Printing insect wings
New Scientist reports on Hod Lipson‘s development of ultra-thin 3D printed wings. I’ve long been a fan of Lipson (his team’s work has inspired some of my own) – and now it seems he’s treading in good old insect territory.
The prototype in the video above can hover untethered for 85 seconds and weighs just 3.89 grams. The 3D printing allows the team to design and build prototypes in a very short time (it takes less than an hour to print), and can achieve film thicknesses of 40-micrometres, and features just 16-micrometres thick. This all means that they can use an experimental, iterative design process to play with concepts and develop an understanding of non-fixed wing motion. In true Cornell style, the team are planning to implement a genetic algorithm so that the wings can undergo a more evolutive process.
To read more on this story, please visit the New Scientist website.
Willy writes:
This is pretty darn cool. UVA is working with Hod and Cornell on 3D printing opportunities for American schools, and I can see some curricular connections with this scientific breakthrough.
Thanks for the post.
July 16th, 2010 at 6:01 pm