Super Expandable Foam for 3D Printing Larger Objects

Scientists from UC San Diego have developed an expandable foam that can "supersize" 3D-printed objects. They developed a foaming prepolymer resin for lithographic additive manufacturing, which can be expanded after printing to produce parts up to 40 times larger than their original volume. This allows for the fabrication of structures significantly larger than the build volume of the 3D printer that produced them. Complex geometries comprised of porous foams have applications in aerospace, energy, and biomedicine. The work was published in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Applied Nano Materials .