New Thinking Informs Soft-Material 3D Printing

As 3D printing evolves, researchers have gone beyond mere fabrication processes to developing techniques for optimizing how particular materials can be printed. To that end, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering have developed a new approach to optimizing the 3D printing of soft materials. This approach combines expert judgment with an algorithm designed to search parameter combinations relevant for 3D printing, they said. Images of 3D prints made using a new method developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon. Their approach combines expertise with an algorithm and applies that to a 3D-printing process to optimize the printing of soft materials. (Image source: Sara Abdollahi, Alexander Davis, John H. Miller, Adam W. Feinberg, Carnegie Mellon) Calling their method Expert-Guided Optimization (EGO), the technique—designed by a cross-disciplinary team of biomedical, materials, and social scientists—enables optimal printing for high-quality soft materials with a completely new approach, said Sara Abdollahi, a Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon. “We developed the EGO strategy after realizing the lack of systematization in 3D printing, especially involving new materials and processes on which little prior information is known,” she told Design News. “We were seeking an approach that would be easy to implement&Ac...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Tags: Design News Source Type: news