December 05 2014

From the website: OK, I think that headline includes all the topics I write about plus my faves: biodegradable and composite materials, plus robotic and 3D printing assembly technologies. What more could I want for an almost-Christmas blog? The best part is, it's all true: An MIT research team has invented what they see as a solution to the need for biodegradable 3D-printable materials made from something besides petroleum-based sources. The team, members of MIT's Mediated Matter Group, includes graduate students Laia Mogas-Soldevila and Jorge Duro-Royo, as well as Neri Oxman, associate professor of media arts and sciences. They developed a water-based robotic fabrication method as both an alternative design approach and an enabling technology for additive manufacturing (AM), using biodegradable hydrogel composites. The team's research "focuses on the combination of expanding the dimensions of the fabrication envelope, developing structural materials for additive deposition, incorporating material-property gradients, and manufacturing architectural-scale biodegradable systems," they write in the abstract to an article describing their work in the Journal of 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing.