Lifeboat Foundation

As 3-D printing gains steam and moves beyond plastics, it could be applied to many other industries, revolutionising medicine on the way.

An Ohio based pharmaceutical company Aprecia has now developed a 3-D printing technology which creates a more porous pill structure — allowing higher dose pills to dissolve quicker and making them easier to swallow for some patients. The same technology also allows precise doses to be layered in the same structure. A UCL team have also developed a technique for printing different shapes, which affects drug release.

“For the last 50 years, we have manufactured tablets in factories and shipped them to hospitals, for the first time, this process means we can produce tablets much closer to the patient.”

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Need an obscure medicinal compound found only in a jungle plant? Just print it.

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Researchers are working on a 3D printing pen that will allow surgeons draw regenerative cells onto injured body parts — the Biopen.

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Learn about the advancements of a robot that will save lives. The plan? It’s going to produce 3D printed organs and even a fully functional human heart.

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UC Berkeley engineers, in collaboration with colleagues at Taiwan’s National Chiao Tung University, have developed a 3D printing process for creating basic electronic components, such as resistors, inductors, capacitors, and integrated wireless electrical sensing systems.

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Keith Murphy discusses the challenge in going from 3D printing tissue to entire organs.

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Fast-growing Dubai, where something new is always being added to the skyline, may have found a way to make construction move even faster.

In a bid to become a global hub of innovation, Dubai announced plans to build an office that will be “the most advanced 3-D printed structure ever built at this scale” and the first to be put into actual use.

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Left: the rigid top fractures on landing, while the top made of nine layers going from rigid to flexible remains intact (credit: Jacobs School of Engineering/UC San Diego, Harvard University)

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This revolutionary new technology is changing the world for kids born without limbs.

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