Blissful New Yr! We’ve bought an abbreviated 3D Printing Information Briefs for you right this moment, so we are able to all take pleasure in our vacation weekend however nonetheless sustain on the trade’s information. First, in enterprise information, amsight has introduced a brand new strategic investor. Shifting on, a 3D printed alternative half helped put an F-15 again within the air manner forward of schedule. Lastly, since winter has totally arrived within the U.S., we’ll finish with analysis out of Amsterdam about 3D printing ice bushes and different constructions.
amsight Broadcasts Butterfly & Elephant as New Strategic Investor
Hamburg-based software program startup amsight has gained a robust strategic companion in GS1 Germany’s funding firm Butterfly & Elephant, which invested in amsight as a part of a Pre-Seed II financing spherical. The startup focuses on data-driven high quality administration for industrial 3D printing, consolidating all related manufacturing knowledge inside a single software program. With its funding in amsight, Butterfly & Elephant is supporting the automation, digitalization, and standardization of AM, and joins amsight in its aim of advancing end-to-end traceability for 3D printed elements, along with digital product and course of knowledge based mostly on GS1 requirements. Collectively, the 2 will collaborate to develop options that permit firms to doc and securely alternate vital parameters throughout the manufacturing chain. amsight will use this infusion of capital to hurry up product growth, drive market entry in regulated industries, and broaden its software program, particularly in compliance and knowledge standardization areas.
“We’re more than happy to have gained Butterfly & Elephant as an investor who not solely offers capital, however above all brings deep strategic experience in standardization in addition to half identification and labeling. Collectively, we are going to elevate the alternate of digital manufacturing knowledge and traceability in industrial 3D printing to a brand new stage,” mentioned Dr.-Ing. Tim Wischeropp, CEO & Co-Founding father of amsight GmbH.
NAVAIR Helps Navy & Marine Corps with 3D Printed F-15 Alternative Half
To extend readiness in forward-deployed places, the NAVAIR Additive Manufacturing crew helps US Marine Corps and Navy maintainers with engineering assist, AM coaching, and technical knowledge. A latest instance is a cross-service collaboration wherein maintainers with Marine Plane Logistics Squadron 36 (MALS-36) and 18th Upkeep Group (18 MXG) used 3D printing to repair a right-hand cockpit cooling duct in a USAF F-15 Eagle fighter plane. Throughout a post-flight inspection at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, a crack was seen within the half, and maintainers initially determined to restore it with conventional processes, which might have saved the F-15 grounded for 3-4 months. However, after a session with a depot liaison engineer, they determined to make use of 3D printing to create a alternative as a substitute. 18 MXG maintainers printed two prototypes, however bumped into technical difficulties earlier than fabricating the ultimate part. As a result of MALS-36 had the identical printer, they reached out for assist, and two prototypes had been printed, delivered, and fit-checked in lower than 12 hours—placing the F-15 again within the air months forward of schedule. Moreover, after analyzing the Air Power’s technical knowledge bundle, the Marines got here up with a greater design for the half that lowered print time by two hours.
“Right here was a state of affairs the place a multi-million greenback plane was going to be sidelined for months because of the lack of a component within the provide system. The Air Power’s proactive, forward-leaning maintainers sought and obtained approval to restore the half utilizing their on-site AM functionality. 18 MXG was backstopped by MALS-36’s AM functionality and so they even bought a greater and faster AM design out of the collaboration,” mentioned Theodore Gronda, NAVAIR Additive Manufacturing Program Supervisor. “This was actually a glowing instance of a ‘One Workforce, One Struggle’ effort.”
3D Printing Ice Christmas Bushes with Evaporative Cooling in Vacuum
Determine 1: {Photograph} of a Christmas tree made fully from 3D printed ice. The construction is fabricated utilizing a 16 µm liquid jet mounted on a business 3D printer inside a vacuum chamber. The tree has a peak of roughly 8 cm and a base diameter of about 6 cm, with branches and positive options faithfully reproduced from the digital mannequin with none supporting materials or exterior cooling. The slight translucency and easy surfaces display the optical high quality of the ice and the soundness of the evaporative-cooling printing course of.
A trio of researchers from the Institute of Physics (IOP) on the College of Amsterdam used evaporative cooling to 3D print freeform ice constructions inside a vacuum chamber. Analysis into ice 3D printing remains to be pretty restricted, but when correctly harnessed, it may very well be very helpful for intricate tissue engineering scaffolds, microfluidic gadgets, casting templates, and even development. Different approaches have used cryogenic refrigeration or substrate cooling to stabilize strong water, however that is costly, and particular infrastructure and gear is required. IOP researchers Menno Demmenie, Stefan Kooij, and Daniel Bonn went a distinct route, housing a ROOK MK1 business 3D printer inside a clear acrylic vacuum chamber. They changed the thermoplastic extruder with a customized nozzle mount, pushed by a Excessive-Efficiency Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) pump to eject a jet of water that breaks into droplets which freeze, by way of evaporative cooling, onto the substrate to kind a construction; solely a tiny little bit of water must evaporate to induce freezing. What’s very fascinating is that the low ambient pressures on the moon and Mars are throughout the mandatory vary for the freezing mechanism. So in principle, water-based or particle-laden jets might straight print constructions in these punishing environments with out having to make use of extra cooling programs. Plus, ice blended with regolith or sand might make a robust composite materials for constructing radiation shielding or protecting constructions off-planet.
“A micrometer-sized water jet is used to 3D print inside a vacuum chamber. The lowered ambient stress results in fast evaporation of the extruded water, extracting latent warmth, and shortly cooling the water nicely under 0 °C. As soon as deposited, the water freezes virtually instantaneously into secure ice constructions. We display high-fidelity printing of complicated geometries (Christmas bushes, cones, vertical pillars, and free-standing zigzag constructions) with out cryogenic infrastructure, supporting supplies, or exterior refrigeration. This strategy straight visualizes elementary thermodynamic ideas—latent warmth, evaporative cooling, and pressure-dependent section transitions—whereas providing a comparatively easy and scalable platform for ice-templated microfluidics and tissue engineering, and even extraterrestrial 3D printing,” the crew defined within the summary of their paper.
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