Tag: 3D Printing

Some bicycle wheels are truly otherworldly. Now a Stuttgart-based startup is focusing on personalised saddles, taking their cue from cyclists’ behinds. Using an A4 form at home cyclists record the distance between their two seat bones, and photograph it on their smartphones. Together with information on bicycle model, road performance and sitting posture, this data is fed into an...

Lights on fishing nets reduce unwanted bycatch. But, once discarded, fishing nets endanger sea life. Enter a British startup, which aims to reuse old nets and reduce marine pollution. With the help of small investors, the English founder has developed a patented machine in a shipping container, which can shred and clean up to 20kg of old nylon nets...

Some tiny houses descend from wind turbines. Now, a German-Ukrainian team has built its own tiny trailer using recycled plastic and 3D-printing techniques. With granules from 7,500 recycled plastic bottles, reinforced by stabilising fibreglass, the prototype was printed in one piece. Ensuring the 3m x 1.85m mobile home weighed only 400kg. The kitchen is concealed towards the rear, under...

Sawdust can replace polystyrene. Now a team led by an American design and engineering student has discovered another way to manufacture sustainable packaging material. The team mixed coffee grounds, brown rice flour, Reishi mushroom spores, xanthan gum and water to form a paste, which was 3D printed into different objects. These were then kept in a closed container for ten...

A Toronto-based team is looking at environmentally-friendly ways to provide clean water. In the same city, a research team is searching for high-strength lightweight materials that could replace common metals. With the help of an algorithm developed in South Korea the team successfully optimised a carbon material on the nanoscale. The system arranged the carbon building blocks in new...

Warmth stored in building walls can be converted into energy, while flexible solar modules keep interiors cool. Yet a research team from Germany is looking to regulate room temperatures without using electricity at all. Its shade-giving system for windows is modelled on movements found in woody fruits. Taking its cue from pine cone scales, the team developed a sheet...

Thanks to 3D printing, walls could soon be in full bloom. Meanwhile a Toronto-based startup is thinking in smaller dimensions - at least in terms of its new soil alternative. It starts life as a small, 3D-printed sphere, is derived from corn and made for use in hydroponics. The locally produced substrate provides seedlings with nutrient-rich water for at...

Cuts help tape stick better and sustainable glue is even stronger underwater. Now, an Austrian-based research team is looking to skip the adhesive stage with two patent-pending techniques for joining wood and other materials. For more complex objects, a polymer composite is applied directly onto wood using 3D-printing. The material flows into the wood pores, the wood fibres become...