Orbex has publicly unveiled its Prime rocket for the first time. Designed to deliver small satellites into Earth's orbit, the rocket is made from a specially-formulated lightweight carbon fibre and aluminium composite and includes the world's largest 3-D printed rocket engine.

Naval Group and Centrale Nantes have printed the first demonstrator of hollow propeller blades by metal additive manufacturing as part of the European H2020 project, RAMSSES1. Funded by the European Commission, this collaborative program aims to reduce the environmental impact of ships.

Carbon has showed the first digitally manufactured polymer parts in production for Ford Motor Company. Carbon and Ford have expanded their collaboration to design and produce several new digitally manufactured, end-use parts.

Instead of throwing away your broken boots or cracked toys, why not let them fix themselves? Researchers have developed 3D-printed rubber materials that can do just that.

The IDTechEx Show! on April 10-11 in Berlin brings together eight key disruptive technologies and their customers at one venue.

Using stimuli-responsive materials and geometric principles, researchers have designed structures that have "embodied logic." Through their physical and chemical makeup alone, they are able to determine which of multiple possible responses to make in response to their environment.

3D Printing of composites is becoming an increasingly explored commercial opportunity. Approaching this from two directions: the 3D Printing industry are looking for functional enhancements to assist industrial uptake and meanwhile the traditional composites industry is looking at ways to allow more design freedom, accelerate time to market, and reduce the costs for low-production volume.

It looks like something you might find aboard the Starship Enterprise. A projector beams a three-dimensional video into a container of photosensitive resin. The video plays while the container rotates for a few minutes — then the fluid drains, leaving behind a complete, fully formed 3D object.

3D printing is rapidly reaching industrial commercialisation in numerous sectors; IDTechEx forecast that the total market will be worth $22bn by 2028. One of the key features is the design freedom this technology enables where, alongside other functional advantages, a major opportunity is in lightweighting.

Researchers have created 3D-printed flexible mesh structures that can be controlled with applied magnetic fields while floating on water. The structures can grab small objects and carry water droplets, giving them the potential to be useful as soft robots that mimic creatures living on water surfaces or that can serve as tissue scaffolds for cell cultures.

A team of researchers has been taking a novel approach to the development of engineering components produced using additive manufacturing.

IDTechEx is highly respected worldwide for its reports, relational databases, events and consultancy on the technology and markets for its chosen subjects. These include life sciences, energy storage, energy harvesting, electric vehicles, wearable technology and advanced materials. The emphasis is on using facts-based analysis to see the future and guide business decisions of our customers. They include the world's largest chemical, healthcare…

The piezoelectric materials that inhabit everything from our cell phones to musical greeting cards may be getting an upgrade. Researchers have developed methods to 3D print piezoelectric materials that can be custom-designed to convert movement, impact and stress from any directions to electrical energy.

Traditional robotic systems with rigid parts often pose a threat to human operators. Recently flourishing soft actuators and robots, in contrast, offer excellent adaptivity to surroundings and safe, coexisting interaction with humans. However, their competence in load-bearing tasks is undermined by the inherent low-stiffness nature of constituent materials like silicone rubbers.

With the help of sponges inserted in the bloodstream to absorb excess drugs, doctors are hoping to prevent the dangerous side effects of toxic chemotherapy agents or even deliver higher doses to knock back tumors, like liver cancer, that don't respond to more benign treatments.

Optomec Partners with Phillips Federal to Bring Metal Additive Manufacturing Repair Solutions to U.S. Government Agencies: Optomec announced that it has signed a partnership agreement with Phillips Federal. The agreement will enable Phillips Federal to resell the Optomec Laser Engineered Net Shaping systems to US government facilities.

For the first time, researchers have used rapid 3D printing technologies to create a spinal cord, then successfully implanted that scaffolding, loaded with neural stem cells, into sites of severe spinal cord injury in rats.

Rather than building up plastic filaments layer by layer, a new approach to 3D printing lifts complex shapes from a vat of liquid at up to 100 times faster than conventional 3D printing processes, researchers have shown.

The top-ranked orthopedic hospital in the U.S. and a leading global medical device manufacturer from Europe announced the formation of the first provider-based additive manufacturing 3D printing facility for custom complex implants.