An astronaut's guide to out-of-Earth manufacturing

mprovising new stuff from the stuff you have is part of an astronaut's job description—think Apollo 13's crew refitting CO2 filters to save their own lives, or stranded Mark Watney in The Martian, feeding himself on the ...

Engineers 3-D-print a miniaturized spectrometer

The miniaturization of spectroscopic measurement devices opens novel information channels in medical science and consumer electronics. Scientists of the University of Stuttgart, Germany, developed a 3-D-printed miniature ...

'Harvesting' microparticles from a liquid jet

Microspheres, microlenses and microfibers can now be produced by irradiating a fluid jet with ultraviolet light. The result is that locally, a polymer of a desired shape is formed. This process, called in-air photopolymerization, ...

New NIST test bed makes the 'digital thread' accessible

Researchers at the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have launched the Smart Manufacturing Systems (SMS) Test Bed. The test bed is an innovative model factory that will facilitate ...

Lowering the heat makes new materials possible while saving energy

A new technology developed by Penn State researchers, called Cold Sintering Process (CSP), has opened a window on the ability to combine incompatible materials, such as ceramics and plastics, into new, useful compound materials, ...

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