A single liquid resin bath can now print a functioning knee joint with hard bone and soft ligaments in a single pass.
3D printing multiple materials usually requires complex machines with multiple nozzles that often clog or fail. This new process uses wavelength-selective light to activate different chemical properties in a single liquid mixture. By changing the color of the light, the printer can tell the resin to become either rigid or flexible at specific points. This allows for the creation of bio-inspired objects that mimic the complexity of living tissue. Previous methods required printing parts separately and gluing them together, which created weak points. This breakthrough means we can manufacture integrated, high-performance parts that are as durable as the biological systems they imitate.
Hybrid Epoxy-Acrylate Resins for Wavelength-Selective Multimaterial 3D Printing
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Abstract Structures in nature have evolved to combine hard and soft materials in precise 3D arrangements, which imbues bulk properties and functionality that remain elusive to mimic synthetically. However, the potential for biomimetic analogs to seamlessly interface hard materials with soft surfaces for applications ranging from soft robotics and sealants to medical devices (e.g., prosthetics and wearable health monitors) has driven the demand for innovative chemistries and manufacturing approac