Analog telephone calls degraded with distance; digitizing communications allowed errors to be detected and corrected, leading to the Internet. Analog computations degraded with time; digitizing computing again allowed errors to be detected and corrected, leading to microprocessors and PCs. Manufacturing today remains analog; although the designs are digital, the processes are not. I will present emerging research on digitizing fabrication by coding the construction of functional materials, and explore its implications for programming the physical world.

As is now widely recognized, Additive Manufacturing offers many potential advantages to both users and industry, with one of the principal benefits being in the extended levels of design freedom and complexity that can be incorporated into a component. For single material additive manufacturing – most notably the powder bed fusion techniques, which are of particular relevance and interest to industry today – we are beginning to see examples emerging that incorporate complex lattice structures or components that involve a degree of topology optimization or parts consolidation in their design. Though many of these emerging examples are impressive, by their single material nature, they also are limited to being used as “passive” components that require integration into a larger system in order to impart functionality beyond the mainly structural. However, taking the concept of design freedom beyond the geometrical domain to one where multiple materials are simultaneously deposited opens up the potential for the creation of functionalized, “active” devices “printed” in one build operation. However, though simple in concept, this discrete deposition of dissimilar materials throughout the volume of a part creates significant technical challenges, particularly in the deposition of useful materials.

STL has been used as the 'de facto' standard for over 20 years. New file format called AMF was developed in order to overcome numbers of limitations of STL. The author reports his brief interpretations of AMF, applications using the current AMF, and ideas of extensions for next version AMF.

The ability to three-dimensionally interweave biology with nanomaterials could enable the creation of bionic devices possessing unique geometries, properties, and functionalities. The development of methods for interfacing high performance devices with biology could yield breakthroughs in regenerative medicine, smart prosthetics, and human-machine interfaces. Yet, most high quality inorganic materials: 1) are two dimensional, 2) are hard and brittle, and 3) require high crystallization temperatures for maximally efficient performance. These properties render the corresponding devices incompatible with biology, which is: 1) three-dimensional, 2) soft, flexible, and stretchable, and 3) temperature sensitive. These dichotomies are solved by: 1) using 3D scanning and printing for hierarchical, interwoven, multiscale material and device architectures, 2) using nanotechnology as an enabling route for overcoming mechanical discrepancies while revealing new effects due to size scaling, and 3) separating the materials synthesis and 3D printed assembly steps to enable conformal integration of high quality materials with biology. The coupling of 3D printing, novel nanomaterial properties, and 'living' platforms may enable next-generation nano-bio interfaces and 3D printed bionic nanodevices.

A simple linear model of piezo DoD inkjet print-head jetting output (drop speed, volume, momentum) provides an analytic prediction for the frequency response for steady state and initial printing streams from nozzles. The model has been applied to both existing commercial and development inkjet print-head devices.

Industrial continuous inkjet printers are typically used for printing directly onto various types of products such as cans, bottles, and food packaging in production lines. To enable their application to higher speed production lines, their print quality needs to be improved. This means that ink-particle simulation technology is needed to clarify the factors that affect print quality. Print distortion is caused by certain droplet shapes in inkjet breakup and aerodynamic and electric interference among the ink particles flying from the nozzle to the print target. A simulation technique has been developed that enables the breakup into droplets and the trajectories of the ink particles flying from the nozzle to the print target to be calculated with initial data obtained by breakup simulation. Printing of a line of seven dots was simulated well with this simulation code without initial particle input data. Also print distortion was prevented by inserting dummy particles between charged ones in the simulation.

Inkjet technology has been used as a tool to manufacture printed electronics, and the size of the droplet should be properly measured and controlled in order to improve the print quality. To this end, the volume of an inkjet droplet can be measured by assessing an image of the droplet through the use of a visualization system. However, a vision-based method may have accuracy issues, so, in this study, an alternative method is proposed by using a microbalance to measure the droplet mass. The mass and the volume of the droplet are simultaneously measured for verification and comparison. Since the results of the proposed mass measurement method are susceptible to the evaporation of liquid on the microbalance, the accuracy of the measurement is improved by employing an evaporation compensation method. Finally, the effects of the jetting frequency on the measurement uncertainty of the mass and the volume of the droplet are investigated by using several jetting materials with different boiling temperatures.

The quality achieved by inkjet printing is limited by various factors, including the nozzle–substrate throw distance, the substrate velocity, and the occurrence of satellite droplets. Under certain conditions, particularly for large throw distances, unacceptable inaccuracies and defects in drop placement occur. In this paper, a new technique based on high-speed imaging and laser optics is presented that allows the visualization of air currents and droplet movement patterns beneath and in the proximity of a printhead and a moving substrate. The images obtained with this technique provide better temporal and spatial resolution than those obtained in previous studies. Tests with two different commercial printheads show that the entrained airflow depends on the interaction with the stream of printed droplets. The formation of unsteady eddies, particularly between nozzle rows, can result in serious errors in drop placement.

Established additive manufacturing technologies such as Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), stereo lithography (SLA) and Polyjet are commonly used in the creation of functional 3D prototypes. The disadvantage of these technologies is the formation of visible layering, which only can be removed by labor intensive technique such as polishing. We have developed an inkjet based process that is able to 3D print fully transparent products with high smoothness. No post-processing is required, which makes the technology suitable for rapid manufacturing and small series production of optics. In this paper we provide an overview of the manufacturing process in general, as well as some technical details of the inkjet printer and optical material.

Recently, inkjet printing has been gradually replacing some of the offset pressing printing applications since it can easily handle small quantity and large variety printing production. We are offering RICOH Pro VC60000 to cover this customers' requirements on not only plain paper but also offset coated paper. To achieve high print quality especially on offset coated paper, we introduce the key technologies on this system such as SUS based 2-inch wide print head, Pigment based Quick-Drying Ink (QDI), Under Coat Liquid (UCL), Protector Coat Liquid (PCL), and Strong Dryer Unit.