标题: Academician Lu Bingheng: 3D Printing Expands the Possibilities of Manufacturing [打印本页] 作者: admin 时间: 2026-11-4 08:09 标题: Academician Lu Bingheng: 3D Printing Expands the Possibilities of Manufacturing Source: People's Daily.
(, 下载次数: 0)
上传
点击文件名下载附件
Nature recently published an article introducing innovative scientific uses of 3D printing: plant-sample preparation tools, acoustic skull models, chemical flow reactors, catalytic stirring beads, and animal suspension systems for neuroscience can all be customized rapidly. It compared printing to a trekking pole for researchers climbing scientific peaks, quickly turning ideas into physical objects with clear time and cost advantages over traditional manufacturing.
From laboratory tools to key industrial processes, from ground-based manufacturing to in-situ production in space, and from printing parts to printing life, 3D printing continually changes our understanding of manufacturing. As it becomes simpler and more intelligent, it creates complex structures and forms difficult to achieve conventionally. It is both a tool for innovation and an opening for deeper changes in production and everyday life.
Complex Internal Structures at Higher Efficiency and Lower Cost Enable More Agile, Distributed Production
The technical name for 3D printing is additive manufacturing. Traditional subtractive manufacturing removes excess material from a solid. Additive manufacturing builds 3D objects layer by layer from metals, polymers, ceramics, glass, or composites supplied as liquids, powders, or filaments. Its outstanding advantage is making complex internal forms such as honeycombs and lattices more efficiently and cheaply, reducing weight while maintaining strength and improving specific strength and stiffness.
Since emerging in the 1980s, it has developed from one process into intersecting technological routes including photopolymerization, binder jetting, and metal cladding. In 2012, The Economist identified it as a defining technology of the third industrial revolution, suggesting that computers combined with printing could enable more agile, distributed production.
From toys, jewelry, food, and houses to cars, aircraft, and rockets, printing has moved from laboratories into industry and daily life. Data place the 2025 global market at approximately USD 24.2 billion. Industrial applications continue expanding in aerospace, medicine, automotive, and construction. In consumer markets, AI modeling, intelligent slicing, and automatic calibration lower barriers, enabling household customization, designer toys and creative products, and digital education.
Additive manufacturing also changes production organization. Boeing uses global printing centers to produce aircraft parts near where needed, reducing transport costs. EOS and other companies explore pay-per-use parts models that give businesses access to global printing networks without equipment purchases. Maker culture is flourishing as cloud platforms enable design-to-production workflows and flexible supply chains combining online collaborative design with local manufacturing.
Accelerating Applications in Aerospace, Marine Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Electronics, and Biomedicine
In aerospace, printing is an important process for drones, rocket engines, satellite brackets, and other key parts. AVIMETAL uses proprietary titanium alloy powder and topology optimization inspired by bird bones and insect wings to produce integrated high-performance wing supports, reducing weight 40% and increasing endurance 26%. SpaceX's Raptor engines use printing to consolidate hundreds of components into a small number, substantially reducing manufacturing cost.
In marine engineering, printing can produce complex propellers and hull structures, shortening shipbuilding cycles. Beijing Institute of Technology's Chongqing Innovation Center uses arc-based printing to reduce propeller delivery from around three months with conventional casting to ten days. In 2025, the UAE introduced the world's first fully 3D-printed catamaran yacht, made from recycled ocean plastic in just over six days at one-third the cost of conventional yachts.
In nuclear engineering, printing can create reactor core parts, fuel elements, and heat exchangers with complex internal structures to improve safety. U.S. startup Ampera has printed the world's first full-size reactor module, including a silicon-carbide reactor core and pressure vessel. Without mid-cycle refueling or frequent maintenance, it could operate continuously for 30 years.
In electronics, printing promotes miniaturization and multifunctionality in intelligent wearables. In April this year, Rice University developed a microwave printing process that locally heats conductive inks on demand for curing at ambient conditions, offering a route for flexible electronics and biomedical devices.
In biomedicine, printing is moving from alternative fabrication to reshaping treatment. Diagnostic models and surgical guides improve precision; assistive devices extend physical functions; and bone implants, tracheal supports, and vascular stents have entered clinical trials. Xi'an Jiaotong University's personalized biodegradable breast scaffolds use bioinspired microstructural fabrication to bring mechanical properties closer to breast tissue and guide the patient's own tissue growth and healing, advancing precision and personalized treatment.
Space Printing, Cellular Printing, and 4D Printing Extend Manufacturing's Boundaries
Additive manufacturing is moving from Earth into space, from industrial parts toward living constructs, and from static structures to intelligent forms that respond to the environment, crossing spatial, disciplinary, and dimensional boundaries.
Space printing shifts from Earth-made objects used in space toward space-made objects used in space. Instead of shipping complete components, raw materials are transported or space resources used directly. Xi'an Jiaotong University is researching lunar manufacturing, advancing metal-wire direct writing suited to space, nonmetallic material validation, and simulated lunar-regolith brick printing. This year, China first produced a complete metal component in suborbital microgravity, then demonstrated metal additive manufacturing in a 600-km orbit, establishing preliminary system-level validation of key technologies. The International Space Station has also conducted metal printing experiments. These technologies could support on-orbit manufacturing and repair, spare parts, and autonomous deep-space mission logistics, enabling long-term residence and exploration.
Cellular printing aims to recreate human tissues and organs. Bioinks containing living cells, biomaterials, and growth factors are deposited according to a 3D tissue model, then continue growing and fusing in culture or after implantation. The challenge extends beyond accurate forming to complex interactions among cells, materials, and microenvironments. The objective is physiological function as well as shape. Simple tissues such as skin, cornea, and cartilage have entered clinical exploration, with blood vessels and heart valves also progressing. Full-size functional organ transplantation still faces vascularization, cell-survival, and immune-compatibility challenges requiring sustained research.
4D printing gives objects dynamic functions. Conventional printing creates static structures. Combined with smart materials, structures can change shape or function in response to temperature, light, electromagnetic fields, or humidity, gaining adaptive properties. This time-dependent manufacturing is evolving into 4D printing. Its core is autonomous changes in shape, properties, and function under external stimulation. Biomedical applications are advancing rapidly. Expandable vascular stents can deploy into preset shapes after implantation, reducing surgical complexity; adaptive drug-release systems can respond to internal conditions to control dosing more precisely and improve treatment.
Future applications may include tissue-engineering scaffolds, adaptive wings, and magnetically controlled soft robots. Beyond this lies a vision of 5D printing: printed structures gradually become biological tissue in biochemical environments and may even grow into organs. Research into vascularized regenerated bone is underway and could open new routes to artificial organs.
Printing is becoming an important influence on industrial competitiveness, supply-chain resilience, and innovation. The United States introduced an additive manufacturing advancement initiative, while Germany made additive manufacturing a key Industry 4.0 pillar. China treats it as an important direction for intelligent manufacturing and manufacturing strength. Its National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center provides shared technologies for aerospace, high-end equipment, and new productive forces, and is researching lightweight major equipment for air, space, and sea.
Compared with millennia of casting, forging, and welding, or centuries of turning, milling, planing, and grinding, printing is a young manufacturing technology with just over 40 years of history. Integrated manufacturing of multi-material functional structures is a major future direction, requiring further study of how materials, processes, and equipment affect precision and performance. As AI, new materials, biomanufacturing, and space manufacturing expand, printing will become further embedded in production and life, advancing intelligent, green, and personalized manufacturing.
The authors are, respectively, a Chinese Academy of Engineering academician, Xi'an Jiaotong University professor, and Director of the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center; and a professor at Xi'an Jiaotong University's National Key Laboratory of Precision Micro/Nano Manufacturing Technology and Vice Chair of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society's Additive Manufacturing Branch.
AI-translated from an article by Beijixiong on Nanjixiong, originally published on 2026-10-30. Text and images retain the original source attribution. Read the original Chinese article
欢迎光临 All Voice of China 3D Printing (https://www.panda3dp.com/)