Advanced Materials

3D Printed Material 10X Stronger Than Steel

A new way of 3D printing internal material structures that make them up to ten times stronger than steel at five percent of steel’s density.

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“Metamaterials” Allow You to 3D Print Simple Machines

“Metamaterials” Allow You to 3D Print Simple Machines

Materials with specially-designed internal microstructures deform to create macroscopic motion.

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Flexible “Willow Glass” Sheeting

Flexible “Willow Glass” Sheeting

Launched this summer, Corning’s Willow Glass is an ultra-thin (0.1mm), flexible, roll-processable glass sheet intended for use in next-generation display devices. From an applications point of view, it offers the possibility of curved displays and/or interfaces that wrap around object or devices, and from a manufacturing point of view, the possibility of producing display devices using continuous “roll-to-roll” assembly, kind of like how bulk paper goods are processed.

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Cool Superhydrophobic Surface Demos

Cool Superhydrophobic Surface Demos

A finger rubbed in superhydrophobic aerogels and submerged in water takes on a decidedly T-1000-esque appearance. And a droplet of water on a piece of paper treated with the same substance behaves more like a drop of mercury on a piece of glass. Definitely worth a click and a few eyeball-seconds.

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How-To: Make Conductive Ink

How-To: Make Conductive Ink

There are so many cool projects out there that use conductive ink, but where to get the ink? Now you can DIY that part, too!

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In the Maker Shed: ShapeLock

In the Maker Shed: ShapeLock

The first time I used ShapeLock was my hotel room at Maker Faire: Bay Area. Ever since then I have been hooked to this wonderful material. But “what is it” you ask?

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How-To: Make Your Own Aerogel

How-To: Make Your Own Aerogel

The folks at Aerogel.org are serious about it: The “Make” section of their exhaustive “open source aerogel” site will teach you how to make high-quality monolithic aerogel the way the pros do it, from building your our own supercritical drying apparatus (“manuclave” is their neologism), to mixing up the wet ingredients, to actually performing the […]

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