New Device Can 3D Print “Fruit”
3D printing is taking a turn towards making things healthier.
While it’s been possible to print chocolate, pizza, and candy for a while, it is now possible to print a new, and somewhat healthier, alternative: reconstructed fruit.
UK-based studio, Dovetailed, is a Cambridge design studio with a passion for crafting engaging new experiences with preexisting platforms –such as 3D printing. Their latest? A device that lets you print out your five a day.
On Saturday, the Dovetailed team announced the launch of their new 3D fruit printer that uses a special technique to print out liquid drops of fruit, allowing you to combine different flavored fruits to make your desired flavor. While the flavors don’t form the exact shape of the actual fruit, it instead uses a molecular gastronomy technique that converts liquid into gelatinous droplets of fruit juice. The fruit that is produced is also organic.
The device allows you to easily customize the taste and texture of the fruit, without requiring that you know anything about molecular-gastronomy.
Dovetailed Creative Director and Founder Vaiva Kalnikatie adds that the 3D fruit printer will open up new opportunities, not only for professional chefs, but home kitchens as well. The whole experience, Kalnikatie says, will “enhance and expand our dining experiences. We have re-invented the concept of fresh fruit on demand.”
Chief inventor Gabriel Villar also adds that the 3D fruit printer will allow you to invent your own fruit flavors. “With our novel printing technique, you can not only recreate existing fruits, but also invent your own creations.”
The 3D fruit printer was unveiled on Saturday at the “TechFoodHack” in Cambridge, an event organized by Dovetailed and Microsoft Research. TechFoodHack is a dining “hackathon” event, where a group gathers to experiment, design, and hack new dining experiences using locally sourced ingredients.
Callout for a 3D Printable Heart Library
3D printing is helping to improve heart surgeries.
A 3D printed heart allows surgeons to investigate the damaged heart before going in for surgery. While in the past, the only option would be to go into heart surgery without knowing what might be encountered, with the 3D printed model of the damaged heart, surgeons know exactly what to prepare for before surgery. This makes surgeries safer, and gives the patient’s loved ones comfort.
The 3D printed heart, based on CT and MRI scan imagery, allows surgeons to see and feel the heart, conditions, and defects before starting surgery. This not only improves the planning process for surgery, it also makes the operation much safer.
Dr. Matthew Bramlet, a pediatric cardiologist at the Children’s Hospital of Illinois, says that he believes that 3D printed hearts can used as more than just a “training tool.”
Dr. Bramlet used 3D printing to aid in the heart surgery of 6-month-old Luke Snodgrass. The 3D printed model of Luke’s heart allowed surgeons to notice an addition defect of the heart that changed the course of surgery. The nearly 12 hour procedure was, as predicted, a success.
Dr. Bramlet now hopes to expand the concept and build an online library of 3D printable hearts so future physicians can learn more from the collection of heart defect images.
To put Dr. Bramlet’s plan in place would involve obtaining high quality MRI and CT scans from across the country and producing 3D models of the hearts. It will require a joint effort from doctors across the country to make such a library work.
The post Callout for a 3D Printable Heart Library appeared first on 3D Printer.
Harvard Researchers Demonstrate New 3D Printed Lightweight Cellular Composites
Honeycomb structure of new composite materials
When I first heard Harvard Professor Jennifer Lewis speak about using the laws of nature to guide research in 3D Printing and other novel fabrication methodologies, I did not fully grasp the broad range of applications for the work being conducted at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in Cambridge, MA. However, Professor Lewis’ paper 3D-Printing of Lightweight Cellular Composites demonstrates the possiblities for new manufacturing tools when looking to the nautral world for guidance.
Recently published online in the journal Advanced Materials, the research centered on mimicing the performance characteristics of balsa wood, a key material used to fabricate wind turbine blades. In collaboration with Brett G. Compton, a former postdoctoral fellow in her group, Professor Lewis combined fiber-reinforced epoxy-based thermosetting resins and novel 3D printing techniques to generate cellular composite materials of unmatched lightness and stiffness. The 3D printing method itself is fascinating.
Close up of composite material showing the black “fillers”
Key to the project was perfecting inks made of epoxy resins, spiked with viscosity-enhancing nanoclay platelets and a compound called dimethyl methylphosphonate, but also with two types of added fillers: tiny silicon carbide “whiskers” and discrete carbon fibers. It turns out that the direction that the fillers are deposited controls the strength of the materials, just as it is easier to chop a piece of wood along as opposed to against its grain. Verification tests have shown that the technique yields cellular composites that are as stiff as wood, 10 to 20 times stiffer than commercial 3D-printed polymers, and twice as strong as the best printed polymer composites.
Novel 3D Printing Process Aligning Fillers in the Inks
In explaining the relationship to balsa wood, Professor Lewis elaborates: ”Balsa wood has a cellular architecture that minimizes its weight since most of the space is empty and only the cell walls carry the load. It therefore has a high specific stiffness and strength. We’ve borrowed this design concept and mimicked it in an engineered composite.”
You can see a video of the process and perhaps also be inspired by the wonder of nature!
Primary support for this research came from the BASF North American Center for Research on Advanced Materials, along with National Science Foundation.
SOURCE: 3DPRINTER.NET
