3D printing technology news

www.llnl.gov

Lab team reports breakthrough in ultrafast, high-resolution nanoscale 3D printing

While 3D printing at the nanoscale — producing intricate features orders of magnitude smaller than the width of a human hair — has significant potential in industry and commercial applications, wide adoption has been impractical because of the slow speed and low throughput of the most widely...
www.llnl.gov www.llnl.gov

Print some nukes ;)
 
Next year's fashion in home 3D printers will print on conveyor belts, allowing plastic parts of infinite length or semi production line rates.
 
bobbymike said:
www.foxnews.com

Army research lab now building future tanks

You could call it a contradiction in terms, or even a paradoxical blending of opposites -- the Army is now building a highly lethal future armored tank that is easier to navigate while being survivable enough to withstand dangerous enemy attacks and offer protection equivalent to or better than...
www.foxnews.com www.foxnews.com
Click to expand...
Challenged by the Army’s emerging NGCV requirements, the Army Research Laboratory is now working to engineer and build new, lightweight yet survivable vehicle parts such as brackets, turret components, propulsion systems and weapons, using “additive manufacturing” or 3D printing technology. In particular, the effort includes the exploration of lightweight metals such as titanium, titanium alloys and hybrid ceramic tile/polymer-matrix composites.


“Titanium is lightweight and has a specific strength to weight ratio. Titanium is half the weight of other metals currently in use," Dr. Brandon A. McWilliams, Materials Engineer, Lead for Metals Added Manufacturing, Army Research Lab, Combat Capabilities Development Command, Army Futures Command, told Warrior in an interview, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. "With additive manufacturing, the costs can come down and make business sense.”

Certain elements of lower-cost titanium have already been in use for several armored vehicle applications such as up-armor for the Abrams tanks and the Commander’s Hatch in the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. However, this integration has been minimal and largely peripheral. Army engineers working on future combat vehicles are now calling for more titanium for large and vital elements in combat vehicles, in part because 3-D printing can deliver it in a more efficient, lower-cost fashion.

Interestingly, using more titanium for military vehicles is emphasized and anticipated in a 1997 essay, entitled “Low-Cost Titanium Armors for Combat Vehicles.” The essay, published in JOM, states “future-vehicle hull and turret will have to be manufactured using more ballistically efficient materials than rolled homogeneous steel armor. Low-cost titanium, with its good mechanical, ballistic, and corrosion properties and acceptable fabricability, offers the overall best alternative to achieving this objective.”
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One major howler in the article though (highlighted by me):
This was published years before “additive manufacturing” existed. Unlike traditional or more standard manufacturing techniques, new combinations of materials can be explored, or even created, using computer modeling as the essential step prior to printing parts with 3-D printing.
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Additive Manufacturing (then better known as Laser Sintering) was around during the 1980s (NASA for example was a major pioneer in this area).
 
sg.news.yahoo.com

Hospitals turn to snorkel masks to ease respirator overload

As hospitals face an overload of COVID-19 patients struggling to breathe, innovative medical staff are turning to snorkelling masks from sports stores to stop their lungs collapsing. The idea started in Italy, the European country worst-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with hospitals in other...
sg.news.yahoo.com sg.news.yahoo.com
 
www.thefirearmblog.com

Beretta Is Helping in the Fight Against Coronavirus

The Italian firearms manufacturer Beretta is helping in the current healthcare crisis in Italy. Beretta has switched their machine park, which usually produces 3D printed prototypes of firearms and accessories, to make parts for breathing aids for the extremely hard-pressed Italian healthcare.
www.thefirearmblog.com www.thefirearmblog.com
 
With a worldwide shortage of hospital equipment such as ventilators and protective gear for medical workers, organisations, educational institutions and individuals have been joining the effort to meet the demand.

In the UK, around 1,400 3D-printer owners have pledged to use their machines to help make face masks for the NHS.
Click to expand...
www.bbc.com

Coronavirus: Defence firm Babcock to make 10,000 ventilators

The move comes as tech giant Apple says it will start making face shields for medical workers.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
phys.org

Researchers uncover the art of printing extremely hard steels flawlessly

For millennia, metallurgists have been meticulously tweaking the ingredients of steel to enhance its properties. As a result, several variants of steel exist today; but one type, called martensitic steel, stands out from its steel cousins as stronger and more cost-effective to produce. Hence...
phys.org phys.org
 
Back in 2018 and 2019, 3D printer manufaturers promised us home machines that could print items of infinite length on conveyor belts.
When will they go on sale?
 
I've seen 3D conveyor printers on YouTube vids at recent printer conventions. At the rate new printers are coming out, it shouldn't be long.

For commercial conveyor printers, it would allow manufacturing of bars of materials with differing tailored material characteristics along their length. Printed spars could have stronger materials at the wing roots and only as strong and light as needed at the wingtips.
 
[URL unfurl = "true"] https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a32744310/submarine-cold-spray-printing/ [/ URL]
newatlas.com

Australia turns to 3D printing to maintain its submarine fleet

3D printing is set to go to sea in the form of an additive manufacturing technique for repairing submarines. Being developed by Australia’s dedicated submarine sustainment organization, ASC, in partnership with the CSIRO and DMTC Limited, the cold spray printing technology is intended to repair the…
newatlas.com newatlas.com
 
www.thefirearmblog.com

Chinese Scientists 3D Print Gunpowder Substitute

3D printed firearms, emptying 3D printed magazines to fire 3D printed bullets against targets protected by 3D printed armor. It looks like the only element missing from the equation is to be able to 3D print gunpowder. Now, we may see that too.
www.thefirearmblog.com www.thefirearmblog.com

www.sciencedirect.com

Fabrication and investigation of 3D-printed gun propellants

Gun propellant is the energy source of barrel weapons. A 3D printed gun propellant based on “Stereolithography (SLA)” was developed to overcome the li…
www.sciencedirect.com www.sciencedirect.com
 
Velo3D makes a metal printer that doesn't need "support" braces that have to be machined off the finished part and allows overhang geometries beyond 45 degrees.


 

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