Selective laser sintering of composite biobased powder
First printings with Selective Laser Sintering of fully composite biobased powders from vegetal waxes and lignocellulosic powders ! A challenging work that was made possible thanks to a collaboration with the University of Auckland’s Creative Design and Additive Manufacturing Lab.
Michael French and Elliot Soffe students at the university of Auckland have demonstrated during their Part 4 project that fully biobased composite powder developped in the framework of the SmartPop Project can be printed in tradtional Selective Laser Sintering machine.
3D Scanning in research, an example of a project between SCION and CAWTHRON institutes
3D scanning is used to produce accurate 3D models of objects. Some hand-held scanners can pick up extremely fine detail and surface texture, with dimensional accuracy of 0.1mm. Some scanners can record colour too. 3D scanning can be used for a range of applications. It can be used to reverse engineer a part, or it can also be used for reproduction; for example if a designer needs to design something to fit with an existing part, the existing part could be scanned and used in the CAD design.
Priyal Jeram, summer student in the SMARTPOP Project
Pryial Jeram, student of the University of Auckland, spent 3 month at SCION in the framework of SCION’s Student summer programme, working with us on the development of composite biobased material from lignocellulosic powder for additive manufacturing.
Thank you Priyal to your great contribution to the SMARTPOP Project !
And we wish you all the best in all you will do! Could be a carrer in science…
A new step toward 4D printing with grafted fluoresent lignocellulosic powders
Our new article about bringing new functionalites to biobased materials by combining lignocellulosic powders and 3 D printing is now avaialble in open access in Industrial Crops and Products Journal.
In this article, we demonstrated that fluorescently-grafted flax shives incorporated into a filament are suitable for 3D printing. The printed materials reveals sensitivity to pH. This work paves the way to the use of functionalized lignocellulosic biomasses as reinforcements into composites and design 4D materials with potential applications as sensors depending on the fluorophore used.
Entering the 4th dimension using 3D printing
3D printing or additive manufacturing using smart materials has led to the emergence of something called 4D printing. Smart materials are known to react to certain external stimuli such as heat, humidity, pH or changes in electric and magnetic field. Once the object has been printed, it can store (or ‘remember’) its permanent shape; be deformed to another shape and then come back to its initial form by applying the stimulus.