Different docking heads like endless liner systems and big bag/drum docking systems (SmartDock) in various sizes can be swapped in and out in just a few simple steps. To achieve this level of flexibility, Rubitec uses the CombiTac uniq modular connector system. In the setup used at Rubitec AG, the connector system combines power and pneumatic contacts in a robust grommet/surface-mount housing with a combination of IP65 and IP67 ingress protection, made from aluminum and with a clamp to keep the connection locked. This system ensures a quick, easy and safe connection between Rubitec’s SmartDock system and the control unit.

The high contact quality and minimal losses provided by the unique MULTILAM technology in the power contacts guarantees over 100,000 mating cycles to ensure long-lasting and uninterrupted operation of the filling or emptying system. The leak-free coupling in the pneumatic contacts ensures a tight, secure connection. Rubitec AG has been fan of the robustness and reliability of the CombiTac uniq modular connector system for many years, making this product an established component of the coupling design in their systems.

Learn more in this case study.

Your download is sponsored by Stäubli.

The post Safe and Fast Connections in Pharmaceutical Production appeared first on Engineering.com.

Dr. David Hoganson is a pediatric cardiac surgeon. This — and the fact that he wears a suit — sets him apart from every other attendee and presenter at 3DEXPERIENCE World 2023. His presence confirms Dassault Systèmes’ claim that making life is more important than making things — and what is more indispensable to our lives than a healthy, beating heart?

“Our heart beats without fail for a long time,” says Bernard Charlès, CEO of Dassault Systèmes, as he welcomes Dr. Hoganson to the main stage.

Dassault Systèmes has supported the Living Heart Project for some time. Dr. Hoganson is familiar with the Dassault Systèmes model of the heart as a teaching and learning model. But because his patients are children and each heart is unique, he relies on detailed patient-specific 3D models of their hearts created from CAD scans or MRIs that show the congenital defects and enable him to determine how to repair them.

A 3D CT scan of a child’s heart is turned into an accurate 3D CAD model, with different colors representing different heart functions.

A laser cutter cuts the heart patches, which are projected onto 2D material from the 3D heart model.

The pediatric heart surgeon faces unique challenges. They have to work on a heart that is depressurized, which means it is a different shape than the 3D model of the beating, pressurized heart they studied to prepare for the surgery. In addition, there is the matter of scale. The 3D model is conveniently colorized, with each color representing different functional and operating areas. The model is also studied at many times the heart’s actual size, but when it comes time to operate, the real heart can be quite tiny.

“There’s a triangular-shaped hole between the mitral valve, which is in purple, and the pulmonary valve, which is in red,” says Dr. Hoganson, pointing to the 3D model of a child’s heart. “On the other side is the electrical system. We have to work very hard to not injure it or the child will be dependent on a pacemaker for the rest of their life.”

Like real heart muscle, the patch material is anisotropic, with different properties along different directions. It operates similarly to carbon fiber in an epoxy matrix — a composite material that is the stuff of aircraft and race cars, and which Dassault Systèmes’ simulation tools (SIMULIA and ABAQUS) are all too familiar with.

Using ABAQUS, Dr. Hoganson was able to ensure that the heart patch material, cut in the flat, would be able to stretch to a 3D shape against the pressures of the flow of blood in a pumping heart.

“It’s a real challenge, right? It’s a three dimensional problem. The patches I showed were totally flat, or pretty flat. We worked hard to create a workflow to design patches to enlarge the aorta and in creating a really complex shape. It makes almost a 180-degree-turn one way, but the patch has to fold something like nine ways. We start with the flat patch; that patch is quite flexible. Because the patch is anisotropic, it can flex more in one direction than the other. Until now, we didn’t have any information the surgeon would need about how it flexes and how much it flexes. And so there’s been a lot of guesswork about trying to cut that patch. But now, the theory gets the curves correctly. The patch doesn’t buckle and it’s the right size. We were able to do that with a workflow that uses a number of very advanced aerospace tools within the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. We’re able to account for the mechanical properties, the pressure and the shape of the arteries pressurized, because that’s all we care about.”

“We’re so excited,” Dr Hoganson continues. “I can’t tell you about the challenging math it takes to do that in 3D space, used in the tools that repair airplane wings, with material that is anisotropic and complex 3D shapes. This is used by their aerospace group. They taught us how to use those tools. They are really powerful, but in another way, they are also the right tools for the right application. That is remarkable.”

The post Dr Hoganson: A Heart in the Right Place appeared first on Engineering.com.

Written by: Stephen Ferguson, Marketing Director, Siemens.

(Image courtesy of Siemens.)

We all want to live longer, healthier, happier lives. It’s a natural part of being human. But how can we do that? Eating well, regular exercise, access to medical care are all crucial elements in the absence of a real holy grail.

But what about engineering simulation?

It’s probably not something that automatically springs to mind when considering extending your life. But give me a few minutes of your time and I’ll show you a few ways in which it will make a huge difference.

Better Pandemic Resilience and Response

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be another long article about COVID-19. While it’s claimed many lives, and is continuing to do so, it’s just the latest in a long line of pandemics that have struck civilization.

(Source: VisualCapitalist.)

Unfortunately, COVID-19 won’t be the last outbreak of a new disease with the potential to spread rapidly across the world.

However, engineering simulation can play a vital role in minimizing the impact of the next pandemic, reducing both direct deaths from the disease and indirect deaths caused by disruption to day-to-day services.

With an airborne infection, understanding airflow and ventilation is key to reducing transmission. CFD simulation can show how different mitigation strategies such as opening windows or erecting plastic shields can protect individuals in different situations.

And remember how the vaccines were such a game-changer? Simulation not only helps manufacturers scale up production, but also helps improve injection technology that will radically reduce the amount of vaccine required in each dose, and the number of medical professionals needed to administer them.

Read more about how simulation can combat a pandemic here.

Precision Medicine

Humans may all be the same species, but identical we are not. Modern medicine has managed to be widely effective as we share the same basic physiology. But there are significant differences in medical care based on factors such as gender, age and race. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

The future is personalized medicine. Customized healthcare based on your precise physiology, genetics and unique conditions. But how can we do that for everyone? With digital twins of personal anatomy, of course.

Find out here how simulation can make healthcare really personal.

Bionic Bodies

If you’re one of the 15 percent of the world’s population that lives with a physical disability, you may already be benefitting from engineering simulation. Prosthetics have been steadily improving with engineering technology, allowing more people to live fuller lives, be it thanks to new hips or entire limb replacements. And glasses are a form of prosthetic, too.

We’ve been using engineering technology to complement the human body for hundreds of years, so why wouldn’t we continue to evolve with it?

Engineering is close to building prosthetic limbs that can perform better than fully functioning organic ones. It’s only a matter of time before people with no disabilities will have the option to improve the standard exoskeletons they are born with.

These developments don’t come cheap, however. And that is where simulation can make a real difference in both reducing the cost and improving the overall effectiveness of these new prosthetics.

Discover the future of prosthetic replacement and augmentation here.

In silico Medical Trials

Any new medical device must undergo extensive trials before it can be used on the population.

And rightly so. After all, the most important rule of medicine is “first do no harm.” If people were to regularly suffer negative effects from new procedures, then the general public would quickly lose faith in the benefits of such advances. So, new medical devices are tested through heavily regulated in situ, in vitro, and ex vivo experiments to ensure that no harm is caused.

But this takes time—a long time—and a lot of money.

As a result, the medical industry is understandably risk-averse, choosing to focus on devices that may not be the most ground-breaking, but which can get to market much sooner.

If only there was an alternative way to test the most complex new devices.

Of course – what if the experiments could be simulated instead? In silico trials do just that. And they’re not constrained by regulation, as nobody can be harmed during a simulation. Not only can simulation allow for the exploration of more advanced medical devices, but it can also drastically reduce development costs and produce finished products much faster.

Find out how here.

Exercise Better

Yes, I started by saying exercise was one of the keys to a longer, healthier life. But it’s important that it’s the right kind of exercise.

With people living longer, governments and insurance companies are struggling to support an increasingly elderly population. So, it’s crucial that individuals can continue to be economically productive for longer, as well as happier and healthier.

But the human body is more prone to injury as it gets older. And each injury takes longer to recover from. Sports science already helps top athletes improve their performance and maintain peak physical fitness, so why not extend this to the general population?

Take a look at how simulation can help us all be fitter and stronger, whatever our age.

Don’t Forget About the Planet

Of course, it won’t be much use extending our lives if we don’t have a home that keeps us safe. If we’re to avoid an ecological crisis and ensure our planet can continue to sustain the lives of ourselves and future generations, we need to act now.

That’s why engineering simulation is also being used to protect us from climate change.

Simcenter is helping to reduce 51 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions by improving the way we make things, grow things, travel and how we heat, cool and power buildings.

Discover our sustainable world here.

Get Started with Simcenter

So, as you can see, engineering simulation will have a big part to play in maintaining and improving the quality of our lives over the coming decades.

Click here to discover how you can use Simcenter to engineer better lives for everyone.

The post How to Engineer Your Best Life appeared first on Engineering.com.

Dimension Inx, an Illinois-based regenerative medicine company, is tackling this challenge head-on. The organization primarily focuses on developing therapeutic solutions for restoring tissue and organ function. It is currently deep into its research on the benefits of using 3D printing to create microenvironments that can direct cells to engage in certain behavior. This can, in turn, accelerate the healing process.

Dimension Inx’s goal is to use 3D printing to replace dysfunctional tissue with healthy, patient-specific tissue, which can facilitate the repair and regeneration of human organs. This has enormous implications for worldwide health care outcomes: 3D printing, in combination with the use of stem cells, can significantly reduce mortality in patients who are waiting for suitable organ donors. Further, it can reduce health care costs by approximately $1 trillion annually in the United States alone. In combination, these two factors could have immense repercussions on the global medical sector.

The Underlying Principles of Bioprinting

There are three ingredients necessary to begin “engineering” biology, so to speak: the cells themselves, the extracellular matrix and cues. In short, the matrix forms the “skeleton” around the cells, and the cues form the basis for the interactions between the cells and the matrix, profoundly affecting the former’s proliferation.

However, most research and funding focuses on optimizing and improving the cells themselves. There is a profound dearth of research on the cues (or microenvironments of the cells), which act as the blueprint for cell action. This is particularly of concern because cells can’t simply be injected into the body and expected to perform their tasks effectively. Although integral to the process, the cells alone cannot regenerate damaged tissue and restore function. Particular combinations of these cells and cues need to be engineered to achieve the desired results.

Dimension Inx’s Advanced Technology

Enter Dimension Inx, an industry disruptor that uses a contrarian and novel approach to bioprinting. As the company puts it, its focus is on providing cells with a “happy place,” which refers to a microenvironment that facilitates cell proliferation. This is accomplished by putting into practice what we already know about cellular biology and applying it to 3D printing. It’s important to note that slight differences in a given microenvironment can have profound implications on patient outcomes. The customizability of 3D printing can be a real advantage in this field: printing certain templates for these microenvironments can be used to promote the desired cell behavior, including cell differentiation, blood vessel formation, or collagen deposition.

There’s one major issue here, though. There is always a trade-off between conventional 3D printing equipment and traditional biomaterials. It’s very common for the processes used to require the modification of certain biomaterials. For example, if collagen will be used, some amount of synthetic polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) may need to be added to the mixture to increase its strength. This significantly affects the biofunctionality and biocompatibility of the printed component.

To mitigate this issue, Dimension Inx uses advanced technology to ensure that the biomaterials printed rely on microenvironments and signaling instead of chemical modification, which means that there is no compromise in the product’s biofunctionality. The basis of this technology is a rapid, room-temperature additive manufacturing process used to produce regenerative structures that can address complex issues.

This bottom-up approach functions by directly extruding 3D “paints,” which dry instantaneously and do not require post-processing (such as sintering or heat treatment). The advantage of these 3D paints is that different types of paints can be combined to create gradient paints. For example, the paint used for bone tissue can be combined with paint used for cartilaginous tissue, creating a “hybrid” variant. Dimension Inx has created several proprietary 3D paints, such as Hyperelastic Bone, which contains 90 percent calcium phosphate by weight, making it highly biofunctional.

A good example of the company’s work lies in a collaboration with Northwestern University and the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, which demonstrated one of the first implanted organs created via additive manufacturing: a bioprosthetic ovary in rats.

A scientist holding a 3D-printed mouse ovary cell scaffold. (Image courtesy of Northwestern University.)

The team 3D printed a scaffold with a microstructure that provided the optimum conditions for the growth and maturation of reproductive cells. This ovary was implanted into a rat, which led to multiple generations of pups, clearly demonstrating its feasibility.

A litter of green pups born from the bioprosthetic ovary. (Image courtesy of Northwestern University.)

Adoption of the Technology

There is often hesitance when it comes to the adoption of new technologies, but it’s crucial to develop novel workflows to ensure the smooth implementation of Dimension Inx’s technology. Since the stakes are quite high in this field, quality assurance is crucial for its widespread implementation.

However, this is not at all a trivial matter for massive hospital systems. Dimension Inx is currently working to implement such a system itself, while RICOH 3D and IBM Medical are also working on their own solution for large-scale hospital systems. This can allow a large number of clinicians to have access to 3D-printed models and hasten the adoption of this technology in hospitals. Further, in light of these developments, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has provided guidelines for the 3D printing of medical devices at the point of care. The future looks promising.

Several companies are currently making strides in the additive manufacturing of human tissue. One U.S.-based company is Organovo, which uses proprietary technology to bioprint living tissue. Another company called Cyfuse, based out of Japan, has developed its own bioprinter called Regenova. An Indian company, Next Big Innovation Labs, is also focused on bioprinting complete organs for use in developing countries. This international interest will work to hasten the implementation of this technology and provide an impetus for its development.

How Can the 3D Printing Community Be a Part of This?

Recently, 3D Systems announced that it plans to focus on two high-growth areas, one of which is the medical sector. This is a direct consequence of the fact that investors and companies alike are increasingly recognizing the positive trajectory of additive manufacturing in the field of health care. According to PitchBook data, over the last two years, more than $1 billion has been invested in this sector, in over 50 companies.

However, data seems to indicate that this industry is at an inflection point. A lot of work needs to be done now to ensure that both the public and industry stakeholders remain convinced that this technology can be scaled sufficiently to provide widespread health care solutions. From this perspective, there are a few actionable steps the community can take.

First, individuals in the medical space can work on improving access to this technology at the point of care. This includes promoting the use of additively manufactured surgical guides, implants and models. This will undoubtedly raise investor interest in the sector, which forms the basis for increased adoption.

Second, at this stage, it’s crucial to pressure regulatory bodies to provide incentives, propose reimbursement schemes, and set quality standards for this specific technology. In particular, the FDA needs to provide increased guidance regarding the point-of-care manufacturing of 3D-printed parts. To accomplish this and gain increased clarity, individuals should contact the FDA to indicate that there is sufficient interest in such programs.

Third, and probably most important, more products in this space need to be commercialized. A larger number of products need to be readily available to the public. This rollout is currently in its nascency. Therefore, it’s important that people in the 3D printing community begin to engage with investors and policymakers through multiple avenues. Examples of groups that can be directly contacted are the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI) BiofabUSA, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Radiological Society of North America.

Dimension Inx can help provide custom solutions for therapeutics—whose progress can have a profound impact on our future and that of our progeny.

The post The Future of Additive Manufacturing for Regenerative Medicine appeared first on Engineering.com.

A startup called Esper Bionics is looking to use technology to expand human capabilities at scale. In its quest to develop new devices, the company is starting with a self-learning robotic hand for people with limb differences.

Currently, there are an estimated two million people with limb loss in the U.S. alone, and this number is expected to double by 2050. Unfortunately, current prosthetic devices fall short in terms of their utility and aesthetics. Esper Bionics is developing its robotic hand to improve the lives of those with limb differences and accelerate the development of human-technology interfaces.

The Esper Hand gripping a fork. (Image courtesy of Esper Bionics.)

Esper Bionics Wants to Expand Human Potential

Esper Bionics, which was founded in 2019 by Dr. Dima Gazda, Anna Believantseva, and Ihor Ilchenko, is currently based in New York City, with research and manufacturing offices in Germany and Ukraine. The company is working to expand the full technology stack for electronic implants—developing the devices themselves, low-power electronics, and AI and advanced data analytics.

In conversation with Dr. Dima Gazda, cofounder of Esper Bionics, engineering.com learned more about the company’s history and ongoing R&D. As both an electrical engineer and medical doctor, Gazda has the unique education required to develop effective devices for human augmentation.

Originally, Gazda and his cofounders started the company to develop what they thought was the most important technology stack for the future of humanity: electronic implants. To start its R&D journey, Esper Bionics focused on the prosthetic industry, which is currently low-tech. Most industry-standard prosthetics are purely aesthetic and do not restore a limb’s functionality. Other companies are working to improve the technical capabilities of prosthetics, including Psyonic. However, Esper hopes to stand out with the speed and utility of its device, which actually learns user habits and customizes the functionality to each patient.

The Esper Hand as a Self-Learning Prosthetic

The goal of the Esper Hand is simple: design a prosthetic that can be controlled just like biological human hands.

Consider a hobby like knitting.

Typically, you would start slowly and inefficiently with the knitting and placement of the needles. However, over time, you would learn the mechanics of knitting until it became smooth, easy and effortless.

The Esper team developed its robotic hand with this in mind, focusing on creating a device that can learn from its user and become increasingly customized with use.

A series of digital signal processors, specifically electromyography sensors, currently control the device. The remaining muscles in the user’s limb control the movement of individual fingers, use different grips, and perform almost any task. Therefore, the device is not the same in every individual as it depends on the remaining active muscles for its control.

Gazda highlighted the mechanical precision of the device: “The [Esper Hand] is up to 10 times more precise in detecting muscle movement compared to most prosthetic devices.”

He mentioned that the device has faster activation and hand control, moving the bar of prosthetics closer to the reaction time of biological hands. To improve the device’s utility, it also includes mechanical protection from water and dust.

On the software front, Gazda discussed the company’s proprietary Esper Platform, which encompasses both a server and AI-powered applications. The software uses data inputs from the hand to learn the user’s habits and improve the device’s performance. For example, the hand can detect muscle activity to recognize certain situations and accurately predict the grip that would best fit a specific context, such as picking up a heavy mug or a delicate blueberry. Plus, the company’s proprietary machine learning algorithms can correct for common issues experienced by prosthetic users, such as sweat and differences in their range of motion.

The Esper Hand holding a pomegranate seed. (Image courtesy of Esper Bionics.)

“The server collects data from the hand and updates the control algorithms to fit the user’s everyday routine,” said Gazda.

The device also improves its ability to detect muscle activity over time, improving the activation, reaction time, and overall hand control. Interestingly, users can remotely adjust the features of their devices, and Esper can send automatic setting suggestions to help the user to improve their functionality.

Beyond the hardware and software, Gazda highlighted the industrial design that went into the production of the Esper Hand. The current design notably considered the aesthetics of the final device, incorporating feedback from individuals with limb differences who were looking for something that they would be excited to wear. Gazda added that at 380 g, the Esper Hand is currently among the lightest prosthetics available on the market.

As part of its industrial design, Esper Bionics is looking to develop alternative materials for a model that can be priced for developing countries. Other organizations are also working on prosthetics for developing regions, including the Victoria Hand Project.

FDA approval of the prosthetic is currently in progress, and the company has 10 users in the New York area, with 10 more users expected by the end of 2022. Gazda considers the company to be in beta testing right now and hopes to see the device expand beyond the U.S. before long.

Nika, an Esper Hand user, playing a video game. (Image courtesy of Esper Bionics.)

What’s Next in Electronic Implants?

Gazda emphasized that his focus is on the future of wearable technology and human augmentation. Expanding from its robotic hand, Esper Bionics is working to develop prosthetics that can assist people with limb losses below the elbow, as well as help those with lower limb losses. As such, the company was chosen to assist with efforts in Ukraine to innovate prosthetics for veterans.

But Gazda wants to look well beyond prosthetics when considering the future of Esper Bionics. The goal is to develop electronic implants to improve human health and well-being. Instead of the Neuralink approach of integrating directly with the central nervous system, Esper is focused on integrating with the peripheral nervous system to improve the utility and accessibility of implants.

“Humanity as we know it is 150,000 years old. We have made major advancements in infrastructure in terms of transportation, buildings, and more. But this is the first time we can advance humans directly with technology,” said Gazda. “When we look back in 10,000 years, there will be a clear divide in the evolution of humans and a shift in our thinking about technology.”

Gazda added that in his opinion, electronic implants in humans will have a bigger impact on humanity than the automotive or space industries.

Although Esper Bionics is still at least five years away from implanted devices, the company is actively developing Esper Control, a wearable brain-computer interface device. All the devices in development will utilize the Esper Platform to help the products customize to each user’s individual habits.

It will be exciting to see how the company further develops the robotic hand and the other devices in its R&D pipeline over the next few years.

The post This Prosthetic Learns Your Habits and Gets Better the More You Use It appeared first on Engineering.com.

This video is sponsored by SIEMENS.

Feeding the population of the planet of 8 million and growing, is a fundamental challenge for the 21st century. The green revolution that began in the 1950s relied on massive chemical inputs, in fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Today, environmental concerns, plus a warming climate and limited agricultural land has been the impetus for new ideas in agriculture. Could we go below the surface and use advanced technology to allow food production anywhere, including cities?   

Montreal, Canada-based Greenforges has developed a novel vertical system that allows agricultural production almost anywhere, without the traditional constraints of weather, irrigation or land-use. It’s harder than it looks to grow food underground, and development uses advanced tools to iterate cost-effectively. Joining engineering.com’s Jim Anderton to describe the technology and how simulation was essential in its development is Jamil Madanat from Greenforges and Carl Poplawsky, Engineering Services Manager at Maya HTT.

Learn how Simcenter unleashes your creativity, granting you the freedom to innovate and allowing you to deliver the products and processes of tomorrow today.

The transcript below has been edited for clarity:

Jim Anderton: Hello everyone and welcome to Designing the Future. Feeding the population of the planet, 8 billion and growing, oh, it’s a fundamental challenge for the 21st century. The green revolution that began in the 1950s, well, it relied on massive chemical inputs in terms of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Today, environmental concerns plus a warming climate and limited agricultural land has been the impetus for new ideas in agriculture. Could we go below the surface and use advanced technology to allow food production anywhere, including cities?

Well, Montreal, Canada based GreenForges has developed a novel vertical system that allows agricultural production almost anywhere without the traditional constraints of weather, irrigation or land use. Now it’s harder than it looks to grow food underground and development uses advanced tools to iterate cost-effectively. Joining me to describe how the technology works and how simulation was essential as development is Jamil Madanat from GreenForges and Carl Poplawsky, engineering services manager at Maya HTT.

Jamil is a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from McGill University where he specialized in machine design and project management. He has five years of professional experience in the impact startups world with a focus on social entrepreneurship and sustainability. Jamil is currently the CTO of GreenForges, the first underground controlled agriculture environment farm early next year.
Carl holds a master of science degree from Purdue University in Mechanical Engineering, and before his appointment as engineering services manager at Maya HTT, he was a senior applications engineer. Previously, Carl was VP of engineering at the Engineering Sciences and Analysis Corporation, and was technical consultant with the Structural Dynamics Research Corporation. Carl and Jamil, welcome.

Jamil Madanat: Hi, Jim. Thank you.

Carl Poplawsky: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Jim Anderton: Jamil, can we start with you? This is an intriguing solution to a pressing problem, feeding 8 billion plus people and growing. The stresses on the environment, in the Western world, we’re paving over agricultural land. We’re looking at a change in climate. There are a lot of factors here that are putting constraints on agricultural production. How big is this problem? I mean, do we need to find these ad advanced technology solutions to feed ourselves?

Jamil Madanat: Absolutely. Actually, this is how the idea came to me. So our founder, Phil, was going through a report describing projected food shortages all around the world, and the report was looking into different methods and means that will alleviate this food crisis issue by looking into urban agriculture. The study looked into, okay, how can we leverage urban agriculture to provide more food in the cities, and was looking into rooftop farming, indoor farming, shipping containers. A couple of days after that, Phil was happened to be thinking about this problem looking outside a window and saw a water well.
That’s when it clicked in his mind, why can we use the underground for food production? So the conclusion of that report saw that even if we leverage urban agriculture, we would still cover 4 to 5% of that food shortage. But now with underground being an option, I think we have a lot of more space to utilize and a lot more means to alleviate the projected food crisis that’s approaching faster than what we’re ready for.

Jim Anderton: Jamil, can you give me a brief overview of the GreenForges’ system? You mentioned underground. Underground, sometimes we think of sort of an abandoned coal mine or a cavern or something, but these are rather more like missile silos, aren’t they sort of a cylindrical vertical shaft?

Jamil Madanat: Precisely. So we’re taking a more simpler approach here. So what we’re starting with is think water wells or just pile foundations, same ones you would may use for building foundations. Initially, we’re starting with a diameter size of 60 inches, so closer to 1.5 meters. So it’s nothing too big. But the advantage that you would really get is going underground and now we’re experimenting with a model going 15 meters underground. With that you’d be surprised how many plants you can fit in there and grow. The scalability would just really grow much faster as you arrange these forges in a grid system.
As you mentioned in the intro, it is a controlled environment agriculture system. With that, it means we get more control over the plants that we want to grow, expedite the harvest cycle, get more precise and refined flavors and control the crops that we want to use. So it’s not just only we’re leveraging the underground system, filling it with plants, but also expediting harvest cycles one, and two, just becoming weather independent. So that will give a lot of additional advantages with keeping the food production running all year long too.

Jim Anderton: Jamil, is this a hydroponic process? Are you growing plants in soil? How does it work?

Jamil Madanat: Yes, it is a hydroponic system. Basically for those unfamiliar, a hydroponic system would be just water mixed with nutrients and oxygen that the plants need and runs continuously just touching the roots, the back of the roots, giving the plants the nutrients that they need. It is a continuous loop system. So really we just keep continuing using this water that’s getting fed to the plants while monitoring at the surface kind of the nutrients being consumed, how much extra oxygen it needs, fill it, and then recycle the water.
So on one hand, this saves a lot of water, almost 90% of the water is, if not more, is getting recycled back within the system. The second advantage is pest management. So we see a lot of contamination that happens when using soil based systems, but with hydroponics, you’re really creating that barrier for preventing a pest and contamination.

Jim Anderton: What sort of crops do you anticipate will be used with this system? I see some green leafy vegetables. I believe it is in your background.

Jamil Madanat: Yeah. What you see here is a couple of what we call grow modules being harvested from underground, extracted and just organized in a radial manner here for harvest. Initially, we’re starting with leafy greens and herbs. Now, the good thing about leafy greens is that they require less input from nutrients to energy to light, and they have faster harvest cycles. So starting with those gives us the advantage of running harvest cycles faster. So we get to iterate faster. Plus, these plants just tolerate variations in the environment, in nutrients much better. So this way, any changes and tweaks we run to the system will still end up with a higher success rate of production.

Jim Anderton:
Now, it’s interesting. So you’ve found a way to take that farming underground, and of course we’re interested in the engineering aspects of this. By the sound of it, there are several. It sounds a bit like a closed loop system. So we’re talking about gas, we’re talking about water, we’re talking about heat. So there are energy flows and there are physical flows of things happening inside these chambers, and there’s also a structural component, in that you have a vertical shaft. Are these things made of ferrous, non-ferrous metals, reinforced concrete? What’s the basic structure made of?

Jamil Madanat: So the casing would be made of steel. We’re using special coating. The special coating has to take into account multiple factors. One, obviously being non-corrosive, nothing to contaminate the plants. Second has to be antimicrobial. So it just doesn’t promote any growth of algae. Third, we’re adding a white coat layer that incentivizes light reflection. So this way, in this tight space that you have underground, you’ll be able to capture most of the lights.

Jamil Madanat:
In this tight space that you have underground, you’ll be able to capture most of the light that’s feeding the plants. So the casing is still with coating on the outside and on the inside. As for the internal structure, it’s a pretty simple structure. I can’t get into too much detail about the current design that we’re working on, that’s still being developed and just has a patent protecting behind it. But I wouldn’t say anything too complicated and we’re always keeping food safety in mind and operational ease in mind when designing these facilities.

Jim Anderton: Well, it sounds like you have multiple systems that are sort of interrelated and overlapping at the same time. You have a mechanical engineering task, you also have sort of dynamic systems operating at the same time here. How complex is this from an engineering perspective? What sort of tools do you use to design these things? Are we talking about a conventional CAD system, FEA simulation? How do you go about this?

Jamil Madanat: Absolutely. So generally when we look at the design of the forge, we split it between structural, mechanical, electrical, and digital systems. Now, the biggest challenge that we found with designing the forges is that once you go underground, there’s very little literature on the climatization of these farms, which has to be done very finely tuned, very controlled environment. As a side note, you’d be surprised how plants sometimes can be very sensitive, certain variations, as we plan on expanding the crops. So we got to be very certain what the environment looks like underground. And to do that, we had to work with Maya HTT to simulate how the heat transfer happens at different soil levels, at different soil types, different humidities. So maybe that’s something Carl can tell us a little bit more is they provided cell work to us, helping us understand better how to climatize the environment underground.

Jim Anderton: Carl, tell us about it.

Carl Poplawsky: The simulation services group at Maya HTT focuses on what we call virtual prototyping. Virtual prototyping is a technique that we use to test the mechanical design long before it’s manufactured or before physical prototypes are produced. We use computer rate and engineering software, CAE software to do that. We standardize a Siemens software products in center 3D, and we look at, in this case, the thermal and flow situations going on within the vertical farm. Our contributions to this project focused on energy efficiency and water use. So we use the software to predict the cooling load within the silo or the vertical farm. That cooling load is a function of not only conduction to and from the surrounding earth, but also quite a lot of heat load caused by the lighting that is necessary to provide the solar heating for the plants to survive.

Jim Anderton: Carl, that sounds like you got several inputs here going on at the same time. It’s also got something which goes is vertical, that’s goes to quite a depth at this point. Is there a temperature gradient from the top to the bottom of this system?

Carl Poplawsky: Yes, absolutely. It starts with the earth itself in that the surface of the earth is basically an ambient temperature. As you go down the surface of the earth reaches the constant, relatively constant temperature within the depth that we’re talking about. And so you have a temperature gradient going down through the earth, and then when you’re pumping air down into the farm, you’re going to see heat transfer happening, picking up heat, and then you have to bring that hot air back up and through the heating, ventilation, air conditioning system. We call it the HVAC system. So we help to size the preliminary sizing for the HVAC system and also the piping and pump sizing in order to remove the condensation that collects at the bottom.

Jim Anderton: Carl, tell me about humidity. that’s something where anyone who’s a greenhouse operator, of course controlling humidity is a major factor here. This sounds much more challenging. This is rather a closed system with artificial light and the heat input coming from that, plus the aspect ratio of this operation seems to be quite high. It’s a tall, skinny cylinder. Is that a factor?

Carl Poplawsky: Well, first of all, the software handles humidity and condensation and it can predict the condensation that collects on the walls and also provides the relative humidity distribution throughout the system. And of course, that has to be controlled pretty tightly for the plant’s health. And that will certainly influence how the final HVAC design evolves.

Jim Anderton: When you’re designing an HVAC system, and Jamil, maybe I’ll throw us back to you the same way is that it’s much engineering development is iterative and in a lot of cases if you’re breaking out, breaking new ground and doing something which has not been done before in the way that you’re doing this, building prototypes, testing, breaking them, going back and redesigning is a very common way to design components in areas like automotive that I’m familiar with. You’ve got a very large and expensive and complex process here. You can’t dig a hundred holes and then iterate a hundred different designs and then go back and then figure out what works down there. How do you cut the corner on that? We know simulation is a great tool to do this, but even with simulation is that you’ve got multiple variables interacting at the same time here down there. Do you have simplifying assumptions you work with or do you just crunch the numbers in a brute force way? How do you attack it? How do you attack this problem?

Jamil Madanat: Absolutely. So, obviously following the engineering method, we go with subsystem testing. So you can’t test the whole system altogether. And as you said, drilling multiple holes on your ground, it’s an expensive process. Same thing is you can just keep flying rockets every time you want to test something there. So what we really try to do is take isolate systems and try to experiment, iterate, and prototype with them. So be it that the lighting system that we’re working with, digital systems and how they work with the lighting system, the climatization system, and how it works with the plants and then for things that we can’t really replicate.
So we do have multiple labs that are running multiple experiments in parallel, whether it’s the extraction system, whether it’s the integration of, call it the hydroponic system with the controllers and specifically for the HVAC and climatization we said, okay, we want to validate a couple of major assumptions, which is how much heat does this soil absorb during the day cycle? How much heat does it retain during the night cycle? And let’s run the simulations based on these assumptions. That would give us at least the groundwork for what we know is at least true. And then you build foundations from there. But yeah, always working from first principles and running subsystem tests, then you can validate and build on top of these building blocks is generally the easiest. Easy is an overstatement, but the best approach to get a more comprehensive design.

Jim Anderton: Plants are an interesting phenomenon. We know that early designers of space station systems had considerable difficulty with things like humidity control, temperature control, also in a closed system. In this case you’re looking at plants and the amount of biomass inside your system is considerable at this point. And of course transpiration is a factor here. So the plants are an active component of changing the environment that they work in. Is there a difference depending on the type of crop that you grow, are those lettuce leaves different from a different type of plant?

Jamil Madanat: Back to kind of controlling the climate of the plants, we have external factors and internal factors. On the external factor side, obviously, and I think I’d like to point out an important piece of the design we’re taking into consideration that I haven’t alluded to before, but when you go underground almost worldwide, below the seven meter mark, the temperature converges to the annual average regardless of what the surface variation is like. When you do the simulation, you want to take that upper piece of variation into the climatization model and then account for that kind of all the way consistent climate that you want to account for. Now, the interior internal variations that are taking place is one, depending on the crop, and second, depending on the growth stage of the crop.

Initially, the first about two weeks, we almost assume no humidity generation. The plants are just growing, evapotranspiration is very low, and then it just exponentially increases in majority of the crops. Now, different crop size also breathe differently and need different humidity levels, different temperatures and different light requirements. Taking all these into account, initially we’re working with all leafy greens that just have a very kind of narrow window of variation. Then as we validate one, we just build on top of the others. Hope that answers your question.

Jim Anderton: It does. Carl, if a mechanical engineer were to design, for example, a ground source heat pump, you can approximate that roughly into sort of a coiled two heat exchanger and think about what we think as the classic sort of convection conduction radiation equations of heat transfer, integrate them with your form factors, your shapes. But in this case, they’re so many other factors going on here that are complicating this issue. Is this something you could run on sort of when you think of a stock simulation software. Does this require a coded solution, a low code, no code solution?

Carl Poplawsky: No, it doesn’t require any additional coding. The software out of the box handles this problem. It is quite complex. Not only do you have the temperature gradients going down through the earth, but you have the humidity distributions and everything else going on. Well, actually in the initial simulations, we looked at just pumping air down in without the HVAC in order to calculate what sort of HVAC requirements we need. The software is quite sophisticated at this point can handle those kind of things. Again, what we’re really trying to do is shortcut the design process to some extent in that. As Jamil mentioned, and you mentioned you can’t go out and drill 50 holes. So we’re going to drill 50 holes in a virtual environment with software and look at the mechanical thermal float performance of design. Then when Jamil is ready to drill those holes, he’s going to drill only a couple because he’s going to have a much higher probability of his design being successful, thanks to the virtual prototyping,

Jim Anderton: Carl, many users simulation tend to think of it in turn as a validation tool as much as the development tool essentially. We know where we want to go, here are targets, we check our design, does it work or does it not work. However, we know the simulation can also feed useful information back in multiple ways into the design process. The aerospace industry, for example, sometimes they discover things they didn’t understand or didn’t realize about a design by actually sort of flying it virtually with simulation. Does that happen in this case too?

Carl Poplawsky: Absolutely. One of the major advantages of this technique is we can look at what I call coffin corner conditions. These are conditions that maybe you can’t physically prototype. Of course one example is in a spacecraft craft industry, when you’re flying something in outer space and we get involved in a lot of spacecraft applications, you can’t actually test all those things in a terrestrial environment.

Jim Anderton: It’s funny you mentioned Jamil, more than one engineers proposed that what you are doing may be the only way to actually feed colonies some places like Mars and the moon. Is there a possible connection here?

Jamil Madanat: Potentially. I mean, virtually you can drill these systems anywhere. The fact that they’re insulated from the environment that’s happening on the surface, regardless of weather conditions, so severe hot or cold climates. The fact also that you can just build this standalone system, lock it, seal it, let it run its harvest cycle and then move after. With little maintenance, most of the work can be done once you put in the plants and then once you want to harvest them, makes them potentially viable for multi planetary agricultural systems, so you never know.

Jim Anderton: Jamil, how did you go about approaching Maya HTT and Carl in this process? Did you have a problem and then say, “we have a complex problem here we need to solve,” or did you run up against a roadblock that seemed insurmountable? How do you get to that point where you say, “Wow, I need to consult with someone outside my industry just to fix this problem?”

Jamil Madanat: I’ll share with you kind of the thought process that we went through here, which is try to understand how the environment for the plants will look underground and ultimately you just want to make sure the crops are climatized based on the what we call the crop [inaudible 00:21:59]. Now, generally you design based on surface conditions. You say, okay, well the temperature outside is going to be as such, we want to climatize the environment up. Inside we want provide this much heating or cooling or dehumidification because outside the kind of temperature and climate variables are very well defined. Underground, while looking through different literature and even engineering formulas in front of me, I realize that the problem is just multidimensional or multifaceted. It’s not only I have to understand, well, okay, we have these LED columns running between 12 to 16 hours a day providing heat to the soil.

How much of this heat is the soil going to absorb? What kind of soil absorbs the most versus releases heat the most? Once you go underground is you have just a wider gradient of different soil conditions and different humidity. Based on the humidity, how much heat is going to be absorbed, how would it be retained? And then let’s scale this a little bit more. You have a grid of, let’s say three by three or 10 by 10 forges, how close should they be to each other so they won’t affect the heat between each other. That kind of dynamic or behavior of temperature distribution underground at different soil conditions is not something that you just can pull off at the back of the napkin. That’s definitely where the Maya HTT team came in very, very handy and useful at helping us understand it.

Carl Poplawsky: Our simulations found that the performance is heavily dependent on the soil conditions, the amount of moisture in the soil, whether it’s sand or a clay or something like that. When you run these simulations, you have to make some judgment calls about how large the earth domain is going to be because it has to extend out way past the vertical farm in order to get correct results. So for instance, if you look at image number one, what we’re showing here is the temperature distribution in a cylinder of the earth, in which the shaft or the farm is contained. And we’ve got some color bars here. Red is hot, blue is cold. So you can see it’s cooler at the bottom. You can see how the temperature contours flatten out. That’s giving us a good indication that this cylinder, this basically arbitrary cylinder of earth is large enough so that the simulation will be sufficient. And of course, this was also going to tell us how closely you can space these things. If you look at image number two, this is the closeup of the air domain within the farm itself. This is just the top. That cylinder over on the left is the air handler.
You can see the little squares in the middle are the LEDs. You can see how they’re producing heat. Again, red is hot and blue is cold. So these are examples of the kind of results we can get. These are of course temperatures. If you look at simulation, I’m sorry, image number three, you’ll see that this is showing the temperature contours going down through the depth and it’s very easy to see now how we do have some significant gradients there. Image number four shows the velocity profile. So we’re pumping air down in and then it has to come up. And of course we don’t want to tear the leaves off the plants, so we have to be concerned about what that velocity profile actually looks like.

Jim Anderton: Remarkable. Intuitively growing things is something that’s as old as humanity. So intuitively we have a simple process. You’re going to take a greenhouse, we’re going to stick it underground. Carl, you just showed us, is that this is more akin to the engineering environment in a space station than it is to farming in a sense. There’s a lot of complexity, a lot of things going on here. Generically for companies that have things that have a lot of things going on, like you have here, Jamil, Carl in this case, how much does an engineer have to know to approach you with a problem? Do they simply have to say, “These are the parameters I have to hit with this design. Am I going to get there?” Or do they have to turn around and say, “I need results on this, this, this and this to understand how they interrelate?” Just how deep do they have to go?

Carl Poplawsky: Yeah, great question. Really, it’s the virtual prototyping techniques that provide the information for how all these parameters interact with each other. So as a mechanical engineer, we think about what we call control volumes. And so we have boundary conditions on those control volumes. Here, the control volume would be that cylinder of the earth, and Jamil is providing us certain boundary conditions that are going to influence the simulation. For instance, the heat dissipation of the LED lights, the transpiration rate of the vapor coming off the plants. So those are basic boundary conditions. And then we take it from there and providing the information on how all these parameters interact with each other. In particular, we can change the performance of the HVAC system and change the locations of air ducting, inlets, outlets, things like that, and look at the total performance of the system.

Jim Anderton: Jamil, did you have any idea when you joined this project that it would be as complex as it is?

Jamil Madanat: Not initially. Not initially, because you look into an idea and you’re like, “Okay, I think we can make it work.” But the more you dig in, the more you realize there’s just way more to it. It really is so multidimensional, as I mentioned, on the mechanical, the structural, the lighting, the just horticultural side. So ultimately we have the plans at the core of our design and we want to make them happy. Also, on the other side, we have our operators on the farm and you want to make it accessible for them to extract and clean and work with it. And the unit economics have to work out too, the carrier capital expenditure and operating expenditure. So try to balance all these parameters together is a challenge. But that’s engineering, right? It just keeps you going and it’s that excitement of discovering something new every time we approach a new problem. So yeah, so far really enjoying it.

Jim Anderton: It is exciting. And one last question, Carl. For design engineers that are working with complex systems and have problems that require the kind of professional help that you and Maya HTT can offer, what’s the number one piece of advice you could give them to prepare themselves before they approach you with a problem? What homework should they do, before they present you with an issue?

Carl Poplawsky: Yeah, I don’t think it’s really not that unusual. You have to think about what your goals are going to be. If somebody comes and says, “I need a thermal simulation.” I don’t have a lot of information there. If he tells me that I don’t want the material to exceed certain temperatures and I need to minimize my energy consumption, now we have something to work with. So it’s really just like anything else in life. You have to decide what your goals are going to be and then we help you meet those goals.

Jim Anderton: An exciting project. Jamil Madanat, GreenForges. Carl Poplawsky, Maya HTT. Thanks for joining me on the show.

Learn how Simcenter unleashes your creativity, granting you the freedom to innovate and allowing you to deliver the products and processes of tomorrow today.

The post Can Underground Agriculture Feed the World? appeared first on Engineering.com.

FluidForm, a Massachusetts-based regenerative medicine company, aims to take on those challenges with its liquid 3D printing technology.

Most current 3D printing methods and research rely on modifying existing materials to enable printing them in air. The downside of that method is that it often results in an unwanted physiological change in the materials.

FluidForm took a different approach while developing a technique called Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels (FRESH). Instead of changing the material, the FRESH method modifies the 3D bioprinting environment. This enables printing with collagen, silicone and proteins, as well as any liquid polymer resins—the latter of which may be a boon to other industries, such as aerospace and automotive.

Beginnings of FRESH

Much of the FRESH technology came about in the Regenerative Biomaterials and Therapeutics lab at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) by Adam Feinberg, FluidForm CTO and cofounder, and professor of biomedical engineering and materials science. In 2018, Feinberg’s core technology to 3D print collagen resulted in the launching of FluidForm.

The following year, the company’s proof-of-concept study was published in Science. The team was able to accurately reproduce the anatomical structure of hearts from patients’ unique MRIs.

FRESH technology enables the 3D printing of collagen to create complex components of the human heart, from small blood vessels to ventricles. (Image courtesy of FluidForm.)

How FRESH Technology Works

Current bioprinting techniques require UV light and high temperatures to work. FRESH eliminates those necessities by enabling the 3D printing of cells and proteins using natural gelation chemistry—enzymatic, ionic, pH—via its LifeSupport bath. Bioinks and other materials are injected into the bath, which supports and rehydrates the materials for extrusion while ensuring that no deformation or collapse occurs. Unlike printing in air, this bath triggers chemical interactions to happen naturally. After printing, the hydrogel is melted away using heat.

LifeSupport enables different materials to be printed together into any geometry without the fidelity of the printed part being affected. Additionally, other proteins can be added to ensure the tissue properly develops. This enables the creation of a tissue structure similar to how the human body builds it.

According to FluidForm: “LifeSupport can be rehydrated in a range of buffers and cell culture media to support multiple cell types and specific bioinks. LifeSupport can also be rehydrated to support the cross-linking and/or gelation of multiple types of bioinks within the same support material.”

Scalability is another FRESH technology feature that FluidForm touts. Many existing bioprinters are only capable of printing something as big as a postage stamp. According to the company, the only limitation is culturing enough cells.

As part of the initial research, Feinberg and his team were able to create a full-sized bioprinted human heart model that mimics the elasticity of sutures and cardiac tissue. (Image courtesy of FluidForm.)

Making Medical Strides

Since the company’s research was published, many investors and big names in the medical field have taken note. In 2021, FluidForm began collaborating with Ethicon, a Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices company, to develop bioprinted tissues with the characteristics of real human tissue.

In June 2022, Hackensack Meridian Health and its Bear’s Den innovation program announced their investment in FluidForm to further advance its tissue technology, as well as surgical repair and drug discovery. In addition, FluidForm has received grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) and has established a pilot biofabrication line.

The LulzBot Bio Printer is certified to use FRESH technology. (Image courtesy of LulzBot.)

FluidForm has already made its technology available commercially. Fargo Additive Manufacturing Equipment 3D, formerly Aleph Objects, launched its LulzBot Bio Printer, a FRESH-certified printer, in 2019. This open-hardware machine is compatible for use with bioinks collagen and other soft biomaterials. Designed for accessibility, its main target is research applications in the fields of tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and cosmetic and pharmaceutical testing.

CELLINK also enables the use of FRESH on its BIO X printer. Using FRESH enables tissue engineers to 3D bioprint at higher resolutions and with complex geometries. Instead of spending time optimizing inks for the print, engineers can skip that step and instantly start printing tissue and scaffolds.

Future Industry Applications

While it may still be a few years before FRESH technology receives Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for use in actual implants, FluidForm continues to look ahead and hone its technologies. For other industries—especially those that require lightweighting applications, such as automotive and aerospace—the use of lightweight silicone and other unmodified polymers to create complex designs may hold new potential.

High-performance polymers continue to be a trend. Along with being lighter and more cost-effective, they are often faster to produce and can be made in more complex shapes. With all their benefits, using traditional stereolithography (SLA) or Digital Light Processing (DLP) to print them comes with a few downsides. These polymers typically are modified, require the addition of a costly pigment, have a low viscosity and don’t allow for multi-material printing.

FRESH technology enables users to print with various polymers and elastomers that are unmodified. This ensures that they maintain their natural properties and also enables different materials to be printed together. Thermoplastic filaments and resins are easier to work with in standard printers but may not have the desired qualities of a thermoset. Since thermoset is a polymer-based material, it can be printed with FRESH. Thermosets tend to be stronger and stiffer thanks to their crosslinked nature. When a manufacturer wants an end product that is resistant to softening and losing its shape like may occur with a thermoplastic, FRESH may be a promising option.

Foam is another trending material that is difficult to create. Although foam has already shown promise in uses such as football helmets and shoes, FluidForm believes that its FRESH technology may provide advances in creating complex foams. The technology’s ability to print in all directions means that it can create open-cell foams with truss and node architecture. The ability to increase void space allows for drastically softer foam with the ability to tailor elasticity and compression while maintaining long-term mechanical performance.

As robotics continue to develop, soft robotics is becoming a hot topic. FRESH may offer new opportunities to create biohybrid materials that enable enhanced sensing with biosensors and nanomaterials. FRESH also allows for nonplanar printing—printing parts with curved layers. This novel technique further provides freedom to create unique geometries, including those that require an anisotropic property, such as 3D glasses.

For manufacturers reverse engineering a part or developing a new one that may work better, FluidForm’s evolving technology might be worth keeping tabs on.

Interested in other 3D printing innovations? Check out This Company Is Shaking Up Additive Manufacturing with Ultrasonics and FGF Printing Advances May Be a Game Changer.

The post A FRESH Take on Liquid Possibilities in 3D Printing appeared first on Engineering.com.

May the fourth be with you!

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To meet this demand, many companies are developing 3D-printed limbs for a diversity of indications. An Illinois-based start-up called Psyonic is looking to stand out with its touch-sensing capabilities and tough, durable device. In September 2021, the company released its first prosthetic, the Affinity Hand, a multi-articulated limb available in the United States and covered under Medicare.

The Ability Hand is made from silicone and rubber to minimize costs and increase functionality. Unlike traditional prosthetics made from plastic, wood or metal, a limb made of silicone and rubber is more resilient to everyday wear and tear. If a patient were to fall or hit their limb against an object, it is no longer susceptible to snapping from such random events—a significant inconvenience for current prosthetic users.

The Ability Hand can use multiple grips to handle objects. Touch sensors in the device’s fingers deliver vibration-based feedback to the wearer to provide information on how tightly an object is gripped. (Image courtesy of Psyonic.)

The Ability Hand is a multi-articulated prosthetic designed to be more user-friendly. The goal of the design was to allow patients to receive touch-based feedback to improve the functionality and longevity of the limb. Currently, most prosthetics do not deliver tactile feedback, making it complicated to maneuver a device without damaging items. Instead, the Ability Hand uses six different pressure sensors in each finger to send vibrations to the user that mimic the sense of touch. The vibrations indicate when someone has touched an item and with how much force. This lets users gently grip something like food or firmly grip breakable objects like a ceramic mug. The overall process more closely mimics biological hand movement and improves the functionality of the limb relative to traditional prosthetics.

Aadeel Akhtar, founder of Psyonic, explained: “When approaching a problem like this, usually people go either super cheap and not functional, or very expensive and highly functional. We wanted something that is the best of both worlds.”

The Ability Hand’s fingers are made of rubber and silicone to further improve the limb’s grip capabilities. All five fingers can flex and extend, the thumb rotates, and the hand includes a full range of motion. The prosthetic can also respond quickly to the user, as the fingers can close in 0.2 seconds, reducing latency or delays that impact functionality. The entire limb is powered by brushless DC motors, commonly used in drone technology.

“We wanted a fully 3D-printed limb to start,” said Akhtar. “We talked with more than one hundred clinicians and patients and learned that even the most expensive limbs were breaking from random use. Plastic components would frequently snap if a patient fell.”

In designing its 3D-printed prosthetic, the Psyonic team wanted to ensure that the final product would be able to withstand daily use and the random accidents that can occur in everyday life. Currently, the device is 3D printed and features carbon fiber to strengthen each prosthetic component. The company 3D prints molds to generate the parts of the hand using low-cost silicone and rubber. Most of the 3D printing process remains proprietary, but the final device is water resistant up to the wrist and is custom built to a patient’s specifications. To ensure that a patient can readily use their device and its associated app, the limb features USB-C fast charging to allow the prosthetic to be fully charged in one hour.

The prosthetic is operated by the user through one of two methods. First, the patient or a physician can manipulate the hand and modify its grip using a mobile app, communicating with the device via Bluetooth. Second, patients can undergo targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR) surgery to rewire the nerves above the elbow that would typically connect to the wrist and instead connect them to existing muscles. These rewired muscles can then control the prosthetic, including opening and closing the hand, making a fist, or using any of the 32 grips made possible with the device. The company is continuing to add grip configurations into the software.

The Ability Hand was also designed to support further research and development.

“We have an API for researchers to evaluate torque, velocity, and position control over all the motors and sensors using either a wired or Bluetooth connection,” said Akhtar.

An app is available for both clinicians and patients to control the prosthetic grips and get real-time feedback from the device. The goal is to accelerate research in artificial limb development and support the further advancement of the technology.

Features of the Ability Hand. (Image courtesy of Psyonic.)

Psyonic was founded by Akhtar to realize his lifelong goal of expanding access to 3D-printed prosthetics. Akhtar’s initial inspiration came when he was seven years old, visiting Pakistan with his family. During their trip, Akhtar met someone with a limb difference for the first time—a young girl. Unfortunately, the girl and her family could not afford a prosthetic, and Akhtar decided that he would commit to one day developing an affordable artificial limb.

The research that led to the creation of the Ability Hand began during Akhtar’s Ph.D. work. As part of his graduate studies, Akhtar and another student, Mary Nguyen, partnered with the Range of Motion Project to test the prototype of the Ability Hand in Quito, Ecuador. Using the device, a patient there, Juan Suquillo, could pinch his thumb and forefinger together for the first time in 35 years. Witnessing this powerful experience encouraged Akhtar to dedicate his life to developing and expanding this technology.

Following the trip, Akhtar founded Psyonic, which received initial start-up funding by winning the Cozad New Venture Challenge at the University of Illinois and the Samsung Research Innovation Prize. Since then, both the company and its founder have received numerous awards, including Akhtar being named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in healthcare in 2016 and one of MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 in 2021.

Aadeel Akhtar, founder of Psyonic, with the Ability Hand. (Image courtesy of Psyonic.)

Other 3D-printed upper arm prosthetics are currently available on the market to aid patients around the world living with a limb difference. However, less progress has been made with 3D-printed lower limb devices. Psyonic is interested in expanding its technology into these applications and is currently working on the development of the Ability Leg.

Beyond its electromyography (EMG)-enabled devices, the company is also exploring ways to integrate prosthetics with existing bone. For example, if a patient loses a finger, can a prosthetic be designed that would integrate into the remaining bone to facilitate the complete operation of the device by the user, closely mimicking biological fingers?

The final area of research being pursued at Psyonic is a further extension of Akhtar’s Ph.D. work. During his studies, Akhtar explored how electrical stimulation of the skin generates diverse feelings. Currently, Psyonic is working on how it can modulate the electrical signaling from the Ability Hand to stimulate the feelings of touch, pain, tingling and more. The research is still in its early stages but shows promise for improving the functionality and quality of life of individuals with limb differences.

3D-printed limbs have long been hailed as game changers in the field of medicine. 3D printing allows physicians to customize prosthetics for patients and improve the functionality of artificial limbs while minimizing costs. As many companies look to innovate within this space, everyone from people with limb differences to users of virtual reality will be able to benefit from these advances in technology. 

The post Let’s Get Physical: A New Prosthetic Restores People’s Sense of Touch appeared first on Engineering.com.

3D printing is taking on an increasingly prominent role in the dental industry. At LMT Lab Day 2022 held in late February in Chicago, additive manufacturing companies unveiled several new technologies designed to help practitioners and patients alike. Let’s take a closer look at some of them.

Formlabs and Medit Partner to Facilitate Chairside 3D Printing

One of the hurdles in getting dental practices to adopt digital processes is making the technologies easier and more accessible. 3D printing company Formlabs has partnered with Medit, a global provider of dental 3D scanners, to enhance chairside 3D printing.

The Medit Link dental platform—an integrated system that enables dental clinics and labs to communicate and collaborate—can now integrate with Formlabs’ PreForm app, a software integration tool that helps prepare CAD designs. Dentists can now 3D print directly from Medit Link through the app, increasing convenience and speed in creating dental products for a patient while they’re still in the chair. Dental professionals can use Medit intraoral scanners to scan patients’ teeth. With the PreForm app, they can easily convert those scans into 3D models and appliances and print them with a Formlabs Form 3B+ printer.

“Together, we’ve created a complete chairside workflow that addresses these barriers to make the technology more accessible, with the ultimate goal of unlocking the benefits of dental 3D printing for both providers and patients,” said David Lakatos, chief product officer at Formlabs.

The partners plan to pair Formlabs products such as Formlabs Dental with Medit i500 and i700 intraoral scanners to bring reliable and easily integrated 3D printing to the dental office—without the need for extensive training or other costs.

“The integration of Formlabs and Medit combines best-in-class 3D printers with the industry’s fastest intraoral scanner. This will inevitably bring about great synergy, resulting in easier access to a complete chairside solution,” said Inhaeng Cho, Medit’s chief strategy officer.

3D Systems and Saremco Enter Partnership to Accelerate Digital Dentistry

Another partnership announced at Lab Day 2022 was between 3D Systems and Saremco Dental AG. 3D Systems already operates in the dental field through its NextDent subsidiary, which provides 3D products and services to the sector. Saremco Dental AG’s expertise is in the development and production of light-curing resins for the industry. The companies are partnering to use additive manufacturing technologies to produce permanent crowns that are specific to a patient, with increased accuracy and speed while lowering total costs.

Saremco will provide its CROWNTEC composite resin, recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for use in 3D Systems’ NextDent 5100 dental 3D printer. Saremco describes CROWNTEC as a new generation of composite resin that can be used to 3D print biocompatible products, including crowns, inlays, veneers and artificial teeth for dentures. With the NextDent printer, the material can be leveraged by labs and clinics to produce dental restorations that are 30 percent stronger than previous generations of crown and bridge materials.

“Our goal is to enable dental professionals to become more efficient and by doing so, ultimately improve patient outcomes,” said Stef Vanneste, vice president and general manager, dental, 3D Systems. “As we innovate to meet our customers’ application needs, this strategic partnership plays a key role in helping to enhance our materials portfolio. [Saremco’s] CROWNTEC material is a strong complement to our NextDent material portfolio, and is yet another step in helping dental professionals improve patient outcomes.”

CROWNTEC joins 3D Systems’ roster of 30 NextDent resins, including the Class IIa biocompatible C&B Micro Filled Hybrid, which is used for creating provisional crowns, bridges and artificial teeth. CROWNTEC gives labs and clinics an aesthetic option for those products—and it can also be used to make permanent crowns.

Xact Metal Introduces Metal Printing Innovations

Xact Metal, a metal 3D printing company, announced at Lab Day 2022 that it is expanding its 3D-printed metal dental applications with its recently introduced XM200G single- and dual-laser metal 3D printers.

The printers feature a large 150 mm by 150 mm build area, rapid and precise galvanometer mirrors, F-Theta lens optics and dental-specific parameters at 50 µm laser spot size and 20 µm build layers. This makes the printers optimal for creating products such as crowns, bridges and removable partial dentures.

Xact Metal is offering the printers as a package with technologies from Materialise and BEGO Medical. The printers will come equipped with Materialise’s Pre-Print Dental Module software. This will enable a workflow specialized to dentistry that will include classification, error repair, print positioning, optimized support structures and part nesting during the design and optimization of dental components. The module is fully integrated into the Materialise Magics intuitive software for Xact Metal to facilitate the 3D printing process. As a result, dental practitioners and labs will be able to edit and repair files, program the print bed and formulate instructions for the printer.

In addition, Xact Metal’s printers will be able to use two certified BEGO Medical dental powders. Mediloy S-Co is a cobalt-based alloy for printing crowns, bridges, denture frameworks, implant prostheses and other orthodontic procedures, while WIRONIUM RP is a nonprecious metal biocompatible and corrosion-resistant alloy for specific use in creating removable partial denture frameworks.

“At Xact Metal, we’re taking the essential specs of metal 3D printing and combining them with breakthrough technology to establish a new level of price and performance for the dental industry,” said Juan Mario Gomez, CEO of Xact Metal. “We have developed a high-performing and complete solution for dental labs…. The package [including Materialise and BEGO Medical products] will make it simple for dental labs to begin printing quickly and for a low cost.”

How digital dentistry works and its future in the dental field.

3D printing is having a significant impact on the way dental practices conduct their business and care for patients. In fact, 63 percent of the respondents to LMT’s 2021 3D Printing Survey say they have incorporated 3D printing into their practices, whether in-house or through outsourcing.

The technology can help practices and labs reduce costs, work more efficiently and create better quality products in less time than conventional methods. From dentures to crowns to nightguards to sports mouthguards, the technology is enabling dental offices to improve the care they provide in their clinics.

Mass customization allows dental products to be made with improved accuracy and speed while retaining the ability to customize each item to meet the unique needs of the patient. Desktop printers are allowing dental practices of any size to integrate on-demand manufacturing into their businesses on-site. And 3D-printed products created at a high degree of accuracy and speed helps providers give better care. For example, the conventional process for creating a denture can often take weeks and involve a fair amount of back-and-forth between the dental office and the dental lab—while a desktop 3D printer could create the product in the same day.

If the partnerships and products showcased at Lab Day 2022 are any indication, the shift to digital dentistry is gaining momentum and the field is constantly innovating—which could make your next visit to the dentist a much more comfortable experience.

Read more about the technologies used in digital dentistry at Formlabs Announces the Form 3+ 3D Printer.

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