4D Printing

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4D Printing

                    4D Printing is also called as 4D bioprinting, active origami or shape-morphing systems. By using 3D printing techniques, 4D printing is created or processed that is able to change its shape or properties.

                    Xinyi Xian, an assistant professor of mechanical and manufacturing engineering at Miami University said ," With 4D printing, objects can be printed with extra features that allow them to change shape or function over time."

                        The material that have ability to change their properties over time is known as smart materials. These materials possess behaviors like self-assembly, self-healing, shape memory & self-capability and respond to the external stimulus. This type of materials are used in 4D printing.



Father of 4D Printing:

                     Computer scientist Skylar Tibbits is the father of 4D printing , who is the founder and co-director of the self-assembly lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT).

4D Shapes:

                Glome, Tesseract, Pentatope, Polychoron, Hyperplane, 16-cell, Facet

Five Factors of 4D Printing:

  • The AM process
  • The material used for printing
  • Stimuli
  • Mechanism of interaction 
  • Modeling

Laws of 4D Printing:

First Law:

                The first law states that, "All the shape changing behaviors such as coiling, curling, twisting, bending, etc. of multi-material 4D structures are due to the relative expansion between active and passive materials."

Second Law:

                The second law states that, "There are four physical factors behind the shape changing ability of all multi-material 4D structures i.e., mass diffusion, thermal expansion, molecular transformation, and organic growth."

Third Law:

                The third law states that, "Time-dependent shape-morphing behavior of nearly all multi-material 4D printed structures is governed by two types of time constants."  

Properties :

  • PH-reactive
  • Magento-reactive
  • Piezoelectric
  • Hydrogels
  • Thermo-reactive
  • Photo-reactive