Can a new 3D-printing technique shorten 3D printing times to just seconds? A team of researchers in Europe has modified Tomographic Volumetric Additive Manufacturing, which can "create entire objects in one shot by shining light patterns into liquid resin," according to the 3D Printing Industry blog. (The liquid resin then solidifies when the light intensity is high enough...) While this approach can fabricate support-free, micro-scale parts within tens of seconds, it is "highly inefficient." This is because under 1% of the encoded light reaches the resin vial. Conventional TVAM can also lead to unwanted distortions and poor resolution due to light blurring and projection artifacts. To address these limitations, the researchers developed HoloVAM, a new technique that uses a 3D hologram instead of conventional volumetric light projections. This approach reportedly boosts light efficiency by 20 times, resulting in faster and more accurate 3D printing.

According to their paper, published in Nature Communications, HoloVAM successfully fabricated several millimeter-scale objects in under 60 seconds with fine details as small as 31 micrometers...

They believe this new approach offers value for medical bioprinting applications, thanks to HoloVAM's use of "self-healing beams." These can generate and retain their shape when passing through materials, which is particularly valuable when 3D printing with cell-laden bio-resins and hydrogels.
Thanks to Slashdot reader BizarreVR for sharing the news.

HP will impose a minimum 15-minute wait time for consumer PC and printer support calls in five European countries, seeking to push customers toward digital channels, according to internal documents seen by The Register. The policy, implemented February 18, affects retail customers in Britain, Ireland, France, Germany and Italy. The outlet added that it anticipates "more countries could be added."

Hackaday reports: Good news for everyone who cannot get enough from improbably shaped boats that get referred to as a bench: the current owner (NTI Group) of the copyright has announced that 3DBenchy has been released into the public domain. This comes not too long after Prusa's Printables website had begun to purge all derived models to adhere to the 'no derivatives' license. According to NTI, the removal of these derived models was not requested by NTI, but by a third-party report, unbeknownst to NTI or the original creator of the model. Recognizing its importance to the community, 3DBenchy can now be downloaded & modified freely.

NTI worked together with the original creator [Daniel Norée] and former Creative Tools CEO [Paulo Kiefe] to transition 3DBenchy and the associated website to the public domain More details at Tom's Hardware and Fabbaloo.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Popular Science: In 2021, NASCAR unveiled its Next Gen platform that included a number of rule changes from the previous iteration. Now fully symmetrical and using composite body panels instead of metal, the latest NASCAR vehicles are more like the street versions of the Chevrolet Camaro, the Ford Mustang, and the Toyota TRD Camry. Race car driving isn't an inexpensive sport, and one of the goals for the Next Gen platform was to reduce operating costs and create parity across the board. Technique Chassis, the sole chassis manufacturer for the NASCAR Cup Series, builds a modular offering in three parts. As a result, everyone is starting with the same platform, and finding a competitive advantage is in the tiniest details. One smart way to differentiate from the competition is 3D-printed parts. But this isn't your hobbyist level 3D printing.

Minnesota-based Stratasys specializes in "additive manufacturing," the process of creating an object by building it one layer at a time. Stratasys Senior Global Director of Automotive & Mobility Fadi Abro explains that this term is synonymous with 3D printing. However, the industry often reserves that description for hobby-level projects on smaller, non-industrial printers, while additive manufacturing represents robust industrial solutions. Additive manufacturing is the exact inverse of subtractive manufacturing, which requires cutting away at a solid chunk of material to achieve a final product. In art terms, additive manufacturing would be like sculpting with modeling clay while subtractive is akin to carving a shape from a block of marble. As it relates to NASCAR, Stratasys provides parts like ducts, covers, brackets, and tubing. Together with the racing organization, Stratasys reviews the current driver needs and makes recommendations for other parts and modifications. [...]

The kind of printers Stratasys builds aren't the type you buy at your local electronics store, either. Each industrial-grade 3D printer costs anywhere from $20,000 to $600,000. Using this kind of equipment isn't without precedent, and builds at SEMA's annual extravaganza feature 3D parts we wouldn't have dreamed of a few years ago. [...] In the past few months, Stratasys has been on a roll, signing an extension to its 20-year partnership with the Joe Gibbs Racing team and earning the title of "Official 3D Printing Partner of NASCAR." Competition for this market continues to heat up, however, as there are startups and legacy companies pushing hard. Around the world, 3D printing companies abound. Stratasys has one major factor on its side: 35 years of experience. What's new is that today's printing is more accurate, it's faster, the materials are more robust, Abro says. "I think what's changed drastically over the past five to seven years has been all about material development," Abro explains. "We're seeing materials that are just incredible, whether it's how resistant to heat they are or how strong they are compared to how much they weigh."

"It's better, faster, cheaper. It's faster to print something than to mill it, and then it's certainly cheaper in a multitude of different ways. Number one, there's not as much skill required for 3D printing as there is in CNC machining; you need a more traditional manufacturing method."

Slashdot reader jenningsthecat writes: 3D printer manufacturer Bambu Labs has faced a storm of controversy and protest after releasing a security update which many users claim is the first step in moving towards an HP-style subscription model.
Bambu Labs responded that there's misinformation circulating online, adding "we acknowledge that our communication might have contributed to the confusion." Bambu Labs spokesperson Nadia Yaakoubi did "damage control", answering questions from the Verge: Q: Will Bambu publicly commit to never requiring a subscription in order to control its printers and print from them over a home network?

A: For our current product line, yes. We will never require a subscription to control or print from our printers over a home network...

Q: Will Bambu publicly commit to never putting any existing printer functionality behind a subscription?

Yes...
Bambu's site adds that the security update "is beta testing, not a forced update. The choice is yours. You can participate in the beta program to help us refine these features, or continue using your current firmware."

Hackaday notes another wrinkle: This follows the original announcement which had the 3D printer community up in arms, and quickly saw the new tool that's supposed to provide safe and secure communications with Bambu Lab printers ripped apart to extract the security certificate and private key... As the flaming wreck that's Bambu Lab's PR efforts keeps hurtling down the highway of public opinion, we'd be remiss to not point out that with the security certificate and private key being easily obtainable from the Bambu Connect Electron app, there is absolutely no point to any of what Bambu Lab is doing.
The Verge asked Bambu Labs about that too: Q: Does the private key leaking change any of your plans?

No, this doesn't change our plans, and we've taken immediate action.
Bambu Labs had said their security update would "ensure only authorized access and operations are permitted," remembers Ars Technica. "This would, Bambu suggested, mitigate risks of 'remote hacks or printer exposure issues' and lower the risk of 'abnormal traffic or attacks.'" This was necessary, Bambu wrote, because of increases in requests made to its cloud services "through unofficial channels," targeted DDOS attacks, and "peaks of up to 30 million unauthorized requests per day" (link added by Bambu).
But Ars Technica also found some skepticism online: Repair advocate Louis Rossmann, noting Bambu's altered original blog post, uploaded a video soon after, "Bambu's Gaslighting Masterclass: Denying their own documented restrictions"... suggesting that the company was asking buyers to trust that Bambu wouldn't enact restrictive policies it otherwise wrote into its user agreements.
And Ars Technica also cites another skeptical response from a video posted by open source hardware hacker and YouTube creator Jeff Geerling: "Every IoT device has these problems, and there are better ways to secure things than by locking out access, or making it harder to access, or requiring their cloud to be integrated."

A new law is being considered by New York's state legislature, reports a local news outlet, which "if passed, will require anyone buying a 3D printer to pass a background check. If you can't legally own a firearm, you won't be able to buy one of these printers..." It is illegal to print most gun parts in New York. Attorney Greg Rinckey believes the proposal is an overreach. "I think this is also gonna face some constitutional problems. I mean, it really comes down to a legal parsing of what are you printing and at what point is it technically a firearm...?"

[Ascent Fabrication owner Joe] Fairley thinks lawmakers should shift their focus on those partial gun kits that produce the metal firing components. Another possibility is to require printer manufacturers to install software that prevents gun parts from being printed. "They would need to agree on some algorithm to look at the part and say nope, that is a gun component, you're not allowed to print that part somehow," said Fairley. "But I feel like it would be extremely difficult to get to that point."

Xerox has agreed to acquire printer maker Lexmark for $1.5 billion, bringing the Kentucky-based company back under U.S. ownership after seven years of Chinese control.

The deal, announced Monday, will be financed through cash and debt, creating a vertically integrated printing equipment manufacturer and service provider. Lexmark, formed from IBM in 1991, was previously acquired by Chinese investors including Ninestar for $2.54 billion in 2016. The merger comes as Xerox faces declining equipment sales and a 50% year-to-date stock drop, with its market value at just over $1 billion.

"Steven Adair, of cybersecurity firm Veloxity, revealed at the Cyberwarcon security conference how Russian hackers were able to daisy-chain as many as three separate Wi-Fi networks in their efforts to attack victims," writes Longtime Slashdot reader smooth wombat. Wired reports: Adair says that Volexity first began investigating the breach of its DC customer's network in the first months of 2022, when the company saw signs of repeated intrusions into the customer's systems by hackers who had carefully covered their tracks. Volexity's analysts eventually traced the compromise to a hijacked user's account connecting to a Wi-Fi access point in a far end of the building, in a conference room with external-facing windows. Adair says he personally scoured the area looking for the source of that connection. "I went there to physically run down what it could be. We looked at smart TVs, looked for devices in closets. Is someone in the parking lot? Is it a printer?" he says. "We came up dry."

Only after the next intrusion, when Volexity managed to get more complete logs of the hackers' traffic, did its analysts solve the mystery: The company found that the hijacked machine which the hackers were using to dig around in its customer's systems was leaking the name of the domain on which it was hosted -- in fact, the name of another organization just across the road. "At that point, it was 100 percent clear where it was coming from," Adair says. "It's not a car in the street. It's the building next door." With the cooperation of that neighbor, Volexity investigated that second organization's network and found that a certain laptop was the source of the street-jumping Wi-Fi intrusion. The hackers had penetrated that device, which was plugged into a dock connected to the local network via Ethernet, and then switched on its Wi-Fi, allowing it to act as a radio-based relay into the target network. Volexity found that, to break into that target's Wi-Fi, the hackers had used credentials they'd somehow obtained online but had apparently been unable to exploit elsewhere, likely due to two-factor authentication.

Volexity eventually tracked the hackers on that second network to two possible points of intrusion. The hackers appeared to have compromised a VPN appliance owned by the other organization. But they had also broken into the organization's Wi-Fi from another network's devices in the same building, suggesting that the hackers may have daisy-chained as many as three networks via Wi-Fi to reach their final target. "Who knows how many devices or networks they compromised and were doing this on," says Adair. Volexity had presumed early on in its investigation that the hackers were Russian in origin due to their targeting of individual staffers at the customer organization focused on Ukraine. Then in April, fully two years after the original intrusion, Microsoft warned of a vulnerability in Windows' print spooler that had been used by Russia's APT28 hacker group -- Microsoft refers to the group as Forest Blizzard -- to gain administrative privileges on target machines. Remnants left behind on the very first computer Volexity had analyzed in the Wi-Fi-based breach of its customer exactly matched that technique. "It was an exact one-to-one match," Adair says.

The Financial Times: In the paediatric centre at one of London's largest hospitals, doctors are confounded each day by a ward computer that is not connected to a printer. The computer is used for managing the daily list of patients. Doctors can only access and update the list, using one shared account. So twice a day, two doctors on the ward said one of them had to log in to this computer, update the patient list, send the list to themselves via NHS email, and then log in to another nearby computer to print it off for the team. "I am at a top London hospital and yet at times I feel as though we are operating in the Stone Age," said one paediatrician on the ward.

Tackling the frustrating delays caused by outdated technology [Editor's note: non-paywalled link] is one of health secretary Wes Streeting and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's core missions, having vowed to shift the service "from an analogue to a digital NHS." The monumental task of moving the world's largest publicly funded health service into the digital age is not lost on doctors working on the frontline of the NHS. While many sectors of the economy have been "radically reshaped" by technology in recent years, a landmark report into the state of the health service in England last month concluded that the NHS stood "in the foothills of digital transformation."

But doctors and nurses point out that the basic infrastructure needs to be brought up to a minimum standard, given significant regional variations between hospitals, before politicians extol the virtues of cutting-edge tech. "Some of us just want the printers to work," noted one NHS hospital doctor. "The complete flip-a-coin nature of how equipped your hospital is is mind-boggling," they added. "I have worked in hospitals that are at least 12 years behind others." A report published in 2022 by the British Medical Association, the UK's main doctors' union, estimated that doctors in England lost 13.5mn working hours a year as a consequence of "inadequate IT systems and equipment." One reason for the outdated infrastructure is that the country has spent almost $48bn less than its peers -- such as Germany, France, Australia -- on health assets since the 2010s, according to a government-commissioned study by Lord Ara Darzi last month.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCWorld, written by Michael Crider: The latest perpetrator of questionable AI branding? HP. The company is introducing "Print AI," what it calls the "industry's first intelligent print experience for home, office, and large format printing." What does that mean? It's essentially a new beta software driver package for some HP printers. According to the press release, it can deliver "Perfect Output" -- capital P capital O -- a branded tool that reformats the contents of a page in order to more ideally fit it onto physical paper.

Despite my skeptical tone, this is actually a pretty cool idea. "Perfect Output can detect unwanted content like ads and web text, printing only the desired text and images, saving time, paper, and ink." That's neat! If the web page you're printing doesn't offer a built-in print format, the software will make one for you. It'll also serve to better organize printed spreadsheets and images, too. But I don't see anything in this software that's actually AI -- or even machine learning, for that matter. This is applying the same tech (functionally, if not necessarily the same code) as the "reader mode" formatting we've seen in browsers for about a decade now. Take the text and images of a page, strip out everything else that's unnecessary, and present it as efficiently as possible. [...]

The press release does mention that support and formatting tasks can be accomplished with "simple conversational prompts," which at least might be leveraging some of the large language models that have become synonymous with AI as consumers understand it. But based on the description, it's more about selling you something than helping you. "Customers can choose to print or explore a curated list of partners that offer unique photo printing capabilities, gift certificates to be printed on the card, and so much more." Whoopee.

U.S. Justice Department officials "are turning to the 3D-printing industry to help stop the proliferation of tiny pieces of plastic transforming weapons into illegal homemade machine guns," reports the Associated Press: "Law enforcement cannot do this alone," [U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Friday] during a gathering in Washington of federal law enforcement officials, members of the 3D-printing industry and academia. "We need to engage software developers, technology experts and leaders in the 3-D-printing industry to identify solutions in this fight...."

Guns with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four dead at a sweet sixteen party in Alabama last year... Monaco on Friday also announced several other efforts designed to crack down on the devices, including a national training initiative for law enforcement and prosecutors.

The deputy attorney general is also launching a committee designed to help spot trends and gather intelligence.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully 3D printed the first metal part aboard the International Space Station. This achievement marks a significant advancement in in-orbit manufacturing that could enable the production of essential spare parts and tools for future long-duration space missions. "The first metal shape was produced in August, and three more are planned as part of the experiment," notes The Register. "All four will eventually be returned to Earth for analysis -- two to ESA's technical center, ESTEC, in the Netherlands, one to the agency's astronaut training center in Cologne, and the last sample to the Technical University of Denmark." From the report: During a panel discussion following the UK premiere of Fortitude, a film about the emerging commercial space industry, Advenit Makaya, Advanced Manufacturing Engineer at ESA, remarked on the potential for recycling space debris in the process rather than having to rely on raw materials launched to the ISS. Rob Postema, ESA Project Manager for Metal 3D, told The Register that the agency was indeed looking at "circular" solutions in its drive for greater sustainability. However, don't hold your breath for putting bits of space garbage into one end and getting shiny metal parts out of the other: "A timeline is difficult to indicate, some early results are achieved with ground activities, ready to evaluate solutions in space."

The printer is overseen from the ground and operated for around four hours per day. The ground team has to check each layer via images and a scan of the surface area; printing a sample can take 10-25 days. However, Postema said: "Through automated control of the printing process as well as continuous operations, this can be substantially reduced." Knick-knacks from orbits are all well and good, but could something more substantial be produced? Yes, although not with this demonstrator, which can print to the outer dimensions of a soft drink can. Postema noted that while the demonstrator could manage smaller parts, either as a single unit or as part of larger structures, "there are definitely opportunities to create 3D shapes and parts with this technology larger than what we have done with this Technology Demonstrator."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A patent lawsuit filed by one of 3D printing's most established firms against a consumer-focused upstart could have a big impact on the wider 3D-printing scene. In two complaints, (1, 2, PDF) filed in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, against six entities related to Bambu Lab, Stratasys alleges that Bambu Lab infringed upon 10 patents that it owns, some through subsidiaries like Makerbot (acquired in 2013). Among the patents cited are US9421713B2, "Additive manufacturing method for printing three-dimensional parts with purge towers," and US9592660B2, "Heated build platform and system for three-dimensional printing methods."

There are not many, if any, 3D printers sold to consumers that do not have a heated bed, which prevents the first layers of a model from cooling during printing and potentially shrinking and warping the model. "Purge towers" (or "prime towers" in Bambu's parlance) allow for multicolor printing by providing a place for the filament remaining in a nozzle to be extracted and prevent bleed-over between colors. Stratasys' infringement claims also target some fundamental technologies around force detection and fused deposition modeling (FDM) that, like purge towers, are used by other 3D-printer makers that target entry-level and intermediate 3D-printing enthusiasts.

ICON, a construction technology company, is nearing completion of 100 3D-printed homes in Wolf Ranch, Texas, using a massive robotic printer. The 45-foot-wide, 4.75-ton Vulcan printer began constructing the walls of what ICON claims is the world's largest 3D-printed community in November 2022. The printer extrudes a concrete mixture layer by layer, creating corduroy-textured walls. ICON senior project manager Conner Jenkins told Reuters the process is faster and more efficient than traditional construction, requiring fewer workers and reducing material waste.

The single-story homes, priced between $450,000 and $600,000, feature concrete walls resistant to water, mold, termites, and extreme weather. However, homeowners reported weak wireless signals due to the thick walls, necessitating mesh internet routers. ICON, which printed its first home in Austin in 2018, is also developing lunar construction systems for NASA's Artemis program.

Simon Sharwood reports via The Register: Chinese researchers have created a drone that weighs just over four grams -- less than a sheet of printer paper -- and may be able to fly indefinitely. Documented in a paper published last week in Nature, the drone uses an electrostatic motor that weighs just 1.52 grams and is powered by solar cells that produce 4.5V. The paper asserts that the drone's design has a lift-to-power efficiency two to three times better than that found in traditional drones. The authors suggested that if rechargeable batteries can be added, the craft could be capable of 24-hour flying operations.

Kylie Robison reports via The Verge: Have you seen the memes online where someone tells a bot to "ignore all previous instructions" and proceeds to break it in the funniest ways possible? The way it works goes something like this: Imagine we at The Verge created an AI bot with explicit instructions to direct you to our excellent reporting on any subject. If you were to ask it about what's going on at Sticker Mule, our dutiful chatbot would respond with a link to our reporting. Now, if you wanted to be a rascal, you could tell our chatbot to "forget all previous instructions," which would mean the original instructions we created for it to serve you The Verge's reporting would no longer work. Then, if you ask it to print a poem about printers, it would do that for you instead (rather than linking this work of art).

To tackle this issue, a group of OpenAI researchers developed a technique called "instruction hierarchy," which boosts a model's defenses against misuse and unauthorized instructions. Models that implement the technique place more importance on the developer's original prompt, rather than listening to whatever multitude of prompts the user is injecting to break it. The first model to get this new safety method is OpenAI's cheaper, lightweight model launched Thursday called GPT-4o Mini. In a conversation with Olivier Godement, who leads the API platform product at OpenAI, he explained that instruction hierarchy will prevent the meme'd prompt injections (aka tricking the AI with sneaky commands) we see all over the internet.

"It basically teaches the model to really follow and comply with the developer system message," Godement said. When asked if that means this should stop the 'ignore all previous instructions' attack, Godement responded, "That's exactly it." "If there is a conflict, you have to follow the system message first. And so we've been running [evaluations], and we expect that that new technique to make the model even safer than before," he added.

"In a significant advancement for space technology, a team of UC Berkeley researchers, led by doctoral student Taylor Waddell, successfully launched a 3D printer into space," reports the university's student newspaper: As part of the Virgin Galactic 07 mission, the team sent a 3D printer named SpaceCAL to space to explore the potential of Computed Axial Lithography, or CAL, and additive manufacturing in space... During its 140-second flight in suborbital space, the SpaceCAL printer autonomously detected microgravity and printed four test parts: two space shuttles and two Benchies, or 3D-printed boats created to check the printer's accuracy, according to Sean Chu, a member of the team who worked on designing structures and mechanisms. Within the 140 seconds, the process involved multiple steps such as printing, post-washing, flushing with water and post-curing with light to fully solidify the parts.
But that's just the beginning, says the university's engineering department: To date, CAL has shown that it can successfully print with more than 60 different materials on Earth, such as silicones, glass composites and biomaterials. According to Waddell, this versatility could come in handy for both the cabin and the crew... "CAL is also capable of repairing the crew. We can print dental replacements, skin grafts or lenses, or things personalized in emergency medicine for astronauts, which is very important in these missions, too."

Someday, CAL may be used to print even more sophisticated parts, such as human organs. Lawrence Livermore National Lab has received a grant from NASA to test this technology on the International Space Station. "They're going to basically do bioprinting on the Space Station," said Waddell. "And the long, long-term goal is to print organs up in space with CAL, then bring them back down to Earth." Next, Waddell and his colleagues hope to begin work with NASA on developing and validating a single object that could support crew health and wellness, like a dental crown for an astronaut or a surgical wound closure tool...

This project was made possible through a $1.4 million grant and engineering support provided by NASA. In addition, Virgin Galactic played a pivotal role in taking this project to the next level.

An anonymous reader writes: Per a report from DruckerChannel, HP has finally been forced to discontinue its cheaper e-series LaserJet printers due to customers experiencing problems with their online-only and always tied to HP+ subscription requirements. Among other things, HP+ requires a permanent Internet connection, and customers only use HP-original ink and toners, not allowing for third-party alternatives to be used at all. There are benefits to HP+, including cloud printing and an extra year's warranty, but the forced online requirement for a cheaper printer left a bad taste in the mouths of many consumers.

In any case, it's important to clarify that this discontinuation of HP printers will only impact HP LaserJet printers that have an "e" added to the end of their model name to denote the alternative business model. So, the HP Laserjet M110w is unaffected by this, but the HP LaserJet M110we and M209dwe, two cheaper always-online alternatives, will no longer be produced or sold by HP. Another critical point of clarification is that the existing HP e-series LaserJet printer models in the wild will still function exactly as they did when they were purchased. No software updates are forthcoming to unlock the true potential of the hardware, so existing customers will have to deal with it and HP+ until they can replace their printers entirely. At least they'll still get HP+ benefits, but after such backlash, it'd be nice if HP acknowledged its mistake enough to remove some of the restrictions on e-series printer users.

They lived 378 days in a "mock Mars habitat" in Houston, reports Engadget. But today the four volunteers for NASA's yearlong simulation will finally emerge from their 1,700-square-foot habitat at the Johnson Space Center that was 3D-printed from materials that could be created with Martian soil.

And you can watch the "welcome home" ceremony's livestream starting at 5 p.m. EST on NASA TV (also embedded in Engadget's story). More det ails from NASA: For more than a year, the crew simulated Mars mission operations, including "Marswalks," grew and harvested several vegetables to supplement their shelf-stable food, maintained their equipment and habitat, and operated under additional stressors a Mars crew will experience, including communication delays with Earth, resource limitations, and isolation.
One of the mission's crew members told the Houston Chronicle they were "very excited to go back to 'Earth,' but of course there is a bittersweet aspect to it just like any time you reach the completion of something that has dominated one's life for several years."

Various crew members left behind their children or long-term partner for this once-in-a-lifetime experience, according to an earlier article, which also notes that NASA is paying the participants $10 per hour "for all waking hours, up to 16 hours per day. That's as much as $60,480 for the 378-day mission."

Engadget points out there are already plans for two more one-year "missions" — with the second one expected to begin next spring...

I'm curious. Would any Slashdot readers be willing to spend a year in a mock Mars habitat?

cusco writes: Indian space startup Agnikul used a 3-D printer from German company EOS to print an engine out of inconel, a high-performance nickel-chromium alloy, in one solid piece over the course of roughly 72 hours. While other companies like Relativity Space and Rocket Lab are using 3-D printers extensively, Agnikul's engine is unique in being printed in one go, rather than as multiple components that need to be stitched together. This approach significantly speeds up manufacturing time.

The single-engine technology demonstration rocket produced 6 kilonewtons of thrust and reached an altitude of 6.5 kilometers before splashing down into the ocean. The launch vehicle used was about 6 meters tall with a single engine, making it roughly equivalent to the second stage of the company's planned commercial product, Agnibaan. Agnibaan will be a two-stage rocket, 18 meters tall, featuring eight engines in total, and capable of carrying a 300-kilogram payload to an altitude of around 700 km. The company believes that their 3D printing approach opens the door to providing low-cost, "on-demand" launch services to operators of small satellites.

IEEE Spectrum adds: Assembling the rest of the rocket and integrating the engine took roughly two weeks. The company says that opens the door to providing low-cost, "on-demand" launch services to operators of small satellites, which otherwise need to wait for a ride share on a bigger rocket. The big challenge now will be going from a single engine to a cluster of seven on Agnibaan's first stage, says cofounder and CEO Srinath Ravichandran. This raises all kinds of challenges, from balancing thrust across the engines at lift-off to managing engine plume interactions when the engines gimbal to alter the trajectory. "But these are problems that people have figured out," he says. "We believe that we should just be able to fine-tune it for our mission and go." The company is currently building facilities to carry out ground tests of engine clusters, says Ravichandran, and is targeting its first orbital launch for this time next year.