to create 3D printed

 

Additive manufacturing of food is being developed by squeezing out food, layer by layer, into three-dimensional objects. A large variety of foods are appropriate candidates, such as chocolate and candy, and flat foods such as crackers, pasta,^[115] and pizza.^[116][117] NASA is looking into the technology in order to create 3D printed food to limit food waste and to make food that is designed to fit an astronaut's dietary needs.^[118] In 2018, Italian bioengineer Giuseppe Scionti developed a technology allowing the production of fibrous plant-based meat analogues using a custom 3D bioprinter, mimicking meat texture and nutritional values.^[119][120]

Fashion industry

3D printing has entered the world of clothing, with fashion designers experimenting with 3D-printed bikinis, shoes, and dresses.^[121] In commercial production, Nike used 3D printing to prototype and manufacture the 2012 Vapor Laser Talon football shoe for players of American football, and New Balance has 3D manufactured custom-fit shoes for athletes.^[121][122] 3D printing has come to the point where companies are printing consumer grade eyewear with on-demand custom fit and styling (although they cannot print the lenses). On-demand customization of glasses is possible with rapid prototyping.^[123]

Vanessa Friedman, fashion director and chief fashion critic at The New York Times, says 3D printing will have a significant value for fashion companies down the road, especially if it transforms into a print-it-yourself tool for shoppers. "There's real sense that this is not going to happen anytime soon," she says, "but it will happen, and it will create dramatic change in how we think both about intellectual property and how things are in the supply chain". She adds: "Certainly some of the fabrications that brands can use will be dramatically changed by technology."^[124]

Applications of 3D printing

 3D printing or additive manufacturing has been used in manufacturing, medical, industry and sociocultural sectors (e.g. Cultural Heritage) to create successful commercial technology.^[112] More recently, 3D printing has also been used in the humanitarian and development sector to produce a range of medical items, prosthetics, spares and repairs.^[113] The earliest application of additive manufacturing was on the toolroom end of the manufacturing spectrum. For example, rapid prototyping was one of the earliest additive variants, and its mission was to reduce the lead time and cost of developing prototypes of new parts and devices, which was earlier only done with subtractive toolroom methods such as CNC milling, turning, and precision grinding.^[114] In the 2010s, additive manufacturing entered production to a much greater extent.

additive manufacturing systems

 

As of December 2017, additive manufacturing systems were on the market that ranged from $99 to $500,000 in price and were employed in industries including aerospace, architecture, automotive, defense, and medical replacements, among many others. For example, General Electric uses high-end 3D printers to build parts for turbines.^[99] Many of these systems are used for rapid prototyping, before mass production methods are employed. Higher education has proven to be a major buyer of desktop and professional 3D printers which industry experts generally view as a positive indicator.^[100] Libraries around the world have also become locations to house smaller 3D printers for educational and community access.^[101] Several projects and companies are making efforts to develop affordable 3D printers for home desktop use. Much of this work has been driven by and targeted at DIY/maker/enthusiast/early adopter communities, with additional ties to the academic and hacker communities.^[102]

Computed axial lithography is a method for 3D printing based on computerised tomography scans to create prints in photo-curable resin. It was developed by a collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.^{[103][104][105]} Unlike other methods of 3D printing it does not build models through depositing layers of material like fused deposition modelling and stereolithography, instead it creates objects using a series of 2D images projected onto a cylinder of resin.^[103][105] It is notable for its ability to build an object much more quickly than other methods using resins and the ability to embed objects within the prints.^[104]

Liquid additive manufacturing (LAM) is a 3D printing technique which deposits a liquid or high viscose material (e.g. liquid silicone rubber) onto a build surface to create an object which then is vulcanised using heat to harden the object.^{[106][107][108]} The process was originally created by Adrian Bowyer and was then built upon by German RepRap.^{[106][109][110]}

A technique called programmable tooling uses 3D printing to create a temporary mold, which is then filled via a conventional injection molding process and then immediately dissolved.^[111]

liquid materials using different sophisticated technologies

 

Other methods cure liquid materials using different sophisticated technologies, such as stereolithography. Photopolymerization is primarily used in stereolithography to produce a solid part from a liquid. Inkjet printer systems like the Objet PolyJet system spray photopolymer materials onto a build tray in ultra-thin layers (between 16 and 30 μm) until the part is completed.^[92] Each photopolymer layer is cured with UV light after it is jetted, producing fully cured models that can be handled and used immediately, without post-curing. Ultra-small features can be made with the 3D micro-fabrication technique used in multiphoton photopolymerisation. Due to the nonlinear nature of photo excitation, the gel is cured to a solid only in the places where the laser was focused while the remaining gel is then washed away. Feature sizes of under 100 nm are easily produced, as well as complex structures with moving and interlocked parts.^[93] Yet another approach uses a synthetic resin that is solidified using LEDs.^[94]

In Mask-image-projection-based stereolithography, a 3D digital model is sliced by a set of horizontal planes. Each slice is converted into a two-dimensional mask image. The mask image is then projected onto a photocurable liquid resin surface and light is projected onto the resin to cure it in the shape of the layer.^[95] Continuous liquid interface production begins with a pool of liquid photopolymer resin. Part of the pool bottom is transparent to ultraviolet light (the "window"), which causes the resin to solidify. The object rises slowly enough to allow resin to flow under and maintain contact with the bottom of the object.^[96] In powder-fed directed-energy deposition, a high-power laser is used to melt metal powder supplied to the focus of the laser beam. The powder fed directed energy process is similar to Selective Laser Sintering, but the metal powder is applied only where material is being added to the part at that moment.^[97][98]

Some methods melt or soften the material to produce the layers

 

Some methods melt or soften the material to produce the layers. In fused filament fabrication, also known as fused deposition modeling (FDM), the model or part is produced by extruding small beads or streams of material which harden immediately to form layers. A filament of thermoplastic, metal wire, or other material is fed into an extrusion nozzle head (3D printer extruder), which heats the material and turns the flow on and off. FDM is somewhat restricted in the variation of shapes that may be fabricated. Another technique fuses parts of the layer and then moves upward in the working area, adding another layer of granules and repeating the process until the piece has built up. This process uses the unfused media to support overhangs and thin walls in the part being produced, which reduces the need for temporary auxiliary supports for the piece.^[85] Recently, FFF/FDM has expanded to 3-D print directly from pellets to avoid the conversion to filament. This process is called fused particle fabrication (FPF) (or fused granular fabrication (FGF) and has the potential to use more recycled materials.^[86]

Powder Bed Fusion techniques, or PBF, include several processes such as DMLS, SLS, SLM, MJF and EBM. Powder Bed Fusion processes can be used with an array of materials and their flexibility allows for geometrically complex structures,^[87] making it a go to choice for many 3D printing projects. These techniques include selective laser sintering, with both metals and polymers, and direct metal laser sintering.^[88] Selective laser melting does not use sintering for the fusion of powder granules but will completely melt the powder using a high-energy laser to create fully dense materials in a layer-wise method that has mechanical properties similar to those of conventional manufactured metals. Electron beam melting is a similar type of additive manufacturing technology for metal parts (e.g. titanium alloys). EBM manufactures parts by melting metal powder layer by layer with an electron beam in a high vacuum.^[89][90] Another method consists of an inkjet 3D printing system, which creates the model one layer at a time by spreading a layer of powder (plaster, or resins) and printing a binder in the cross-section of the part using an inkjet-like process. With laminated object manufacturing, thin layers are cut to shape and joined. In addition to the previously mentioned methods, HP has developed the Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) which is a powder base technique, though no lasers are involved. An inkjet array applies fusing and detailing agents which are then combined by heating to create a solid layer.^[91]

Processes and printers

 

There are many different branded additive manufacturing processes, that can be grouped into seven categories:^[80]

• Vat photopolymerization
• Material jetting
• Binder jetting
• Powder bed fusion
• Material extrusion
• Directed energy deposition
• Sheet lamination

Schematic representation of the 3D printing technique known as fused filament fabrication; a filament a) of plastic material is fed through a heated moving head b) that melts and extrudes it depositing it, layer after layer, in the desired shape c). A moving platform e) lowers after each layer is deposited. For this kind of technology additional vertical support structures d) are needed to sustain overhanging parts

The main differences between processes are in the way layers are deposited to create parts and in the materials that are used. Each method has its own advantages and drawbacks, which is why some companies offer a choice of powder and polymer for the material used to build the object.^[81] Others sometimes use standard, off-the-shelf business paper as the build material to produce a durable prototype. The main considerations in choosing a machine are generally speed, costs of the 3D printer, of the printed prototype, choice and cost of the materials, and color capabilities.^[82] Printers that work directly with metals are generally expensive. However less expensive printers can be used to make a mold, which is then used to make metal parts.^[83]

ISO/ASTM52900-15 defines seven categories of additive manufacturing (AM) processes within its meaning: binder jetting, directed energy deposition, material extrusion, material jetting, powder bed fusion, sheet lamination, and vat photopolymerization.^[84]

The first process where three-dimensional material is deposited to form an object was done with material jetting^[25] or as it was originally called particle deposition. Particle deposition by inkjet first started with continuous inkjet technology (CIT) (1950s) and later with drop-on-demand inkjet technology (1970s) using hot-melt inks. Wax inks were the first three-dimensional materials jetted and later low temperature alloy metal was jetted with CIT. Wax and thermoplastic hot-melts were jetted next by DOD. Objects were very small and started with text characters and numerals for signage. An object must have form and can be handled. Wax characters tumbled off paper documents and inspired a liquid metal recorder patent to make metal characters for signage in 1971. Thermoplastic color inks (CMYK) printed with layers of each color to form the first digitally formed layered objects in 1984. The idea of investment casting with Solid-Ink jetted images or patterns in 1984 led to the first patent to form articles from particle deposition in 1989, issued in 1992.

4D printing

 

Using 3D printing and multi-material structures in additive manufacturing has allowed for the design and creation of what is called 4D printing. 4D printing is an additive manufacturing process in which the printed object changes shape with time, temperature, or some other type of stimulation. 4D printing allows for the creation of dynamic structures with adjustable shapes, properties or functionality. The smart/stimulus responsive materials that are created using 4D printing can be activated to create calculated responses such as self-assembly, self-repair, multi-functionality, reconfiguration and shape shifting. This allows for customized printing of shape changing and shape-memory materials.^[78]

4D printing has the potential to find new applications and uses for materials (plastics, composites, metals, etc.) and will create new alloys and composites that were not viable before. The versatility of this technology and materials can lead to advances in multiple fields of industry, including space, commercial and the medical field. The repeatability, precision, and material range for 4D printing must increase to allow the process to become more practical throughout these industries. 

To become a viable industrial production option, there are a couple of challenges that 4D printing must overcome. The challenges of 4D printing include the fact that the microstructures of these printed smart materials must be close to or better than the parts obtained through traditional machining processes. New and customizable materials need to be developed that have the ability to consistently respond to varying external stimuli and change to their desired shape. There is also a need to design new software for the various technique types of 4D printing. The 4D printing software will need to take into consideration the base smart material, printing technique, and structural and geometric requirements of the design.^[79]

Multi-material 3D printing

 

Efforts to achieve multi-material 3D printing range from enhanced FDM-like processes like VoxelJet, to novel voxel-based printing technologies like layered assembly.^[73]

A drawback of many existing 3D printing technologies is that they only allow one material to be printed at a time, limiting many potential applications which require the integration of different materials in the same object. Multi-material 3D printing solves this problem by allowing objects of complex and heterogeneous arrangements of materials to be manufactured using a single printer. Here, a material must be specified for each voxel (or 3D printing pixel element) inside the final object volume.

The process can be fraught with complications, however, due to the isolated and monolithic algorithms. Some commercial devices have sought to solve these issues, such as building a Spec2Fab translator, but the progress is still very limited.^[74] Nonetheless, in the medical industry, a concept of 3D printed pills and vaccines has been presented.^[75] With this new concept, multiple medications can be combined, which will decrease many risks. With more and more applications of multi-material 3D printing, the costs of daily life and high technology development will become inevitably lower.

Metallographic materials of 3D printing is also being researched.^[76] By classifying each material, CIMP-3D can systematically perform 3D printing with multiple materials.^[77]

Balance and a Rewarding Career Using FlexJobs

For many, the United States Census Bureau study about commuting comes as no surprise. The Bureau's report shares that the average time spent commuting back and forth to work has grown to almost 30 minutes each way. And for most professionals who work in an office setting, giving up five hours of life each week for a commute is pretty standard.

But Sara S. struggled with a lengthy commute combined with long, draining hours. She realized that something had to change. Her work life was taking a toll on her family and personal commitments and pushing her to professional burnout. It was time to take back control of her life.

Committing to Pursuing Balance

Recognizing that she needed a change, Sara looked for remote roles independently. It was only a short time before she realized she was spending more time sourcing legitimate positions than she was applying for and following up on them.

"I had been looking for a remote position for a few months and wasted so much time and energy on fake job leads." Even with the many awareness campaigns, job seekers like Sara are often overwhelmed with the number of scams targeting job seekers. Fortunately, she found FlexJobs, and her job search became streamlined and productive.

Building a Rewarding Career

Sara knew that her next role needed to do more than create balance. She was also determined that it would be a quality position aligned with her career goals. "I didn't want to step backward in my career or be stuck in a position with no growth opportunities."

Fortunately, Sara remained focused on her goals and found a perfect fit in a fully remote role with UnitedHealth Group. Now, Sara can be more present for her family without having to put her career to the side. "I found an organization I can grow with, professionally and personally."

Thriving Throughout All Areas

If you ask Sara how working remotely has affected her life, she'll tell you she's enjoying building better balance in the larger, more apparent areas of her life. "I have more time for the things that are important to me—my kids, my education goals, and my health," she says.

But like most professionals new to remote work, Sara discovered that work flexibility has also enhanced her life in other areas. "I am saving on gas and auto expenses, eating healthier, and I can wear activewear to work, so I go for a jog or do Pilates on my breaks!"

Advocating for Work Flexibility

Now that Sara is thriving in a meaningful role supporting her work-life balance, she has become an advocate for others to make effective changes in their lives. "I have recommended FlexJobs to so many people. It was well worth purchasing the membership."

Her guidance to others looking for more work freedom? Your job search is much more than tailoring a resume and hitting "submit." Sara says, "Don't forget about the value of networking," also stating that, "A flawless resume is useless if no one ever reads it."

Create Your Own Success Story

We hear from job seekers like Sara every day, sharing the enormous impact that flexible work has made on their lives.

If you're ready to build a better work-life balance, take the tour and discover all of the resources that FlexJobs offers to support you in your job search.

Schema structured data for your articles and pages

 

How to manage redirects in Shopify

Redirects are incredibly important and helpful when you are working on your site structure. With a proper redirect, you can send a customer from one URL to another URL without them noticing it. You can use this when you remove pages or products and don’t want people to stumble on dead links.

Shopify has a redirect feature built-in. For one, Shopify automatically adds a redirect when you change the slug of an existing post. You can upload CSV files with your redirects if you need to do large-scale work on your site. Or simply use the URL redirect feature in the navigation section of the admin settings. It’s a straightforward redirect feature with just two fields: one for the old URL you want to redirect and one for the new URL you want to old one to point to.

You can manage redirects via a simple URL redirect feature

Add your Shopify store to Google Search Console

With Analytics, Google Search Console is an essential tool for insights into how your store performs in search. It gives you an idea of how your site does in a technical sense — crawlable, fast, and with valid structured data — and in a visibility sense. How do people see your pages and products, and how do they interact with them? Adding your store to Search Console is a must.

Adding your Shopify store isn’t complicated:

• Open Search Console and log in,
• Add a new property
• Choose either way if you’ve bought your URL from a third party
• Choose the URL way for your examplestore.myshopify.com or examplestore.com URLs you got from Shopify (this is the only way that works)
• Temporarily turn off the password protection (if needed)
• Enter your domain name (including https://)
• Copy the HTML file
• Open your site theme settings
• Click Actions > Edit code
• Find the theme.liquid file and paste in the HTML tag below the head tag
• Save and wait for Google to verify your site

Yoast SEO for Shopify makes it easy to add the verification code to your ecommerce store. You no longer have to touch any code to do that! Simply open the Yoast SEO app, go to the settings and click on Webmaster tools in the sidebar. Find the webmaster tool you want to verify — Google, Baidu, Bing, or something else — and paste in the verification code you received. Click Save, and you are good to go. Check the head of your site to see if the code is correctly added.

How to increase sales in Shopify

When you have your store up and running, the next thing will be getting those customers — and getting them to return and spend more and more. For fledgling stores, it’s not easy to rank products in the search results. You must do more to get noticed and marketing your Shopify store can get you there. Also, improving the UX can help you get those conversions up.

Structured data for your products

 Structured data is essential in this day and age. Structured data is coded in a specific vocabulary — Schema.org in this case — that search engines read to get a better understanding of your website. Structured data describes every part of your website to Google, so it knows all about your authors, articles, types of pages, businesses, and how they connect. Of course, there’s also Schema structured data for products.

With product structured data, you can describe your product to search engines. You’ll tell them about the name of the product, the description, images, SKUs, prices, reviews, and a lot more. Search engines like Google might give your product listings a rich result in return for this valuable information. A rich result is a highlighted search result that features information about prices, availability, and even star reviews. Getting this is essential for online shops.

An example of a rich snippet for a product in Google

Luckily, most themes and Shopify itself output a bit of product structured data. If you need a more complex setup without having to code, you can use one of the structured data apps in the Shopify App Store. But there’s also another possibility: Yoast SEO for Shopify.

Yoast SEO for Shopify output structured data automatically

On WordPress, Yoast SEO has one of the best implementations of structured data out there. We built a complete graph that describes and connects every nook and cranny of your site. Google loves this! Now, we bring part of that to Shopify in our Yoast SEO app. Unfortunately, we can’t include everything we want yet as it is a bit finicky to get everything going in Shopify. Nonetheless, we succeeded and got the essential things in there, and we can now tell Google all about your products and their details.

To get Yoast SEO to output Schema, you need to go through some steps to start. A lot of structured data is added automatically, but we do need your input for some things. First, go to Apps and open the Yoast SEO for Shopify app. Go to the settings and click the Schema tab in the sidebar. Click Site Representation and fill in your store name, upload a logo and fill in the social profiles. Now, your site is ready to rock.

Editing robots.txt to determine what ends up in search engines

 Shopify hired many top-notch SEO people to help expand and improve the platform’s capabilities. One of the things that came out of that team pretty quickly was the new ability to edit the robots.txt file. Having complete control over the robots.txt gives you more ways to control what Google can and can’t do on your store. This takes away one of the most significant issues that SEOs have with Shopify.

The robot.txt file is one of the crucial tools that you can use to optimize your online store or your website. It gives a way to tell Google how you want them to crawl the site. Ideally, you use this to prevent search engines from crawling less critical pages or sections of your site. For huge ecommerce sites, this is very important.

You can find your robots.txt file on https://example.com/robots.txt. Here’s what a standard robots.txt of Shopify looks like:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin
Disallow: /cart
Disallow: /orders
Disallow: /checkout
Disallow: /54914154724/checkouts
Disallow: /54914154724/orders
Disallow: /carts
Disallow: /account
Disallow: /collections/*sort_by*
Disallow: /*/collections/*sort_by*
Disallow: /collections/*+*
Disallow: /collections/*%2B*
Disallow: /collections/*%2b*
Disallow: /*/collections/*+*
Disallow: /*/collections/*%2B*
Disallow: /*/collections/*%2b*
Disallow: /blogs/*+*
Disallow: /blogs/*%2B*
Disallow: /blogs/*%2b*
Disallow: /*/blogs/*+*
Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2B*
Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2b*
Disallow: /*?*oseid=*
Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*
Disallow: /*preview_script_id*
Disallow: /policies/
Disallow: /*/*?*ls=*&ls=*
Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3D*%3Fls%3D*
Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3d*%3fls%3d*
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /apple-app-site-association

Shopify automatically disallows crawling for several parts of the store. It does this pretty well, and most users probably don’t have to touch this file. But for more complex or expansive sites, it might make sense to add some rules to ensure that some more advanced features don’t generate duplicate content in the search results.

You can now edit the robots.txt liquid file by going to your Online Store admin page. From there, go to the theme section and select Actions > Edit code. Find the template section and click Add new template. Click the dropdown and select robots.txt from at the bottom. Click create template, and you can start editing.