Weird but super useful gadgets
I seem to be someone who buys things on the off chance that they will be useful at some point down the road. Thile there are many times when it doesn't feel like this pays off, some of the ...
From blood vessels and chocolates to cars and planes, 3D printers are showing off their amazing skills.
In Star Trek, humans could fill almost any need with machines called replicators that could produce almost any object (or food and drink) asked of them.
Today, the nearest technology we have to that sci-fi vision are 3D printers, computer-controlled machines capable of building almost anything - blood vessels, a small plane, even other 3D printers.
Nick Heath of silicon.com takes a look at the most outlandish objects that are emerging from 3D printers. Plus, SmartPlanet has chipped in with some cool ideas that could become mainstream in just a few years,
Blood vessels
The idea of printing out body parts may sound far-fetched but researchers are already attempting to use 3D printers to produce artificial blood vessels.
Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany want to print artificial blood vessels so they can be used to supply nutrients to human organs created in the lab.
They intend to make the capillaries in two parts. First, the artificial tubes will be printed out layer by layer inside a 3D inkjet printer. Next, brief pulses of a high-energy laser will be fired at the tubes to alter the structure at an atomic level, in order to give them the elastic properties of natural capillaries. Researchers have carried out these two tasks separately and are working on developing a system that can combine the two tasks to make the blood vessels.
The printed tubes have natural molecules integrated into their walls so that living cells can be attached to the inside of the vessels to form a lining. The lining will allow the vessels to transport the nutrients from the blood to their destination, most likely a lab-grown organ. In the picture, researchers are washing a polymer artificial blood vessel with a solution containing living cells.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute say that in future these vessels could be used to treat heart bypass patients.
Photo: Fraunhofer IGB
Caption by: Silicon.com
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