Researchers in MIT’s Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, have created “Cilllia,” a new computational method for designing and 3D printing artificial hair. 3D printers have been unable to print hair, fur, and other dense arrays of extremely fine features that require a huge amount of computational time and power.

By blending pulverized natural bone with man-made plastic, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University 3D-printed replacement skeletal structures of the head and face, including the lower jaw of a female patient. The team's composite material combines the strength and printability of plastic...

Tufts University biomedical engineers are using low-energy, ultrafast laser technology to make high-resolution, 3D structures in silk protein hydrogels. The laser-based micropatterning represents a new approach to customized engineering of tissue and biomedical implants.

The ability to integrate disparate materials and properties within printed objects is the next frontier in 3D printing. Harvard University researchers have designed new multimaterial printheads that mix and print concentrated viscoelastic inks, enabling simultaneous control of composition and...

Children with under-formed or missing ears can undergo surgeries to fashion a new ear from rib cartilage. Aspiring surgeons, however, lack lifelike practice models. A University of Washington otolaryngology resident and bioengineering student 3D-printed a low-cost pediatric rib cartilage model that more closely...

A hyperbaric chamber has been designed to achieve the goals of maximizing safety, minimizing complexity, and minimizing cost of hyperbaric chamber therapy. This design minimizes the volume of compressed gas in the chamber, and eliminates the need for complex gas mixing, carbon dioxide scrubbing,...

A strong, lightweight metal foam created by a North Carolina State University researcher absorbs the energy of high-impact collisions and effectively blocks X-rays, gamma rays, and neutron radiation. The device offers new shielding possibilities for use in CT scanners.