We’re covering research innovations in today’s 3D Printing News Briefs! First, Penn Engineering developed 3D printed materials that change color under stress, and UC Berkeley researchers created an open source, customizable, 3D printed humanoid robot.Biomedical engineering students at Colorado State University, including one who’s an amputee himself, announced a patented 3D printed prosthetic foot.Finally, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) scientists came up with a way to reduce porosity in large 3D printed parts.
Penn State’s 3D Printed Materials Change Color Under Stress Stretching the lattice-like CLCE structure shows how the material changes color in response to mechanical stress.A multidisciplinary team from Penn State, including researchers from the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), developed a way to 3D print cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers (CLCEs), which are soft, rubbery materials that respond to mechanical stress by changing color.By developing a transparent silicone shell to act as a scaffold for the CLCE core, they’re able to support intricate 3D designs; this would be very helpful for applications in displays, robotics, and smart sensing.
The liquid precursor of a CLCE is extremely viscous, so when it’s extruded through a printer nozzle, the twisted helix structures responsible for its color-changing properties don’t form correctly.The team turned to Coaxial Direct Ink Writing (DIW), which enables precise 3D printing of color-changing, multi-stable structures.They were also determined to find the perfect viscosity for CLCEs, which would be just thick enough to maintain the finished product’s structural integrity, but not so thick that the material doesn’t flow easily through the nozzle.
You can read more about this work in their published study.“The color changes are caused by the material’s ability to manipulate light, much like a beetle shell reflects light to create a colorful display.These materials have the potential to solve industry problems across medicine, diagnostics, monitoring and can even be used in art,” said lead investigator Shu Yang, the Joseph Bordogna Professor and Chair of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE).
UC Berkeley’s Open Source 3D Printed Humanoid Robot Moving from Pennsylvania to California, a team of researchers from UC Berkeley developed the Berkeley Humanoid Lite: an accessible, customizable, open source humanoid robot made with 3D printing.Due to a lack of accessibility and customization in the fascinating field of humanoid robotics, most of the commercially available hardware is closed and costly, which doesn’t do much to help grow the field.That’s why the UC Berkeley team created their open source humanoid robot, which was designed to be customizable, accessible, and costs less than $5,000.
The center of the design is a modular 3D printed gearbox for the body and actuators, and a cycloidal gear design helps get around the normal limitations of 3D printed gearboxes, like decreased durability and strength.All of the components can be found on e-commerce platforms and made with standard desktop 3D printers, and the team says their design “emphasizes modularity and ease of fabrication.” Several experiments were conducted to demonstrate the Berkeley Humanoid Lite’s capabilities, and the results show that it is well-suited for research validation.“By making the hardware design, embedded code, and training and deployment frameworks fully open-source and globally accessible, we aim for Berkeley Humanoid Lite to serve as a pivotal step toward democratizing the development of humanoid robotics.” You can find all the documentation to help build your own version of this humanoid robot here.
Amputee Student & Classmates Develop 3D Printed Prosthetic Foot Garrison Hayes and Eric Gutierrez-Camacho lead a team of biomedical engineering students who invented a new kind of prosthetic foot, which they call the Goldilocks Foot.Hayes, who is an amputee, has tested all the team’s prototypes.Photo: Hannah Tran/CSU Photography When he was 6 years old, Colorado State University undergraduate Garrison Hayes had his left leg amputated due to bone cancer.
While this didn’t slow him or his sports ambitions down, Hayes always found the feet on his prosthetic legs to be lacking, and was determined to create a better device once he began studying engineering.This summer, he and four other biomedical engineering students developed the prosthetic Goldilocks Foot—3D printed out of polyamide in a network of latticing for a fit that’s “just right,” it enables full customization, comfort, and support by returning energy to the body with each step.They now have a patent pending for the Goldilocks Foot, and established a startup to attract venture funding for further development and marketing.
They believe that their product might retail for around $2,000, compared to $3,000 or more for other prosthetic feet.In March, they won the Multicultural Undergraduate Research Art and Leadership Symposium (MURALS), which highlights student innovations, and received $3,000 and two awards last month during the university’s Venture RAMS Business Showcase.They also took part in an event called E-Days that showcased the entrepreneurial design work of Colorado State’s senior engineering students.
“It’s not just some rubber shell over an insert.This is actively supporting your leg and your body.When you apply pressure on it through gait cycles, the material wants to return to its shape, like a spring, and that supplies energy to assist you,” said Hayes, who has tested each one of his team’s 3D printed prototypes.
“It actively supports you and feels more natural.” “With the Goldilocks Foot, we can reach infinite markets to address very specific problems with very specific solutions.We can tailor each design to each person,” explained the team’s design engineer Eric Gutierrez-Camacho, who made prototypes for the Goldilocks Foot on his personal 3D printer.ORNL Develops Method to Reduce Internal Porosity of Large 3D Prints A vacuum-assisted extrusion is leveraged in large-scale additive manufacturing to reduce porosity in printed parts.
Credit: Vipin Kumar/ORNL, U.S.Dept.of Energy Large-format additive manufacturing (LFAM) makes it possible to print meter-scale structures that are used in aerospace, defense, and automotive tooling.
Unfortunately, internal porosity, or voids, that weaken the 3D printed components is slowing down widespread adoption.Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee took matters into their own hands to reduce the porosity of LFAM parts in order to improve their durability, strength, and performance.They came up with a novel idea: a vacuum-assisted extrusion method that can decrease the internal porosity in large-scale 3D printed polymer parts by up to 75%, thus improving their overall performance.
The team integrated a vacuum hopper during the extrusion process to remove trapped gases and minimize void formation in fiber-reinforced materials, which are often used in LFAM due to their low thermal expansion and stiffness but experience intrabead porosity that limits part quality.ORNL’s current method is designed for batch processing, but the team developed a patent-pending concept for continuous deposition systems.“Using this innovative technique, we are not only addressing the critical issue of porosity in large-scale polymer prints but also paving the way for stronger composites.
This is a significant leap forward for the LFAM industry,” said Vipin Kumar, Senior R&D Staff Scientist at ORNL.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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