Donald Trump 3Dprinting and business.

Freshmade 3D, a Youngstown-based 3D printing service bureau about an hour outside of Cleveland that specializes in rare automotive parts , they stepped away from their usual work to make something very different – a life-sized, 3D printed Donald Trump bobblehead. This feat has brought them loads of business thanks to the publicity the image has given them. Freshmade 3D has already seen an increase in business thanks to the publicity the project has gotten them. More requests for automotive parts than usual are beginning to come through the site, according to Wetzel, and the publicity and ensuing benefits for the company are likely to increase a lot more in the near future – not only because of this week, but because the company and their partners will also be printing a life-sized bobblehead of Hillary Clinton for the first presidential debate, which will take place in September in Dayton, Ohio. Read more

Bio pen: a hand held 3D printing pen for surgery.

BioPen is a handheld 3D printer which allows surgeons to precisely design and deliver customized bone and other implant materials (live stem cells and growth factors) at the time of surgery to regenerate bone, cartilage, muscle, or nerve tissue. The University of Wollongong (UOW) in Australia developed a handheld device is designed to let surgeons “draw” live cells and growth factors directly onto the site of an injury to help accelerate the regeneration of functional bone and cartilage. The BioPen extrudes cell material inside a biopolymer Instead of plastic filament,such as alginate, which is in turn encased in an outer layer of gel material. Both the outer and inner layers are combined in the pen head as it is extruded and the surgeon “draws” to fill in a section of damaged bone. When the surgeon draws with the BioPen, the two layers of gel are combined in the pen head as they are are extruded onto the bone surface to fill in the damaged bone section. Then, an ultraviolet light source solidifies the materials, providing protection for the embedded cells as they are built up layer-by-layer to construct a 3D scaffold in the wound site. Once the cells are drawn onto the surgery site, they will multiply, become differentiated into nerve cells, muscle cells, or bone cells, and eventually develop from individual cells into a thriving community of cells in the form of functioning tissue. Contributed by coolweirdo.com

3D Life Makes High-Quality 3D Printed Medical Models So Doctors Can Save Lives.

3D Life is certainly aptly named. This Greek startup isn’t promoting a fun new lifestyle or arts and crafts in the 3D printing industry—they are involved in the serious business of helping to save lives. Recognizing the value that 3D printing has in the medical arena, the team at 3D Life is committed to making 3D printed models for medical professionals to use, with numerous benefits for all involved. Currently, the Athens-headquartered company makes high-quality, detailed models of the anatomy like teeth, hands, and bones, as well as organs like the heart, liver, brain, and more. 3D Life is encouraging the more comprehensive study of anatomy, mainly in terms of organs. They believe that even better knowledge of organs allows for better preparation for surgeries that are often solving complex physical issues—and the team uses congenital heart disease as a perfect example. “As a result, the doctors can better plan reparative operations based on conventional medical imaging which is suboptimal,” Bilalis told 3DPrint.com. “The human mind can only partially understand trying to create mental images of three dimensional structures so we believe that having this ability will make operations shorter and more efficient, and provide better results.” At 3D Life they believe, and undoubtedly are correct, that the exercise of holding and manipulating a 3D model leads to a better understanding of the client’s condition, as well as allowing for practicing for surgeries that are intricate and may not even have been performed before. This leads to numerous positives, from safety to better client outcomes, along with providing training for students. While there may be other companies around the world making 3D models, 3D Life is unique as the first company to endeavor in such a field in Greece. Offering advanced 3D printing, they are able to make models in a variety of materials and, even better, multiple colors. They are able to offer excellent services to all the professionals who come to them. 3D Life uses Materialise Mimics software, made specifically for medical image processions. This enables the conversion of MRIs or CTs into 3D models, which can then be used in numerous ways. These devices avail, medical professionals and surgeons to find themselves with a much better way to educate patients and their families about medical conditions, handle diagnoses and treatments, and explain procedures. Surgeons can then spend a lot of time themselves with those medical models, considering and practicing for upcoming operations—as well as using the models in the operating room to navigate through surgeries, saving time and allowing for better outcomes with less surprises. In some cases around the world, 3D libraries are being made as these models begin to pile up, and can be of use to other medical personnel. Contributed by 3D Print

3D PRINTED AQUARIUM.

Haruka Misawa, a Japanese artist, designer and the founder of Misawa Design Institute, has used modern 3D printing technology to craft some truly stunning minimalist aquariums and water features. Her series of installations is called Waterscape, and she has mixed real water plants and fish to create a beautiful and calming collection of aquariums that is understated and yet completely memorable. It is said that just looking at an aquarium can help reduce stress levels and lower blood pressure, and will produce a calming effect. Just looking at some of the pictures of Misawa’s Waterscape designs will make you feel like the stresses that you deal with on a daily basis are just melting away. When she was designing her Waterscapes, Misawa created a series of 3D printed objects that were inspired by the shapes and objects that would be found in nature. Things like coral, water plants and stone formations inspired the minimalist, sculptural versions that she used in each aquarium. The objects were 3D printed and placed inside of simple, stark square-shaped tanks that provided the living fish with unique and varied structures to swim around and inside of. Misawa created several structures that would trap air inside of them, so plants could be growing underwater among the fish and other aqua life. Read more @3dprint.com

University of Illinois Veterinarians Use 3D Printing to Help With Eagle’s Surgery.

3D printing technology is helping veterinarians prep for surgical procedures on one of the most prized bird species in the world. Recently, students from the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine had come across a wild eagle with its left humerus out of alignment, due to improper healing after it was shattered by a gunshot wound months earlier. In order to help the bird take flight again, an intensive surgery was required. To do this, the veterinarian students turned to those in the College of Engineering, who assisted by creating two 3D printed life-sized models of the eagle’s humerus, one that was healthy and another that replicated the actual injured bone. Before the the 3D printed models were used by Dr. R. Avery Bennett, an acclaimed avian surgeon, to help perform the procedure, a massive dataset was procured from the spiral CT scan taken by veterinary radiologist Dr. Stephen Joslyn. Consulting from Australia, Dr. Joslyn added a so-called ‘threshold’ into the data, which enabled the computer to separate ‘bone’ and ‘not-bone’ from the subtle and delicate CT scan information. Since the injured bone was fragmented, and thus unable to be printed in a single piece, medical illustrator Janet Sinn-Hanlon utilized software to manually thicken and link the bone areas together. After communications went back-and-forth between experts across the world, which were facilitated by Wildlife Medical Clinic intern and University of Illinois student Dr. Nichole Rosenhagen, it seemed that the life-sized models were set to be 3D printed in the university’s Rapid Prototyping Lab. But, the day before the surgery was planned, it turned out that the 3D printing queue was full. Thanks to Ralf Möller, the lab supervisor and director of technical services in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, the models were 3D printed overnight in about six hours, and were good to go by the time the lab opened up the next morning. Möller enlisted the help of undergraduate student and lab technician Nick Ragano, who visited the lab overnight to ensure that 3D models would be prepared for use, and also pressure washed the starch-based support material used to print the plastic models. That morning, the 3D printed bones were collected by Dr. Rosenhagen, and the injured eagle received successful orthopedic surgery in a matter of three hours culled from 3dprint.com

Building 3D printed tanks by hand ..

Michael Sng is a one-man tank factory. The Singapore-based designer hand-built the walking mecha toy Codename: Colossus from 435 3D-printed parts. A former graphic designer, Sng previously sold Stikfas, a stick-figure toy he co-created, to Hasbro. Colossus started out as a way to learn new skills. "I didn't know a lot of electronics," Sng, 38, says. "I learned from scratch."He designed the toy as a 3D CAD file, printing each part on a small UP Plus 2 printer. "It's 60cm tall, but none of the parts is larger than 12cm long," he explains. "They're put together with hundreds of screws." Sng also hand-wired the working legs, guns and lights, and hand-painted each part, including the interior and tiny characters. (The tank's shell conceals a cannon that fires table tennis balls.) The process took 18 months and cost Sng more than $3,000 (£2,070). Colossus was part passion project, part audition: under the Machination Studios moniker, Sng's conceived a fictional universe for the toys, set after the first world war "where air power never happened, and tanks just got bigger and bigger." read more @wired.co.uk

JOHNSON & JOHNSON ANNOUNCES COLLABORATION WITH HP TO CREATE PERSONALIZED 3D PRINTED HEALTHCARE SOLUTIONS.

3D printing technology offers a wide range of personalization and customization options that are impossible with traditionally manufactured products. We’re already seeing some of the first custom 3D printed consumer products making their way to market, including shoes, sports equipment, eyeglasses and even earbuds. All of these products can be made for a specific user’s body, optimizing the technology to work for an individual, not an average user as with most mass produced products. A more exciting, and potentially world-changing application of customized 3D printed products is the ability to manufacture life-saving medical devices and assistive technology to suit an individual user’s needs. As one of the largest pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers in the world, the products that Johnson & Johnson develops will be made available in more than 175 different countries all over the globe. So when they decide to develop ways to integrate 3D printing technology into their business, it isn’t just their own company that will be changed, but as their competitors try to keep up with them, their entire industry will change. This week Johnson & Johnson is announcing a broad and wide-reaching collaboration with a 3D printing subsidiary of HP Inc. The goal of the partnership between Johnson & Johnson and HP is to find ways to implement new 3D printing technology that will help them develop better healthcare outcomes for patients, consumers and health care providers while reducing costs. The two companies plan to combine their scientific, clinical, material science and technological know-how to develop a series of consumer products, medical solutions and medical devices that can be manufactured fast. 3D printing will allow them to develop products that have been customized for individual patients and consumers based on their specific needs. “Advances in 3D printing technology have the potential to break historical paradigms of health care delivery in ways that are not feasible in traditional manufacturing processes. Together with Johnson & Johnson we have the potential to create opportunities and innovations in health care to improve patients’ lives that neither company could develop alone,” explained Stephen Nigro, president of HP’s 3D printing business. While the collaboration was just announced yesterday, the partnership has actually already begun, and teams of experts brought together from both companies are working together on new medical products and solutions. In the early stages of the partnership they will focus on the personalization of instrumentation and software used to operate patient-specific medical devices. However they expect that their collaboration will lead to 3D printing applications that will innovate solutions and devices in orthopedics and eye health, not to mention new, cutting edge consumer products. culled from 3Dprint.com

The Polysher will shine your 3D-printed objects.

Polymaker wants to make 3D printing a tempting hobby for everyone with its new PolySmooth filament and Polysher machine, which polishes creations so they look shiny and cohesive. The company launched the items on Kickstarter this past week and has already surpassed its $100,000 goal. The filament can go in any extrusion-based 3D printer, but the Polysher will only work on items that have been made with PolySmooth. The polisher works by simply spraying the piece with an alcohol aerosol solution. Polymaker hopes nicer looking 3D objects will bring 3D printing into mainstream culture. No one currently mixes up mass-produced plastic pieces with printed ones because of their feel and obvious filament layers. Solely going off Polymaker's Kickstarter images, the new filament and Polysher really does make 3D printer creations look more legit. There are no obvious layers, and they come off as fully finished products. I'm not sure if the Polysher will finally bring 3D printing into the mainstream, but in either case, I'm always pro-shiny things. culled from polymaker.

3D -GROWN SKIN SWEATS AND SPROUTS HAIR.

The research was led by the RIKEN Centre for Developmental Biology in collaboration with Tokyo University of Science, been published in Science Advance. A Japanese lab has grown a 3D layer of skin that can sweat and sprout hairs. The skin has sweat glands, follicles, sebaceous glands and three layers of skin cells. The researchers behind the study said the skin was able to "connect to other organ systems such as nerves and muscle fibres" and could eventually be used to treat burns patients or those requiring "new skin". The team used cells from the gums of mice to create stem cells, which were then then developed into an "embryoid body". The researchers described this as "a three-dimensional clump of cells that partially resembles the developing embryo in an actual body". The cells were then implanted into bald mice, where they connected with nerve and muscle tissues and "functioned normally", according to the team. Up until now, artificial skin development has been hampered by the fact that the skin lacked the important organs, such as hair follicles and exocrine glands, which allow the skin to play its important role in regulation. This new technique has successfully grown skin that replicates the function of normal tissue, bringing us closer to the dream of being able to recreate actual organs in the lab for transplantation, and also believe that tissue grown through this method could be used as an alternative to animal testing of chemicals. Source;wired.co.uk