Thrilling information to kick off in the present day’s 3D Printing Information Briefs: Formlabs Co-Founder and CEO Max Lobovsky is the recipient of the 2026 AMUG Innovators Award. Then, America Makes introduced a brand new Venture Name, MIT researchers are working to make the efficiency of 3D printed components extra dependable, and the College of Colorado Boulder is advancing campus sustainability with a 3D printing recycling program. Lastly, medical college students in Canada created a modular, low-cost, 3D printed medical coaching device.
Formlabs CEO Max Lobovsky to Obtain AMUG Innovators Award
The Additive Manufacturing Customers Group (AMUG) non-profit group works to teach and advance AM functions for industrial functions, and its annual gathering is designed for each novice and skilled AM customers. The 2026 AMUG Convention shall be held in Reno, Nevada from March 15–19, and it was simply introduced that the recipient of AMUG’s esteemed Innovators Award is Max Lobovsky, the Co-Founder and CEO of Formlabs. Along with fellow MIT graduate college students David Cranor and Natan Linder, Lobovsky developed the Kind 1, the primary reasonably priced, skilled SLA 3D printer. He’s been the CEO for the reason that firm was based in 2012, serving to to information it from a profitable Kickstarter marketing campaign all the best way to double unicorn standing with a valuation over $2 billion. The thought of commercializing an affordable desktop 3D printer took place from Lobovsky’s MIT Media Lab experiences and a category known as “Methods to Make Virtually Something,” and now the corporate has offered greater than 130,000 3D printers. The Innovators Award is given to those that have cultivated improvements that advance the AM trade, and shall be offered to Lobovsky on the 2026 AMUG Convention. In the course of the Innovators Showcase on the occasion, Lobovsky will share his experiences, concepts, and insights with the viewers.
“The AMUG Board of Administrators admires his story. Max was an apparent choice for the Innovators Award, and we have been unanimous in our choice,” mentioned Shannon VanDeren, AMUG president.
“Formlabs has had a dramatic affect on the 3D printing panorama. Its success throughout the non-public {and professional} areas, from people to startups to international trade leaders, has tremendously expanded the adoption, exploration, and consumption of the know-how. Max’s management and tenacity should be acknowledged by our Innovators Award.”
America Makes Publicizes $1.3 Million CATACS Venture Name
Just lately, America Makes and the Nationwide Heart for Protection Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) introduced a brand new challenge name, Corrosion of Additive – Examined At Element Scale (CATACS). Funded by the Workplace of the Beneath Secretary of Protection, Manufacturing Know-how Workplace (OSD ManTech), CATACS is price a complete of $1.3 million and focuses on two important matter areas, with two awards anticipated. We’re regularly seeing the Division of Protection spend money on AM, however as a result of an absence of broadly accepted testing and processing strategies, qualification and certification for steel 3D printed components are nonetheless a difficulty. There are distinctive corrosion issues particular to materials properties produced with AM, so the CATACS program will work to determine and validate a framework for evaluating steel 3D printed half corrosion testing wants. The primary matter space will deal with corrosion efficiency in high-temperature environments, whereas the second is about thermal administration methods, specializing in interactions between AM microstructures and dealing fluids underneath various thermal circumstances throughout stream channels and sophisticated geometries. Initiatives ought to function validated prototypes examined in related settings (TRL 4-7), and present manufacturability by pilot builds and managed processes (MRL 4-7).
“CATACS is about placing actual AM {hardware} to the take a look at in harsh circumstances — as a result of corrosion will discover the weak factors. We’re asking proposers to deliver their finest components, set a plan to emphasize them in excessive environments, and let the ocean assault. That’s CATACS,” mentioned Ben DiMarco, Know-how Transition Director at America Makes.
Submissions are due by 5 pm ET on December 2, 2025. Please reference the request for proposal (RFP) for all the small print and pointers.
MIT Topology Optimization Analysis Makes 3D Printed Elements Extra Dependable
Graphical summary
A pair of MIT researchers are working to make advanced 3D printed components extra dependable by permitting pc designs to include a printer’s limitations, thus attaining higher management over materials efficiency. Topology optimization is a complicated computational design approach that may generate new materials buildings which regularly outperform typical designs, akin to optimizing stiffness and power. Nevertheless, the strategy typically creates designs at very high-quality scales, which some 3D printers can’t reliably reproduce as a result of points like print head measurement weak bonding between layers. So the researchers wished to repair the disconnect between how a fabric is predicted to carry out, and the way it really does. Beforehand, Professor Josephine Carstensen developed an algorithm that embedded details about nozzle measurement into design algorithms, so she and PhD scholar Hajin Kim-Tackowiak used that as a leaping off level to account for 3D printing’s limitations throughout design. In experiments, they discovered that historically designed supplies deviated from their deliberate mechanical efficiency greater than ones designed with the pair’s new approach. Basically, their method could make supplies that end in components with extra dependable efficiency at most densities.
“In the event you don’t account for these limitations, printers can both over- or under-deposit materials by quite a bit, so your half turns into heavier or lighter than supposed. It could additionally over- or underestimate the fabric efficiency considerably. With our approach, you recognize what you’re getting when it comes to efficiency as a result of the numerical mannequin and experimental outcomes align very effectively,” defined Carstensen, Gilbert W. WInslow Affiliate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
To study extra, you’ll be able to learn their revealed paper right here.
CU Boulder Launches Campus 3D Printing Recycling Initiative
A scholar staff on the College of Colorado Boulder’s School of Engineering and Utilized Science helps to extend sustainability on campus, because of a brand new 3D printing recycling program by the Built-in Instructing and Studying Program (ITLP). The thought took place in an engineering classroom, the place the staff was investigating how they may repurpose failed PLA prints and extra help buildings. ITLP engineer Kathryn Penzkover helped the scholars develop their thought right into a working system; after it was additional refined by ITLP summer time intern Eli Publish, a mechanical engineering main, it was included into the ITLP ecosystem. Failed or extra PLA prints are collected and floor into small fragments, earlier than being flattened into sheets with using a T-shirt press. These sheets, that are free for college students to make use of, are used as uncooked materials for laser slicing initiatives. By reworking plastic 3D printing waste into reusable supplies, the system reduces landfill affect, conserves sources, and helps scholar initiatives. The scholar staff additionally gained first place, and the Folks’s Selection Award, within the Scholar Thought Showcase on the 2025 Campus Sustainability Summit, and the Engineering Excellence Fund awarded them a grant to purchase the polymer shredder.
“What excites me most about this challenge is that this began with college students who noticed an issue and determined to resolve it,” mentioned Kai Amey, director of engineering schooling and operations for the ITLP. “By backing their creativity with mentorship and sources, we’re not solely slicing down on waste, we’re displaying future engineers that they’ve the facility to drive actual change. Incorporating recycled plastic into hands-on engineering schooling turns what would have been waste right into a shared useful resource for college students. By making these supplies freely accessible, we’re decreasing our environmental affect whereas giving college students new alternatives to innovate and create.”
Medical College students Develop Low-Price, Modular 3D Printed Coaching Device
Dr. Mark Wheatcroft, a vascular surgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital, teaches residents utilizing Tiffany Ni and Marco Istasy’s knot-tying board.
You won’t notice, however knot-tying is a necessary ability for surgeons, as a well-tied knot helps management bleeding, helps therapeutic, and might cut back the chance of an infection and problems. Whereas lower than preferrred as a result of these don’t simulate real-life conditions, medical college students typically follow typing knots round water bottles, doorknobs, or their very own thighs, as there hasn’t been a standardized studying device…till now. Medical college students Tiffany Ni and Marco Istasy determined to develop a low-cost, modular device that was simple to make, and decided the optimum design for a 3D printed surgical know-tying board whereas at Unity Well being Toronto. In 2020, they impressed Dr. Andrew Brown, an interventional radiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital, with their prototype, and he related the pair with residents and fellows from the Division of Normal Surgical procedure and Vascular Surgical procedure at Unity Well being to achieve end-user suggestions. That very same 12 months, they launched RISE MD (Analysis, Innovation, Simulation in Schooling), a 3D printed medical device startup, and their thought has change into its first commercially accessible studying device, the RISE MD surgical knot-tying board.
The 3D printed board has suction cups on the bottom to safe it to a flat floor, three pegs to stretch a rubber band to follow with completely different pressure gradients, a bar to retailer further string and rubber bands, and modular tubes that may be threaded into the board, simulating a physique cavity. The RISE MD surgical knot-tying board can be partially disassembled for journey, which could be very useful. After Dr. Brown launched Ni and Istasy to Dr. Mark Wheatcroft, a vascular surgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital, he bought a number of of the board to assist prepare his personal college students, and calls the device “compact, versatile and sturdy.” He additionally helps run an annual Nationwide Vascular Bootcamp for surgical residents throughout Canada to allow them to refine their abilities, and at the newest one, he used one of many 3D printed boards to display tying a flat reef knot, which is used to tie off blood vessels or be part of the perimeters of a wound. Ni mentioned seeing surgical residents follow their knots on RISE MD’s device was “gratifying and humbling.”
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