Top TechTop Tech #17: Continuous liquid ‘printing,’ sound waves and sensors, and an electric plane
Promising products and interesting innovations
Today’s Top Tech:
• Significantly speedier 3D printing
• Sound waves may boost phone sensors, solar cells
• NASA testing electric plane
Significantly speedier 3D printing
Continuous liquid interface production will “allow parts to be produced in minutes instead of hours,” its developers claim.
Carbon3d says additive manufacturing processes such as 3D printing “use time-consuming, stepwise layer-by-layer approaches to object fabrication. 3D printing has struggled to deliver on its promise to transform manufacturing. Prints take forever, parts are mechanically weak, and material choices are far too limited. That’s because current 3D printing technology is really just 2D printing, over and over again.”
Instead, they use “continuous generation of monolithic polymeric parts up to tens of centimeters in size with feature resolution below 100 micrometers.” The continuous liquid interface production “is a breakthrough technology that grows parts instead of printing them layer by layer. CLIP allows businesses to produce commercial quality parts at game-changing speeds — 25 to 100 times faster — creating a clear path to 3D manufacturing.”
There’s more information here.
Sound waves may boost phone sensors, solar cells
Sound waves that controllably change the electronic properties of 2D materials may open the door to a new era of highly efficient solar cells and smart windows, Australia’s RMIT University reports.
RMIT researchers used surface acoustic waves (dubbed “nano-earthquakes”) to cause changes in a material electronic properties.
“Other possible fields of applications could include consumer imaging sensors suitable for low-light photography, for example in mobile phone cameras, which currently suffer from poor low-light performance, or in sensors for fluorescence imaging,” the researchers add.
NASA testing electrically propelled plane
NASA reports it’s developing a new plane that “may herald a future in which many aircraft are powered by electric motors.”
The Leading Edge Asynchronous Propeller Technology (LEAPTech) project “will test the premise that tighter propulsion-airframe integration, made possible with electric power, will deliver improved efficiency and safety, as well as environmental and economic benefits,” the agency says.
NASA researchers will test of a 31-foot-span, carbon composite wing section with 18 electric motors powered by lithium iron phosphate batteries. “Within a few years the NASA hopes to fly a piloted X-plane, replacing the wings and engines of a Tecnam P2006T with an improved version of the LEAPTech wing.” (Hat tip to Engadget)
