Materials Library to put UK at Forefront of 3D Printing

A team of scientists at The University of Nottingham has been awarded a £3.5m grant to develop a  new library of 3D printing materials which could accelerate commercial uptake of the technology.

The team aims to create ‘plug and play’ platforms of materials, material combinations and formulations which could be used to develop 3D printed products in fields as diverse as pharmaceuticals, food, agrochemicals and consumer products.

UK is already at the forefront of this rapidly developing field, but this step will allow UK industry to leapfrog other nations in the area of multi-material, multifunctional 3D printing; the project’s industrial partners - GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever, PPG, Syngenta and Malvern Instruments – have cited the current limited range of materials as an obstacle to the commercial development of 3D printing.

By establishing a suite of new materials from which anyone can select to most appropriate 3D printable material for their product, the limited palette of materials available to industry will be removed and significant barrier to the wider adoption of the technology significantly reduced.

“There is considerable industrial demand for this kind of product in the 3D printing industry, which could help the technology to reach its full potential as a manufacturing platform in the UK,” explains project lead Professor Ricky Wildman from the Faculty of Engineering at The University of Nottingham.

The project will build on the considerable success that The University of Nottingham has had in the fields of 3D printing and high throughput pharmaceutical analysis.

The grant was awarded to Professor Wildman and his team by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).