Filaments, resins, and material properties — what to print with, how it behaves, and what it costs.
One anonymous U.S. defense contract manufacturer just ordered more than CAD $3 million of Ti-6Al-4V powder from Tekna for 2026 — six times its 2025 total — and consumable volume like that is the clearest public signal yet that metal additive manufacturing has moved from prototyping into serial production.
Read the story →Dutch startup Hembased is selling a cold-compostable FDM filament made from fallen palm leaves at 32 euros/kg, claiming 12-month breakdown in a home compost bin — but the category dates to 2013 and the company names no third-party compostability certification.
Concordia researchers print carbon/epoxy laminates flat, then let engineered thermal-expansion mismatch curl them into finished vertical-axis turbine blades on cooling — no curved mold, ~80% lighter than aluminum, and faster-spinning in lab tests.
Trinity College Dublin and Harcourt Technologies 3D printed Ireland's first Portland-cement-free geopolymer — a red-brown binder built largely from bauxite refining residue that preliminary figures peg at roughly 70% less embodied carbon than ordinary concrete.
University of Waterloo chemists paired a purpose-built hydrophilic silicone resin with vat photopolymerization and a non-contact coating step that erases layer lines from the optical surface — producing patient-specific rigid contact lenses in about 20 minutes. Biocompatibility testing is done; in vivo studies are only in preparation.
A JHU team led by Jochen Mueller has mapped the two thermal failure modes that plague aluminum metal extrusion printing and fixed both by varying bed temperature layer-by-layer instead of fighting the nozzle.
Maui's Voltage Vessels is flying and floating 3D-printed drones made from Eclipse X9, a recycled-PETG/basalt-fiber composite, during the 30-nation RIMPAC 2026 exercise.
Protolabs has qualified a biocompatible Medical White resin on Axtra3D's Lumia X1 platform, giving its high-speed SLA line a fifth production material cleared for surgical guides, splints, and dental parts.
EPFL's Soft Materials Laboratory has printed a double-network granular elastomer on ordinary extrusion hardware that is up to 15x tougher and 3x more fatigue-resistant than conventional printed rubbers.
Liqcreate's new Bio-Med Flex resin passes ISO 10993 biocompatibility testing and survives repeated steam sterilization, opening flexible anatomical models and wearable medical fixtures to open-source DLP/LCD/SLA printers.
Nottingham and UC Berkeley researchers show a RAFT polymerization additive slashes runaway heat buildup in volumetric 3D printing resin, cutting temperature rise from 59°C to as low as 3.5°C and preventing parts with 150-micron gaps from fusing.
D-Shape has installed five 3D-printed reef structures in Italy's Monte Argentario Underwater Park, printed in a patented mineral mix engineered to chemically mimic coral skeletons and designed by a team of artists.
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