Stories
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Articles: Green Design & Manufacturing
This column presents technologies that have applications in commercial areas, possibly creating the products of tomorrow. To learn more about each technology, see the contact information provided for that innovation.
Briefs: Software
Using 3D printers, researchers have created a metamaterial from cubic building blocks that responds to compression forces by a rotation. Usually, this can only be...
Briefs: Energy
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has developed a solid-state ultracapacitor with a unique combination of high capacitance and battery-like discharge characteristics. The high capacitance in a...
Blog: Manufacturing & Prototyping
ORNL staff scientist Adam Rondinone explains how his team made the tiny toy.
Question of the Week: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Have You Used Metal Additive Manufacturing?
Today's INSIDER featured a story about the growing role of metal additive manufacturing in industries like aerospace, automotive, and healthcare.
Articles: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Metal additive manufacturing is being embraced as a choice for parts production across many fields — including aerospace, automotive, healthcare, and other industries —...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A new method for digital design and printing of stretchable, flexible electronics, called Hybrid 3D printing, was developed to integrate soft, conductive inks with a material substrate to...
Sound-Off: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A Tech Briefs reader asks our expert to compare three 3D-printing techniques.
Blog: Software
Will Ethics Training be Essential for Tomorrow's Design Engineers?
In our second INSIDER story, Patti Kreh demonstrated that colleges and universities will need to take an "interdisciplinary" approach to train the design engineers of the future.
"What we're seeing is the need for the blending of disciplines – a combination of traditional...
Question of the Week: Software
Will 'read-ahead' algorithms speed up 3D printing?
Our featured INSIDER story today showcased algorithms that allow 3D printers to anticipate motion and "read ahead" of its programming. The Michigan State University readers believe that the faster, more precise builds will allow 3D printers to create products twice as fast.
Blog: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Thinking Ahead with 3D Printing: Five Technologies to Watch
A 3D printer's moving parts can lead to vibrations and a flawed final product. Engineers at the University of Michigan anticipated the problem — and now, thanks to their algorithms, machines can do the same.
INSIDER: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Kapton, a material used in electronics and aerospace applications, has only been available in sheet form. Researchers from Virginia Tech have found a way to 3D-print a polymer with Kapton's structural...
Sound-Off: Manufacturing & Prototyping
In the additive manufacturing process, leftover powder is often recycled for the next job. Do the raw materials degrade with time and exposure?
Sound-Off: Manufacturing & Prototyping
By reducing size and weight, 3D-printed parts provide an opportunity to improve thermal control systems. So which major industries are leading the way and using additive manufacturing...
News: Manufacturing & Prototyping
The Next 3D-Printed Part: A Hack?
See what’s new on Tech Briefs, including a three-layer way of securing the growing number of 3D-printed parts being placed in today’s vehicles and airplanes.
INSIDER: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A 3D printer is essentially a small embedded computer — and can be exploited like one.
Researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology and Rutgers University have developed...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
The first entirely 3D-printed organ-on-a-chip with integrated sensing has been built by a fully automated digital manufacturing procedure. The 3D-printed heart-on-a-chip can be quickly...
Briefs: Robotics, Automation & Control
A team of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a way to use 3D printers to create objects capable of dramatic expansion. The technology could someday be used in...
News: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A team from Northwestern University created bioprosthetic ovaries that ultimately led to the restoration of hormone production and fertility in mice.
Application Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Polymer-bonded magnets are valuable for many sensor applications that require the production of unique and reproducible field profiles, not necessarily fields with the highest strength.
INSIDER: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Traditional robots often feature isolated mechanical joints. These discrete components limit a rover’s ability to traverse sand, stone, and other challenging environments.
A team at the...
INSIDER: Manufacturing & Prototyping
In 1983, Chuck Hull worked for a small California-based company that used ultraviolet light to turn liquid polymers into hardened, or cured, coatings. Inside the firm’s lab on his nights and weekends,...
INSIDER: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Frequently used as a design validation and prototyping tool in its early days, the 3D printer now supports a much wider range of applications, from shape-conforming electronics to the creation of printed...
INSIDER: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Researchers Design Lightweight, 'Stronger-Than-Steel' Material
A team of engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has successfully designed a new 3D material with five percent the density of steel and ten times the strength. By compressing and fusing flakes of graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon, the sponge-link configuration...
Articles: Manufacturing & Prototyping
3D printing has progressed over the past decade to include multimaterial fabrication, enabling production of powerful, functional objects. While many advances have been made, it still has been difficult for...
INSIDER: Electronics & Computers
Metamaterial Structures Shrink When Heated
While most solid materials expand with heat, a new 3D-printed structure built by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers is designed to shrink. The metamaterial may enable heat-resistant circuit boards.
INSIDER: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Engineers are using light to print three-dimensional structures that “remember” their original shapes. The process of 3D printing shape-memory materials can also be thought...
INSIDER: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A small, squishy vehicle equipped with soft wheels was developed at Rutgers University to roll over rough terrain and run underwater. The vehicle features a soft motor that...
Articles: Photonics/Optics
High-definition digital projectors based on Texas Instruments’ DLP® technology are widely known for being used in more than 90% of the world’s digital movie theaters. However, DLP chips...
Top Stories
Blog: Lighting
A Stretchable OLED that Can Maintain Most of Its Luminescence
News: Energy
INSIDER: Energy
Advancing All-Solid-State Batteries
Blog: Energy
My Opinion: We Need More Power Soon — Is Nuclear the Answer?
Blog: Robotics, Automation & Control
Aerial Microrobots That Can Match a Bumblebee's Speed
Blog: Communications
Microscopic Swimming Machines that Can Sense, Respond to Surroundings
Webcasts
Upcoming Webinars: Automotive
Advantages of Smart Power Distribution Unit Design for Automotive...
Upcoming Webinars: Unmanned Systems
Quiet, Please: NVH Improvement Opportunities in the Early Design...
Upcoming Webinars: Sensors/Data Acquisition
From Spreadsheets to Insights: Fast Data Analysis Without Complex...
Upcoming Webinars: Defense
Cooling a New Generation of Aerospace and Defense Embedded...
Upcoming Webinars: Test & Measurement
Beyond AI-Copy-Paste Engineering: Advanced AI-Integration Success...
Upcoming Webinars: Energy
