The inmates are running the asylum

Metamaterials exhibit properties beyond those exhibited by conventional materials in conventional scenarios. These have been investigated both theoretically and experimentally at length. In many cases the underpinning physical understanding of metamaterials has greatly preceded our ability to manufacture constituent structures. However, the development of additive manufacturing techniques gives new possibilities for the fabrication of complex metamaterial structures, many of which cannot be realised through conventional fabrication methods. The literature to date contains contributions from a diverse group of researchers from the physical sciences, mathematics, and manufacturing technology in the creation of metamaterials for electromagnetic, acoustic and mechanical applications. It is proposed that additive manufacturing holds the key to realise the capabilities of this vibrant research community and permit the creation of new paradigms in fundamental structures but also exploitation through application. For this purpose, a literature review is presented which identifies key advances in metamaterials alongside additive manufacturing and proposes new opportunities for researchers to work together through intra/inter disciplinary research to realise structures which exhibit extraordinary behaviour(s). This review represents a comprehensive account of the state-of-the-art in the production of such metamaterials using additive manufacturing methods and highlights areas, which, based on trends observed in the literature, are worthy of further research and require a coordinated effort on behalf of the afore mentioned disciplines in order to advance the state-of-the-art.

Additive manufacturing of metamaterials: A review

Future of additive manufacturing: Overview of 4D and 3D printed smart and advanced materials and their applications

Digital fabrication courses that relied on physical makerspaces were severely disrupted by COVID-19. As universities shut down in Spring 2020, instructors developed new models for digital fabrication at a distance. Through interviews with faculty and students and examination of course materials, we recount the experiences of eight remote digital fabrication courses. We found that learning with hobbyist equipment and online social networks could emulate using industrial equipment in shared workshops. Furthermore, at-home digital fabrication offered unique learning opportunities including more iteration, machine tuning, and maintenance. These opportunities depended on new forms of labor and varied based on student living situations. Our findings have implications for remote and in-person digital fabrication instruction. They indicate how access to tools was important, but not as critical as providing opportunities for iteration; they show how remote fabrication exacerbated student inequities; and they suggest strategies for evaluating trade-offs in remote fabrication models with respect to learning objectives.

Remote Learners, Home Makers: How Digital Fabrication Was Taught Online During a Pandemic

Due to the wide diffusion of 3D printing technologies, geometric algorithms for Additive Manufacturing are being invented at an impressive speed. Each single step, in particular along the Process Planning pipeline, can now count on dozens of methods that prepare the 3D model for fabrication, while analysing and optimizing geometry and machine instructions for various objectives. This report provides a classification of this huge state of the art, and elicits the relation between each single algorithm and a list of desirable objectives during Process Planning. The objectives themselves are listed and discussed, along with possible needs for tradeoffs. Additive Manufacturing technologies are broadly categorized to explicitly relate classes of devices and supported features. Finally, this report offers an analysis of the state of the art while discussing open and challenging problems from both an academic and an industrial perspective.

From 3D Models to 3D Prints: an Overview of the Processing Pipeline

Recently, researchers started to engineer not only the outer shape of objects, but also their internal microstructure. Such objects, typically based on 3D cell grids, are also known as metamaterials. Metamaterials have been used, for example, to create materials with soft and hard regions.So far, metamaterials were understood as materials-we want to think of them as machines. We demonstrate metamaterial objects that perform a mechanical function. Such metamaterial mechanisms consist of a single block of material the cells of which play together in a well-defined way in order to achieve macroscopic movement. Our metamaterial door latch, for example, transforms the rotary movement of its handle into a linear motion of the latch. Our metamaterial Jansen walker consists of a single block of cells-that can walk. The key element behind our metamaterial mechanisms is a specialized type of cell, the only ability of which is to shear.In order to allow users to create metamaterial mechanisms efficiently we implemented a specialized 3D editor. It allows users to place different types of cells, including the shear cell, thereby allowing users to add mechanical functionality to their objects. To help users verify their designs during editing, our editor allows users to apply forces and simulates how the object deforms in response.

Metamaterial Mechanisms

Biochips, or digital labs-on-chip, are developed with the purpose of being used by laboratory technicians or biologists in laboratories or clinics In this article, we expand this vision with the goal of enabling everyone, regardless of their expertise, to use biochips for their own personal purposes We developed OpenDrop, an integrated electromicrofluidic platform that allows users to develop and program their own bio-applications We address the main challenges that users may encounter: accessibility, bio-protocol design and interaction with microfluidics OpenDrop consists of a do-it-yourself biochip, an automated software tool with visual interface and a detailed technique for at-home operations of microfluidics We report on two years of use of OpenDrop, released as an open-source platform Our platform attracted a highly diverse user base with participants originating from maker communities, academia and industry Our findings show that 47% of attempts to replicate OpenDrop were successful, the main challenge remaining the assembly of the device In terms of usability, the users managed to operate their platforms at home and are working on designing their own bio-applications Our work provides a step towards a future in which everyone will be able to create microfluidic devices for their personal applications, thereby democratizing parts of health care

https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5354/4/2/45/pdf

OpenDrop: An Integrated Do-It-Yourself Platform for Personal Use of Biochips.

Living media interfaces (LMIs) have emerged as a new way to interact with digital systems by incorporating actual living organisms in user interfaces. There is increasing interest in utilizing livi...

Living media interfaces: a multi-perspective analysis of biological materials for interaction

Microfluidic-based biochips are replacing the conventional biochemical analyzers, and are able to integrate on-chip all the necessary functions for biochemical analysis using microfluidics. The digital microfluidic biochips are based on the manipulation of liquids not as a continuous flow, but as discrete droplets. Researchers have presented approaches for the synthesis of digital microfluidic biochips, which, starting from a biochemical application and a given biochip architecture, determine the allocation, resource binding, scheduling, placement and routing of the operations in the application. The droplet volumes can vary erroneously due to parametric faults, thus impacting negatively the correctness of the application. Researchers have proposed approaches that synthesize offline predetermined recovery subroutines, which are activated online when errors occur. In this paper, we propose an online synthesis strategy, which determines the appropriate recovery actions at the moment when faults are detected. We have also proposed a biochemical application model which can capture both time-redundant and space-redundant recovery operations. Experiments performed on three real-life case studies show that, by taking into account the biochip configuration when errors occur, our online synthesis is able to reduce the application times.

Online synthesis for error recovery in digital microfluidic biochips with operation variability

Microfluidic-based biochips are replacing the conventional biochemical analyzers, and are able to integrate on-chip all the necessary functions for biochemical analysis using microfluidics. The digital microfluidic biochips are based on the manipulation of liquids not as a continuous flow, but as discrete droplets. Researchers have presented approaches for the synthesis of digital microfluidic biochips, which, starting from a biochemical application and a given biochip architecture, determine the allocation, resource binding, scheduling and placement of the operations in the application. Existing approaches consider that on-chip operations, such as splitting a droplet of liquid, are perfect. However, these operations have variability margins, which can impact the correctness of the biochemical application.We consider that a split operation, which goes beyond specified variability bounds, is faulty. The fault is detected using on-chip volume sensors. We have proposed an abstract model for a biochemical application, consisting of a sequencing graph, which can capture all the fault scenarios in the application. Starting from this model, we have proposed a synthesis approach that, for a given chip area and number of sensors, can derive a fault-tolerant implementation. Two fault-tolerant scheduling techniques have been proposed and compared. We show that, by taking into account fault-occurrence information, we can derive better quality implementations, which leads to shorter application completion times, even in the case of faults. The proposed synthesis approach under operation variability has been evaluated using several benchmarks.

/pdf/synthesis-of-biochemical-applications-on-digital-1r4rgnr402.pdf

Mirela Alistar

Papers

Metamaterial Mechanisms

OpenDrop: An Integrated Do-It-Yourself Platform for Personal Use of Biochips.

Living media interfaces: a multi-perspective analysis of biological materials for interaction

Online synthesis for error recovery in digital microfluidic biochips with operation variability

Synthesis of biochemical applications on digital microfluidic biochips with operation variability