liège location, and installed both the hardware and the software there for the collective. In addition, the company also provided a user training session, which the new users at Sirris found to be “very self-explanatory.”
Discuss this story and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com, or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below.
[Images provided by atum3D]
Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings has not slowed down a bit regarding their uses for 3D printing technology, and now they will have even greater resources as they acquire 3D Material Technologies (3DMT) from ARC Group Worldwide, Inc. Hidden away in the Daytona Beach, Florida area, 3DMT is already a supplier of AM services to important industries like aerospace, defense, and medical—and Aerojet Rocketdyne is already a industry leader in 3D printing powerful metal components for propulsion and power systems required for a variety of applications in aerospace.
Following long-term technological collaborations with NASA and subsequent qualification of parts for both the RL10 and the RS-25 liquid rocket engines, Aerojet Rocketdyne has continued their impressive momentum in both 3D printing and additive manufacturing, seeing the obvious value and future potential in being able to fabricate lightweight, complex geometries and high value systems—benefiting from the enormous advantages such progressive technology has to offer—and passing that on even to the entire US as their defense unit expands further using AM technology for hypersonic propulsion.
“The addition of 3DMT’s capacity and expertise in metal alloy additive manufacturing expands our range of products and services in the space and defense markets,” said Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Inc. CEO and President Eileen Drake. “As we look to the future, additive manufacturing will continue to play an important role in lowering costs and production timelines.”
“This deal allows Aerojet Rocketdyne to broaden its application of this revolutionary technology. We respect the long-standing reputation for quality and customer focus that 3DMT has built in the aerospace industry and we are thrilled to welcome them to our company.”
3DMT Headquarters, Daytona Beach, FL (Photo credit: 3DMT)
In their recent press release announcing the acquisition, Aerojet Rocketdyne announces that the recently acquired 3DMT will still continue work at their 28,000 square ft. facility in Daytona Beach, and with their existing workforce too. Currently, Aerojet Rocketdyne is headquartered in El Segundo, California, but is also operating at 14 different sites in the US with 650 team members in their West Palm Beach, Florida headquarters and Orlando, combined. Along with manufacturing 3D printing and additive manufacturing technology and creating defense products and systems, Aerojet Rocketdyne also owns a real-estate firm that deals with leasing and sales of their own substantial assets.
Exact terms of the deal between the two companies was not disclosed further.
In the past few years especially, Aerojet Rocketdyne has been heavily engaged in 3D printing and additive manufacturing endeavors, with many high-profile, innovative projects where their engineers have 3D printed engine components, completed groundbreaking 3D printing projects for NASA, and even set critical industry standards for 3D printing rocket engines. What do you think of this news? Let us know your thoughts! Join the discussion of this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com.
[Source: Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Inc.]
In need of a costly power wheelchair for their son, the parents of 2-year-old Cillian Jackson turned to an unlikely source. Teenagers.
Thanks to the robotics team at Farmington High School, Cillian now has his ride – a functioning power wheelchair hand-built from a Power Wheels riding toy.
Read the whole story from TV station KARE 11 website with video.
