Extrusion bioprinting's resolution and the shear stress it puts on cells rise and fall together, because both trace back to forcing bioink through a nozzle wall. Light-based printing sidesteps the nozzle entirely, but the cell's own 10-20 micron diameter sets the finest scale either method can resolve.
Sep 28, 2026
Aprecia's Spritam opened the door to 3D-printed medicine in 2015. A decade of polypill research has pushed drug-loading efficiency past 96 percent, work that is now waiting on the regulatory pathway that would let a second printed drug follow Spritam to market.
Sep 25, 2026
A PolyJet printer does not commit to one plastic and stay there. It jets multiple photopolymer resins droplet by droplet under UV light, so a single part can shift from rubber-soft to hard as it prints, the way a paint mixer blends two cans into every shade in between.
Sep 22, 2026
Molten thermoplastic flows the moment it clears its melting point. Glass resists a printer for a different reason: its viscosity crosses several orders of magnitude before it counts as printable at all, and two MIT projects have found opposite ways through that window.
Sep 19, 2026
Additive manufacturing lets a company store a spare part as a CAD file instead of a warehoused object, printing it only when a machine breaks down. The economics only favor that trade for a specific slice of a parts catalog, and a recent cost study puts a number on exactly how narrow that slice is.
A twice-monthly newsletter rounding up our latest coverage, from AppliedAM.
AppliedAM accepts research write-ups, case studies, and technical explainers from practitioners across the AM community.
Grad student and AM professional Ayman Ahdy is using rare access to wire laser metal deposition equipment to study bimetallic printing, joining mild steel and stainless steel for cheaper, corrosion-resistant marine parts.
Read nowJun 14, 2026
Graduate student Rebecca Kaaya Nansubuga is developing an open-source 3D-printed orthopedic surgical positioning table, bringing a $200,000 piece of operating room equipment within reach of any facility with a desktop printer.
Aug 30, 2026
The FDA built its first dedicated review pathway for additive manufactured devices in 2017, after more than a hundred 3D-printed implants had already reached patients under general device rules, and the point-of-care question it raised in 2021 is still open.
Aug 28, 2026
Rail operators, navies, and heavy industry are starting to store spare parts as CAD files instead of steel, printing them only when a machine breaks. The economics only work for some parts, but where they work, they upend how a maintenance budget gets spent.
Peer-reviewed findings from AppliedAM's contributors and the wider AM research community.
Market moves, new capacity, and the business side of additive manufacturing.
Real production runs and real lessons from teams using AM at scale.
Explainers and analysis on the technology, economics, and practice of AM.
Sep 3, 2026
PEEK is semicrystalline, and getting a strong print comes down to managing that chemistry deliberately: the chamber temperature it needs, the cooling rate that lets it crystallize, and the mechanical properties that follow from getting both right.
Sep 2, 2026
A shape memory polymer can be printed flat, folded into a shape that has no business holding still, and left alone until heat or light tells it to unfold into the part it was actually designed to be.
Sep 2, 2026
Thermal debinding has kept 3D-printed ceramic parts on a 20-to-100-hour timeline for years, because burning off resin too fast cracks the part. A new vacuum-and-graphite-felt process from UT Dallas cuts that to under 30 minutes.
Sep 1, 2026
Cold spray fires metal powder fast enough to fuse on impact alone, letting shops rebuild titanium and aluminum aircraft parts without a heat-affected zone, but proving that impact actually produced a sound bond is still the harder half of the problem.
Insights · Aug 26, 2026
Insights · Aug 24, 2026
Insights · Aug 19, 2026
Insights · Aug 13, 2026
Insights · Aug 9, 2026
Insights · Aug 3, 2026
Insights · Jul 27, 2026
Insights · Jul 20, 2026
A twice-monthly newsletter rounding up our latest research, industry, case studies, and insights coverage - straight from the AppliedAM editorial team.
