The next revolution in manufacturing might come from a robotic arm that ‘prints like nature builds’
With funding from a three-year, $3.5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) Future Manufacturing Research Grant, a team at Virginia Tech is pioneering this new approach by using robotic arms to produce 3D-printed composite materials from multiple directions instead of laying them down in straight lines and flat layers.
The final printed product features engineered materials that bend and curve like the grains of wood in a tree to anticipate stresses, making them almost 10 times stronger than traditional 3D-printed material.
The three-year NSF grant funding the work is one of only seven awarded under the Future Manufacturing Research program, which supports research, education, and the training of a future workforce to create manufacturing capabilities that do not exist today. [Read more…] about National Science Foundation funding brings ‘smarter and stronger’ advanced manufacturing