In today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, Bambu Lab has opened its first retail store, and Meltio is inaugurating its first international additive manufacturing reference site.A consortium has launched a project to conduct a feasibility study of a 3D printed, digitally enabled propeller, and Boeing unveiled a 3D printed solar array approach.Finally, we’ll end with research about using AI and 3D printing to make shape-morphing materials.
Bambu Lab Opens First Retail Store in Shenzhen, China Popular desktop 3D printing company Bambu Lab has officially opened the doors to its first flagship retail store, located in the Nanshan District of Shenzhen, China.The dedicated 3D printing retail experience is located in a 244-square-meter space, which turns 3D printing into a tangible experience for consumers.The store showcases the entire Bambu Lab 3D printer lineup, including a full wall installation of A1 systems.
A veritable rainbow of filament colors are also for sale, while a dedicated in-store gallery honors some of the top creators from Bambu’s MakerWorld community by displaying and selling their models at the onsite mini market.Finally, the MakerSupply showcase demonstrates the company’s full ecosystem of materials and tools.At the center of the store is one of its most impressive features: a huge CyberBrick diorama, which was fully 3D printed on a farm of over 100 H2D printers operating continuously for seven days.
Visitors are encourage to interact with this display and experience 3D printing firsthand.Bambu Lab claims it is the first 3D printer manufacturer to open its own flagship store, which is about bringing 3D printing to the masses.With offices in Shanghai and Austin, the company is headquartered in Shenzhen, which was the logical place for its first store.
More consumer spaces are planned for the future, including some international locations.Meltio to Inaugurate International AM Reference Site in U.S.at Fastech Flap actuator for the aerospace sector developed by Meltio.
Manufactured in Titanium 64 on the M600, this component weighs only 0.67 kg, showcasing the advantages of lightweight, high-strength additive manufacturing for aerospace systems.Spanish DED multinational Meltio, which specializes in wire laser metal deposition (W-LMD) technology, is opening its first international Advanced Additive Manufacturing reference site.The inauguration will soon be celebrated at the site itself: the Danville, Virginia headquarters of trusted Meltio service bureau Fastech.
The Ready for Action open house event will be held on October 14th, and will showcase Fastech’s newly acquired Meltio M600 blue laser metal 3D printer and the Meltio Robot Cell, which will be fully operational and on display.The facility marks a major milestone in Meltio’s global expansion, and will serve as a demonstration hub of Meltio’s AM solutions for the U.S.and international industries, like defense and security.
Several companies will share their experiences with Meltio during the event, including Austal, ExxonMobil, and the U.S.Navy, and many metal applications will also be displayed, addressing critical challenges like on-demand part repair in remote or operational areas, obsolete component replacement, and more.These parts include an artillery shell, an automotive engine block, a winglet mold, a propeller shaft bracket for the naval sector, jet engine exhaust, lightweight tank ice cleats, and more.
“Establishing this first global reference site in the United States reflects Meltio’s strong commitment to supporting U.S.industries.With Fastech, we are giving manufacturers the opportunity to explore cutting-edge applications, from defense to research, that demonstrate the transformative power of wire-laser metal 3D printing,” said Gabriel Ortiz, Meltio’s Sales Manager for the United States.
Consortium to Conduct Feasibility Study of Digitally Enabled, 3D Printed Propeller A newly formed consortium has launched the Digitally Enabled Efficient Propeller (D.E.E.P.) project to pioneer the next generation of marine propellers fabricated with advanced AM, integrated with digital twin technology.The concept is to transform propellers from passive pieces of hardware to smart, cyber-physical systems that can monitor their own performance, and the consortium will conduct the Techno-Economic Feasibility Study of Manufacturing Digitally Enabled Efficient Propellers.The team is led by Enki Marine Ltd, with partners Stone Marine Propulsion (design and market validation), TWI (materials testing and manufacturing processes), DEEP Manufacturing (manufacturing processes and production scaling), Authentise (digital thread and AI-driven monitoring), ASTM International (certification and standardization) and Newcastle University (hydrodynamic modeling and validation).
The project secured funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s Innovate UK through the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition (CMDC6), and the first phase will be focused on evaluating AM processes for the regulated maritime sector, with other phases validating the resulting demonstrator on Newcastle’s research vessel. “ENKI’s core mission is to ensure that emerging technologies are not only cutting-edge, but also safe, purpose-driven, and seamlessly integrated into the maritime sector,” said Milad Armin, Executive Director of Enki Marine.“We are proud to collaborate with a world-leading consortium on the D.E.E.P programme, which supports our mission and will pioneer a new generation of marine propellers manufactured through advanced additive manufacturing (AM) processes and enhanced with digital twin technology.” Boeing Unveils 3D Printed Solar Array Substrate Approach On-orbit render of a Millennium-built small satellite flying Spectrolab solar cells (Boeing image).Across its entire portfolio, Boeing has incorporated more than 150,000 3D printed parts (like 1,000+ RF parts on each Wideband Global SATCOM satellite in production), resulting in major cost, performance, and schedule benefits.
Now, it’s unveiled a new 3D printed solar array substrate approach that is said to cut production cycle times for a typical solar array wing program by up to six months—a 50% production improvement.This allows for a parallel build of the complete solar array: dozens of separate parts, long-lead tooling, and bonding steps can be replaced by printing features like attachment points and harness paths directly into each panel.This new array approach is designed to scale up from small satellites to larger platforms, including the Boeing 702-class spacecraft, and flight-representative hardware has finished engineering testing, now moving through the company’s standard qualification path.
Boeing’s first 3D printed solar arrays will fly Spectrolab solar cells on SmallSats built by Millennium Space Systems.“As we scale additive manufacturing across Boeing, we’re not just taking time and cost out, we’re putting performance in.By pairing qualified materials with a common digital thread and high‑rate production, we can lighten structures, craft novel designs, and repeat success across programs,” explained Melissa Orme, Vice President, Materials & Structures, Boeing Technology Innovation.
“That’s the point of enterprise additive, it delivers better parts today and the capacity to build many more of them tomorrow.” AI-Driven Design & 3D Printing to Autonomously Create Shape-Morphing Materials Displayed here is a comparison of simulation (left), experiment with manufacturing instructions (center), and experiment without instructions (right).With instructions, the material morphs from circle to ellipse as designed; without them, it fails.While plants, animals, and viruses can change their shapes to adapt to environments, most engineered materials cannot.
But a team of researchers from Northwestern University, led by Professor Wei Chen and Professor Ryan Truby, developed an AI-driven design and 3D printing method to develop adaptive materials that can respond to external factors like light or heat by reshaping themselves—just like biological systems.The new framework autonomously determines the ideal material (stimuli) distribution and print parameters for achieving a desired shape in response to environmental cues.The team’s system also adapts quickly to changing design requirements, and can produce new designs in just minutes, including all the instructions for how they should be printed.
Finally, new inks and 3D printing processes were developed to manufacture these stimuli-responsive materials, called liquid crystal elastomers.You can learn more by reading their published paper here.“By combining AI, physics, and digital manufacturing, we’ve created a powerful tool for developing adaptive materials that could be used in medical devices, robotics, and other technologies that need to respond to changing environments or functional needs.
It’s a step toward smarter, more versatile materials that can do things traditional systems simply can’t,” said Professor Chen.Subscribe to Our Email Newsletter Stay up-to-date on all the latest news from the 3D printing industry and receive information and offers from third party vendors.Print Services Upload your 3D Models and get them printed quickly and efficiently.
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