Top TechTop Tech #80: Print with wood, grip with a glove, platinum thruster
Important innovations in science and technology, every day
By Paul Worthington
Friday’s Top Tech:
• Renewable material for 3D printing
• Get a grip with robotic glove
• Hot firing 3D-printed platinum thruster chamber
Renewable material for 3D printing
3D printing plastic is old hat. Additive manufacturing with metal is on its way. And now comes… wood?
Okay, cellulose anyhow. A bioprinter made at Chalmers University of Technology is working with the natural material.
The result: “cellulose and other raw material based on wood will be able to compete with fossil-based plastics and metals in the on-going additive manufacturing revolution. Cellulose is an unlimited renewable commodity that is completely biodegradable, and manufacture using raw material from wood, in essence, means to bind carbon dioxide that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere.”
Because cellulose doesn’t melt, it’s a complicated process of making a gel to feed into the printer, and then freezing the object that emerges.
Here is the full announcement.
Get a grip with robotic glove
Here’s help for those who lack or are losing their ability to grasp objects: a lightweight robotic glove.
The assistive technology made by engineers at Harvard, “aligns more flexibly with a patient’s joints, plays nice with soft tissue like human skin, and, since it is much lighter, could eventually be taken home instead of being limited to use in a clinic,” Technology Review reports.
More than 6 million people in the United States have hand mobility issues, whether from a degenerative condition, stroke, or old age.
Hot firing 3D-printed platinum thruster chamber
Another example of how additive manufacturing can help get us into space:
The world’s first spacecraft thruster with a platinum combustion chamber and nozzle made by 3D printing passed its “baptism of fire” with a series of firings lasting more than an hour, and 618 ignitions.
A maximum temperature of 1253°C was attained, Phys Org reports.
The prototype thruster was produced and tested at the Airbus Defense & Space facility in Germany.
There’s more information here.
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