Bleeding-edge 3D printing research from MIT, Oak Ridge, Sichuan University, SUTD, and Tianjin University.
With Formnext only a few weeks away, the additive manufacturing (AM) industry has been holding its collective breath in anticipation of the latest products and partnerships to be announced at one of the world’s largest industrial 3D printing events. Meanwhile, engineering researchers from around the world continue to push the boundaries of what 3D printing technology can do and what it can be used for.
Here’s the latest from the world of AM research.
MIT & TJU 3D print objects with built-in sensing
It’s incredible how many of the newest advancements in 3D printing boil down to software updates rather than hardware overhauls. Case in point: engineers at MIT and Tianjin University (TJU) in China have developed a new software tool dubbed “X-Hinges” that enables users to produce more precise interactive items. The software automatically embeds sensors into 3D models at relevant points of articulation.
For example, when given a model for a robotic hand, X-Hinges embeds sensors at the joints to capture motion data, enabling the 3D printed device to respond more dynamically to users’ intentions.
“It’s kind of like adding a conscious element to everyday objects,” said Jiaji Li, MIT electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) postdoc, in a press release. Li is a senior author on a paper introducing the work. “What you get is objects that better understand how they’re being used and have more ways to respond. In the same way an AI agent is programmed to make certain decisions based on our instructions, these creations have built-in sensing to adaptively react to human touch.”
As a proof of concept, Li and his colleagues used X-Hinges to create a glove for teaching a robot how to grasp blocks. The glove adjusts to the size of a user’s hands, then records how the joints in their fingers bend via sensors before relaying that information to a humanoid robot hand to mimic it.
The researchers say that X-Hinges’ novelty lies in its ability to create more diverse motions compared to past attempts to 3D print responsive everyday objects. “Most methods only allow for one axis of motion, often due to signal interference. X-Hinges enables your 3D printed item to move from three angles,” said lead author Xiang Chang in the same release. “Ultimately, you get a design with the intended movement you want. It also records motion data in each of those areas at the same time, making the device responsive to different kinds of interactions.”
The research is published in an open-access paper on arXiv and will be presented at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) next month.
Oak Ridge 3D prints forms to accelerate nuclear construction
For good or for ill, the push to build more data centers has reinvigorated conversations about nuclear power, but actually building nuclear power plants is notoriously time-intensive. Enter Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the collaborative project “Advanced Composite Formwork for Accelerated High-Precision Nuclear Infrastructure” which brings 3D printed composite forms to nuclear construction.
In addition to ORNL’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, the project included Kairos Power, the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center, Barnard Construction, Airtech Advanced Materials Group, JuggerBot 3D, Additive Engineering Solutions, Haddy, and Tru-Design.
Together, the team developed a digital manufacturing process for producing fiber-reinforced composite forms that can be designed, 3D printed, and delivered in roughly two weeks rather than the six months typically required for conventional steel molds. Moreover, the team says the forms achieved one-sixteenth-inch precision on critical surfaces while withstanding the substantial pressure exerted by the concrete they were built to shape.
“Accelerating advanced nuclear deployment requires rethinking how we build, not just how we design reactors,” said Ahmed Arabi Hassen, group leader of composites innovation at ORNL in a press release. “Conventional formwork is costly, labor-intensive and too slow to support the pace and scale of future nuclear construction. Through large-scale additive manufacturing and strong industry partnerships, we are transforming this bottleneck into an opportunity to build faster, smarter and more affordably.”
The project was recently recognized with the 2026 CAMX Combined Strength Award.
Sichuan University develops liquid metal skin for soft robots
We’ve been covering 3D printed soft robots for years here on engineering.com, but a persistent issue with the technology involves combining pliable, synthetic bodies with metallic pathways that fracture under repeated strain. Now, researchers from Sichuan University in China are tackling this problem by combining stereolithography (SLA) with laser-induced selective metallization.
By exploiting the selective adhesion of a magnetic liquid-metal slurry made from Galinstan and iron particles to the copper patterns produced by laser-induced selective metallization, the researchers have been able to fabricate flexible devices that crawl on flat surfaces and slopes, move across water, shield electromagnetic interference, and restore cut conductive traces with magnetic assistance.
The key to this technique is the incorporation of nanoscopic zinc oxide particles into a photosensitive resin. By selectively activating designated regions on the printed surface using the laser, the researchers can guide electroless copper deposition to create precise metallic patterns that serve as an interfacial layer for the magnetic liquid metal. According to the researchers, the liquid-metal traces measure 58.6 μm across and remain electrically isolated with gaps as narrow as 40.23 μm.
Patterning their magnetic slurry only along the abdomen of a soft, 3D-printed caterpillar, the team used fluctuating magnetic fields to make the robot rhythmically buckle and extend, inching forward 3.5 cm in 15 seconds and climbing a 30° ramp.
Before you get your hopes up about 3D printing an army of liquid-metal-skinned robot caterpillars, the researchers say that they still need to verify that trace metal ions do not leach into human tissue during prolonged contact with acidic sweat or physiological fluids. They also need to develop thin, breathable polymer coatings that protect the exposed liquid traces from physical friction without compromising their flexibility.
The research is published open-access in the International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing.
SUTD enhances low-light photography with 3D printing
A common issue with using digital cameras for low-light photography is the loss of light as it passes through color filters before reaching the sensors. In dim conditions, the result is images with more noise, longer exposure, and increased motion blur. However, a team of researchers at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) has created a new color router designed to minimize this issue, “steering” light to sensors rather than filtering it.
“A Bayer filter separates colors by letting one color through and absorbing the others,” explained professor and lead researcher, Joel Yang from SUTD, in a press release. “A color router instead steers those colors towards the corresponding sensing regions, allowing three times more of the incoming light to be used.”
Earlier versions of color routers relied on high-refractive-index materials such as titanium dioxide or gallium nitride, which bend light strongly but demand precise, multi-step fabrication. The SUTD team instead turned to low-refractive-index materials: ordinary polymers and glasses which are less expensive and easier to scale, but have been overlooked due to their weaker interaction with light.
“Building on our experience with 3D-printed polymer optics, we wanted to explore whether carefully optimized geometry could overcome that limitation,” said lead author and SUTD PhD candidate, Pan Cheng-Feng, in the same release.
The latest example of using 3D printing’s unique geometric flexibility to overcome physical limitations, the team designed a color router in which each unit cell contains four cylindrical nanopillars, printed to precise heights and widths using two-photon polymerization (2PP). Rather than acting as individual color filters, the nanoscopic pillars scatter light such that it interferes collectively, steering red, green, and blue wavelengths toward their target destinations.
“The four pillars act as a coordinated optical system,” said Pan. “A pillar positioned beneath the red sensing region is not simply an independent ‘red pillar’. In our design, the desired routing emerges from the collective response of the complete arrangement.”
According to the researchers, images captured through their router showed improved color fidelity with a third of the exposure time compared to a standard filter-based sensor. Simulations indicated a routing efficiency of almost 90 percent across the visible spectrum, compared to 20-35 percent in an off-the-shelf filter. Printed as arrays of 250,000 unit cells across a one-millimeter square, the routers achieved approximately 70 percent efficiency—a drop the team attributes to fabrication-induced deviations from the ideal design.
In the next phase of their work, the SUTD researchers intend to combine their color router with an image sensor to test how the optical gains translate to improvements in exposure time, noise, and color accuracy. They also want to reduce leakage between color channels, improve performance for light arriving at different angles, and demonstrate repeatable replication.
Their research is published in the journal Nature Communications.
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