The new candy apple red electric guitar has been modelled around the Saleen 1 sports car and features a hollowed carbon-fibre body with a roasted alder centre block and hand-carved maple top. The neck has a carbon fibre round-lam fingerboard topped off with a matching carbon fibre headstock overlay.

To complete the set, the Fender Stratocaster 1 also comes with a matching pedalboard and will be displayed with a Saleen car at Winter NAMM 2020.

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Using the Lulzbot HS1.2 printer he shows how to make this unusually shaped skateboard and puts it to the test at a local skatepark.

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The boat was printed in 72 hours and is 25′ long and weighs in at just under 2.5 tonnes and won the Composites Center three Guinness World Records for the world’s largest prototype polymer 3D printer, largest solid 3D-printed object, and largest 3D-printed boat.

The new 3D printer is designed to print objects as long as 100 feet by 22 feet wide by 10 feet high and can print at 230 kgs per hour. The one-of-a-kind printer will support several ambitious initiatives, including the development of biobased feedstocks using cellulose derived from wood resources, and rapid prototyping of civilian, defence and infrastructure applications.

A $20 million research collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Energy’s largest science and energy laboratory, will support fundamental research in key technical areas in large-scale, biobased additive manufacturing. The partnership between UMaine and ORNL will advance efforts to produce new biobased materials conducive to 3D printing of large, structurally demanding systems. The research will focus on cellulose nanofiber (CNF) production, drying, functionalization and compounding with thermoplastics, building on UMaine’s leadership in CNF technology and extrusion research. By placing CNF from wood into thermoplastics, bioderived recyclable material systems can be developed with properties that may rival traditional materials, possibly even metals.

Biobased feedstocks are recyclable and economical, providing competitive advantages for Maine’s manufacturing industries, including boatbuilding. The UMaine Composites Center received $500,000 from the Maine Technology Institute (MTI) to form a technology cluster to help Maine boatbuilders explore how large-scale 3D printing using economical, wood-filled plastics can provide the industry with a competitive advantage.

The cluster brings together the expertise of UMaine researchers and marine industry leaders to further develop and commercialize 3D printing to benefit boatbuilders in the state. By 3D printing plastics with 50% wood, boat moulds and parts can be produced much faster and are more economical than today’s traditional methods.

UMaine also showcased a 3D-printed, 12-foot-long U.S. Army communications shelter. The new printer will support programs with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) Soldier Center and its mission to develop rapidly deployable shelter systems for soldiers. Other use areas include concealment applications, structural shelters and high-temperature fire retardant materials for vehicle-mounted shelters.

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The resin-infused advanced composite aircraft wing underpins the Airbus A220 and is the first certified commercial aircraft wing made using resin transfer infusion (RTI). The RTI process sees a complex structure created by placing the dry fabric into moulds before impregnating it with liquid resin, which then sets into shape under heat and pressure. While other processes involve pre-impregnated carbon fibre requiring intensive refrigeration before manufacture, the RTI process uses less energy, fewer parts and results in a lighter wing. Compared to a conventional metal wing, Bombardier’s carbon composite wing is approximately 10% lighter helping to reduce fuel burn in flight, with an accompanying reduction of CO2 and NOx emissions.

The £520 million investment in Bombardier’s aircraft wing programme is the largest ever single inward investment in Northern Ireland and around 200 suppliers across the UK are directly involved with the programme alongside many others throughout the supply chain.

Bombardier was chosen from a shortlist of four finalists that included Darktrace, M Squared and OrganOx. Founded in 1969, the MacRobert Award is overseen by the Royal Academy of Engineering and is the UK’s longest-running engineering prize.

The Award honours the winning organisation with a gold medal and the team members with a cash prize of £50,000. It recognises engineering teams that demonstrate outstanding innovation, tangible societal benefit and proven commercial success within the UK engineering sector.

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They used models found online for the Aventador bodywork and printed them using a variety of plastics including carbon fibre infused materials where extra strength was required. The car’s entire frame and suspension are made with a steel spaceframe design mimicking that of real Lamborghini.

So far Sterling estimates he’s spent about $20,000 on the project,  but he hopes the car can serve as an educational tool for Science Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics (STEAM) programs. If you’re interested in the project you can follow their updates on Facebook or YouTube.

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Le Mans winner and Bugatti test driver Andy Wallace reached the top speed of exactly 304.773 mph on the test track at Ehra-Lessien in Lower Saxony. He worked his way up to the top speed from 190 mph in 30 mph increments to make sure all the conditions were right and the Chiron was optimally balanced in terms of lift and downforce. The previous record was held by the Koenigsegg Agera RS which set a then-record of 277.9 mph over two separate runs back in 2017.

An incredible speed. It’s inconceivable that a car would be capable of this. But the Chiron was well prepared and I felt very safe – even in these high speed ranges Bugatti test driver, Andy Wallice

The body of the car which has been confirmed for production is made from exposed carbon fibre along with a carbon fibre engine cover, while the stripped out interior features a pair of Alcantara-trimmed carbon-fibre-backed bucket seats and a full carbon fibre dashboard.

For the record, a team of engineers prepared a pre-production vehicle of a Chiron derivative. In addition to aerodynamic improvements, the specialists attached great importance to safety. Andy Wallace was held in place by six-point belts and protected by an additional safety cell.

The Bugatti team were supported by Italian race specialist Dallara as well as tyre manufacturer Michelin. The tyres were subjected to extensive test bench trials at speeds of up to 317 mph in the USA. On the test bench, the Bugatti engineers also tested the performance of the engine and the interaction between engine, gearbox and chassis during various manoeuvres with the smallest changes having a huge impact on overall top speed.

The Ehra-Lessien high-speed track in Lower Saxony is 50 metres above sea level. Unlike higher-altitude high-speed tracks such as in Nevada, however, this has certain drawbacks. Due to the higher air density, the vehicle has to apply more force, and at high speeds of over 249 mph, it runs as if were driving against a wall.

The record run was recorded by a sealed GPS box, the certificate was issued by SGS-TÜV Saar. So as of August 2019, Bugatti is the first manufacturer to produce a car that runs faster than 300 mph – at a speed of 304.773 mph.

The production-ready version of the record-breaker will be powered by a tweaked version of the original car’s quad-turbo 8-litre engine and will produce 1,578bhp. Bugatti has confirmed that only 30 of the Chiron SuperSport 300+ will be manufactured with prices starting around £3.1 million.

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After successfully completing the longest duration flight for a human-powered helicopter in fall of 2013, the UMD Gamera Team, a student team originally inspired in 2012 by the American Helicopter Society’s Sikorsky Prize, has continued raising the bar. In 2014, a new group of undergraduate students took over Team Gamera, reinventing itself as Solar Gamera to test the feasibility of applying solar power in achieving human helicopter flight.

Constructed from balsa wood, foam, mylar and carbon fibre, the Gamera helicopter has been designed into a giant x formation with the pilot seated in the centre. Attached to the end of the 60 feet long arms is a 42-foot rotor.

While electronic controls offer an advantage over Gamera’s human-powered predecessor, the challenge of lifting a 100-foot square rotorcraft solely through solar power has posed its own unique set of challenges. The craft may never engage in long-distance flight, but through this project’s immense hands-on opportunities, students hone their engineering chops and find a focus for their future.

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First up was a piece of carbon fibre tubing places on its side, then a section of driveshaft, designed to withstand twisting forces, and finally a carbon fibre sandwich which proved too much for the press and was only defeated when a nut was added to the surface.

Instead of shattering the carbon fibre almost disintegrates as the weave breaks down. These pieces of carbon fibre composites are made to be extremely strong in one direction but when you pressurise it in a different angle the material will completely implode rather than slowly deform like steel.

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This material is the first key component of futuristic smart uniforms that also will respond to and protect from environmental chemical hazards.

High breathability is a critical requirement for protective clothing to prevent heat-stress and exhaustion when military personnel are engaged in missions in contaminated environments. Current protective military uniforms are based on heavyweight full-barrier protection or permeable adsorptive protective garments that cannot meet the critical demand of simultaneous high comfort and protection, and provide a passive rather than active response to an environmental threat.

The LLNL team fabricated flexible polymeric membranes with aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) channels as moisture conductive pores. The size of these pores (less than 5 nanometers, nm) is 5,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Ngoc Bui, the lead author of the paper said;

We demonstrated that these membranes provide rates of water vapour transport that surpass those of commercial breathable fabrics like GoreTex, even though the CNT pores are only a few nanometers wide.

To provide high breathability, the new composite material takes advantage of the unique transport properties of carbon nanotube pores. By quantifying the membrane permeability to water vapour, the team found for the first time that, when a concentration gradient is used as a driving force, CNT nano-channels can sustain gas-transport rates exceeding that of a well-known diffusion theory by more than one order of magnitude.

These membranes also provide protection from biological agents due to their very small pore size – less than 5 nanometers (nm) wide. Biological threats like bacteria or viruses are much larger and typically more than 10-nm in size. Performed tests demonstrated that the CNT membranes repelled Dengue virus from aqueous solutions during filtration tests. This confirms that LLNL-developed CNT membranes provide effective protection from biological threats by size exclusion rather than by merely preventing wetting.

Furthermore, the results show that CNT pores combine high breathability and bio-protection in a single functional material.

However, chemical agents are much smaller in size and require the membrane pores to be able to react to block the threat. To encode the membrane with a smart and dynamic response to small chemical hazards, LLNL scientists and collaborators are surface modifying these prototype carbon nanotube membranes with chemical-threat-responsive functional groups. These functional groups will sense and block the threat like gatekeepers on the pore entrance. A second response scheme also is in development – similar to how living skin peels off when challenged with dangerous external factors. The fabric will exfoliate upon reaction with the chemical agent.

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