Alternative Manufacturing Methods to Explore

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚 𝐨𝐟 𝟑𝐃 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝. Instead of printing metal, a team of scientists in Switzerland grew it from a gel – and the result is 20x stronger than previous methods. Using a water-based hydrogel as a scaffold, researchers at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) created complex structures that can be infused with metal salts. After several rounds of soaking and heating, the gel vanishes – leaving behind dense, ultra-strong metal or ceramic. Traditional metal 3D printing often results in porous structures with serious shrinkage. This new method dramatically reduces those flaws, producing durable, precisely shaped components with only 20% shrinkage. It also opens the door to building with a wide range of materials – the same gel template can be used to grow iron, silver, copper, or even advanced composites. The technique could revolutionize how we make complex, high-performance parts for energy systems, biomedical devices, and next-gen electronics. It’s also a shift in mindset: rather than designing around the limits of printing materials, this approach lets researchers build first, and choose the material later. The team is already working on automating the process, aiming to bring this breakthrough into real-world manufacturing. Read the study "𝐻𝑦𝑑𝑟𝑜𝑔𝑒𝑙‐𝐵𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑉𝑎𝑡 𝑃ℎ𝑜𝑡𝑜𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑦𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑧𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝐶𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑐𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑀𝑒𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝐿𝑜𝑤 𝑆ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑠 𝑣𝑖𝑎 𝑅𝑒𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝐼𝑛𝑓𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑃𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛." 𝐴𝑑𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑑 𝑀𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙𝑠, 2025 https://lnkd.in/eian6kVx

Nature's Inspiration, Tomorrow's Innovation. Just take a stroll down any supermarket aisle or glance into your shopping trolley—you'll likely see a sea of packaging, a lot of which is unrecyclable and likely to end up in landfill. Even packs that are recyclable are non-optimal and use too many materials or components But there's hope on the horizon, as creative designers like Margarita Talep are finding solutions. She has pioneered an ingenious solution—an alternative to traditional plastic packaging derived from algae. Her project began with a simple question—how can we produce packaging that holds up well in use but breaks down quickly after its purpose is served? The answer lies in Agar, a gel-like substance from seaweed. Chances are, you're familiar with Agar as a food thickener. The process involves heating it to make a polymer, then adding water to make it flexible. The material comprises solely natural elements, right down to the dyes used to colour it—a rainbow of hues are extracted from the skins of fruits and vegetable such as blueberries, purple cabbage, beetroot, and carrot. The manufacturing process is quite simple. The mixture is heated and cooled with care until it transforms into a flexible gel. This gel can then be rolled into thin plastic sheets or poured into moulds, adapting to various shapes and packaging styles, like forming trays for donuts or creating bags for pasta. It's designed to naturally break down. During warmer months, it disappears in two to three months, with the timeframe influenced by thickness. Even in colder months, the breakdown continues, albeit at a slightly slower pace. Margarita Talep holds a strong conviction that bio-fabrication will not merely shape future industries but play a pivotal role in them. She stresses the importance of of environmentally conscious processes when extracting raw materials and during production. Yet, her vision transcends material creation—it demands seamless alignment with broader actions. Countries around the world are encouraged to take proactive steps by adopting plans to reduce packaging waste. Embracing circular economy initiatives is key, as they ensure plastic stays in a continuous cycle rather than contributing to landfills or polluting our oceans. As we strive to make better decisions for our planet, innovations like this algae-based packaging show that there are creative solutions to modern problems. Can nature's cues lead us to a sustainable path forward? #packaging #sustainablepackaging #sustainability #innovation #creative 📷Margarita Talep

I just came across something unexpected, as engineers at the University of Glasgow have developed a circuit board using chocolate as a biodegradable substrate, with zinc replacing copper in the printed circuits.   It sounds like a curiosity, but there's a practical reason it caught my attention. Copper is essential to electronics manufacturing, and the supply gap is expected to grow by 24% by 2040. Finding alternatives isn't just about sustainability, it's increasingly about resilience.   What I find promising is that these biodegradable boards are already powering LEDs and temperature sensors at performance levels comparable to traditional methods. To me, this isn't just a lab experiment, it's something worth watching.   Across the electronics industry, I see growing interest in materials that reduce e-waste and ease pressure on critical supply chains. This work fits that pattern. It also opens the door to other biodegradable substrates, paper, bioplastics, and materials we haven't yet considered.   The future of our industry depends as much on materials breakthroughs as it does on design. I'm curious what others are seeing. Where else is unconventional thinking reshaping how we source and build? https://bit.ly/4amfAjN

🌳 The most radical manufacturing breakthrough might look like… a tree. Stop and think about that. 🪑 In the UK, designers have grown chairs directly from living willow and oak. Not assembled. Not manufactured. Grown. Branches are guided over years. Trees are shaped within frames. Natural grafting fuses joints into one continuous structure. When harvested, the chair is already whole. Here’s the uncomfortable insight: This isn’t slow innovation. It’s long term thinking in physical form. We obsess over speed, scale, and automation. But growing a chair forces a different metric. Time becomes a design material. Waste is eliminated at the source. Carbon stays locked in. Supply chains shrink to a field. It challenges a core assumption in modern industry: That better always means faster. What if the next frontier of advanced manufacturing is not acceleration… but biological collaboration? If you were leading a design driven company, how would you balance speed to market with regenerative production that could take a decade to mature 🌱 #BiologicalManufacturingSystems #RegenerativeProductDesign #LivingMaterialsInnovation #NatureIntegratedManufacturing #CircularDesignEngineering #CarbonStoredInProducts #SlowInnovationStrategy #ExperimentalIndustrialDesign #FutureOfSustainableManufacturing #DesignForLongTermValue #BioBasedProductionModels #ClimateAlignedProductDevelopment Posted: 14 FEB 2026 (21:45)

The potential of Ultrasonic Additive Manufacturing (UAM) for Batteries 🔋    Imagine a combination of 3D printing and ultrasonic bonding and you get UAM – a process that uses “sound” to merge layers of (dissimilar) metals at low temperatures.     Here are 3 ways UAM could innovate the battery market – let me know if you see more! 🤩    1️⃣ EMBEDDED SENSORS: UAM allows a seamless integration of e.g. strain or temperature sensors, accelerometers, or fiber optic sensor into metals.     💡Imagine “smart busbars” identifying temperature hotspots or mechanical swelling, or incorporating accelerometers in structural parts to detect vibrations. I see applications ranging from battery testing to production modules.     2️⃣ LAYERED BUSBARS: UAM allows joining dissimilar metals irrespective of their thickness.    💡 Picture a layered busbar combining mechanical stiffness from one material with conductivity from another, creating a flexible, lighter, cost-effective alternative to traditional Copper busbars.    3️⃣ BATTERY (SUB-) CELL ASSEMBLY: In my opinion, UAM could have the potential to redefine cell manufacturing and assembly.     💡 Envision a scenario where traditional laser welding or wire bonding processes are obsolete, removing constraints on material selection, shape, or thickness. How would we reimagine sub-cell components, from separators to the materials and processes involved in cell current collectors, all the way to cell-to-cell connections?     I am working with Fabrisonic LLC to explore these topics. Please feel free to share your experience and ideas and reach out if you are interested to INNOVATE! 🤩     #battery #manufacturing #electrification  

🚀 Exciting News from NC State! Our research team has developed a groundbreaking laser technique to create ultra-high temperature ceramics, such as hafnium carbide (HfC), more efficiently and with less energy. This innovation has significant impacts for industries requiring materials that can withstand extreme heat, such as aerospace and nuclear energy. Traditional methods involve heating materials in furnaces at temperatures above 2,200°C, which is time-consuming and energy-intensive. Our new approach uses a 120-watt laser to sinter a liquid polymer precursor in an inert environment, transforming it into solid ceramic without the need for such extreme conditions. This technique offers two main applications: 1. Coating: Applying ultra-high temperature ceramic coatings to materials like carbon composites. 2. 3D Printing: Creating complex ceramic structures layer by layer, enabling more versatile and precise manufacturing. This advancement not only streamlines the production process but also opens new possibilities for designing components that can endure extreme environments. For more details, read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eE2Wh2TR #Innovation #MaterialsScience #NCStateResearch #AdvancedManufacturing

What if waste wasn't just managed, but metabolized? On this week's #GrowEverything, Erum Azeez Khan and I sat down with Molly Morse, co-founder CEO of Mango Materials, who's doing something both radical and obvious: Using microbes to make plastics that actually break down when we're done with them. "We feed methane—a potent greenhouse gas—to bacteria that transform it into PHA, a biodegradable polymer," Molly explains. "This isn't just about making 'better plastic.' It's about reimagining material lifecycles by working with nature's oldest manufacturing platform." Biology is Infrastructure, and Mango is the perfect demonstration of how biological systems can become the foundation of materials production. Three insights that stuck with me: 👉 Methane from wastewater treatment plants isn't just pollution—it's a building block hiding in plain sight 🏭 The plastics industry isn't the enemy—it's a system designed for permanence when what we need is planned decomposition 🧗♀️ Scale isn't just about bigger facilities—it's about distributed, modular, biological production near waste sources As Erum pointed out during our conversation: "This completely flips the script on what materials should do after we're done with them." This episode is perfect for: ➡️ Anyone thinking about biomanufacturing's real-world applications ➡️ People exploring how to turn environmental liabilities into assets ➡️ Anyone who's wondered why we make things that outlast their usefulness by centuries The #bioeconomy isn't just about new products—it's about new cycles. And Mango Materials is showing us how that happens. Listen here: 🎧 Apple: https://lnkd.in/e9mmeiXa 🎧 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eD_yt3bf 🎧 YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eCg5TkkB #GrowEverything #MangoMaterials #Biomanufacturing #SyntheticBiology #PHA #CircularEconomy #ClimateTech #WasteToValue #Bioeconomy #MaterialsInnovation

It's Manuscript Monday! What: Researchers at Texas A&M University and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory demonstrated a novel manufacturing approach they call In-Foam Additive Manufacturing (IFAM), in which a modified 3D printer injects thermosetting elastomeric resin directly into open-cell polyurethane foam to create cured struts with deterministic geometry within the stochastic foam structure. The resulting elastomeric cellular composite bridges the gap between highly scalable but hard-to-tune stochastic foams and precisely engineered but slow-to-produce lattice structures. The team explored the design space given the manufacturing limitations of injecting the resin via syringe by varying strut diameter, spacing, and inclination angle. They then characterized the composites under quasi-static compression. Using a rule-of-mixtures approach, they determined that at roughly 5 vol% elastomer addition, they achieved nearly 3x improvement in energy absorption and plateau stress. At higher volume fractions, energy absorption improved by nearly an order of magnitude relative to the neat foam. Why this is important: This work is a clever answer to a real manufacturing scaling problem. Lattice structures offer exceptional tunability but are bottlenecked by AM production rates orders of magnitude slower than traditional foaming. IFAM sidesteps this by using the foam as both structural host and compliant mold, decoupling injection from curing and enabling parallelization across multiple needles. The authors estimate a 25-needle array could produce over 1,000 reinforced helmet pads per hour, a rate that starts to look practical for defense and sports equipment supply chains. Beyond the applications identified in the paper, I can see this extending into automotive crash structures where graded energy absorption profiles are needed, packaging for sensitive electronics or aerospace payloads, and biomedical applications like orthopedic padding or prosthetic socket liners, where patient-specific tuning of mechanical response would be valuable. The ability to locally vary strut density, diameter, and orientation within a single foam opens a design space neither foams nor lattices alone can access. If only snakey or curved syringes were a thing. It will be interesting to see how this performs under dynamic impact rates and whether the synergistic mechanisms hold. Great work by Bruhuadithya Balaji, Frank Gardea, Eric Wetzel, and Mohammad Naraghi! https://lnkd.in/gHgYHqtt #additivemanufacturing #cellularmaterials #energyabsorption #foams #composites #IFAM As always, help finding the profiles of Frank and Eric for proper attribution is greatly appreciated!

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN: manufacturing constraints are becoming manufacturing options ——— DFM used to mean the process defined the solution before you touched a pencil. Draft, uniform walls, no undercuts - you designed inside the box. Now your CM often gives you a menu, not a rule sheet. CNC, additive, multi shot, overmold, MIM. Each path has different cost, lead time, risk, and finish quality. You are not asking “can this be made” anymore. You are asking “which version are we making, and what are we willing to give up.” When there are five valid paths, you can burn months choosing the wrong one and ship something that technically works but feels compromised in exactly the way your customer cares about. The job now is manufacturing literacy plus decisiveness. Know the options well enough to choose deliberately before the decision turns permanent. ——— Craftedby.agency

Supportless conformal 3D printing, without the scaffolding. Researchers at NUS show a method that prints complex metal structures in free space using low-melting Feld metal guided by surface tension. No support material, no post-processing removal. The geometry is formed directly in one pass. Most metal printing workflows still depend on heavy support strategies that limit shape, waste material, and slow iteration. Here, the physics of the material itself is used as the shaping mechanism. What it enables in practice. • Free-form conductive paths that are hard or impossible to machine • Dense, complex geometries without planning support structures • One-step fabrication of metal features embedded into other assemblies Still early, but this feels like one of those techniques that quietly changes how designers think about what is printable. Source: NUS Singapore —- Weekly robotics and AI insights. Subscribe free: scalingdeep.tech