Researchers at public research university Virginia Tech are teaching robotic arms to fabricate materials with natural, flowing geometries inspired by trees, shells, and bones.
Backed by a three-year, $3.5 million NSF Future Manufacturing Research Grant, the team is advancing beyond traditional flat-layer, straight-line printing by enabling robots to deposit composite materials from multiple directions. This method creates components with wood-like grain structures that can better anticipate and absorb stress, making them nearly 10 times stronger than parts produced using conventional additive manufacturing techniques.
The grant is one of only seven awarded through the NSF’s Future Manufacturing Research program, which supports initiatives designed to develop manufacturing capabilities that do not yet exist.
Breaking the Limits of Layer-by-Layer Printing
Early 3D printing worked much like a hot glue gun, laying down single-material lines that cooled into stacked layers. Although that technique still dominates, robotic multi-directional printing—paired with advanced composite materials—is unlocking components once considered impossible: flexible electronic structures, lighter and stronger aircraft parts, and multifunctional mechanical systems.
“We have been exploring how robotic arms could benefit 3D printing for almost 10 years now,” said Christopher Williams, director of Virginia Tech Made: The Center for Advanced Manufacturing. “We found that to truly leverage the flexibility of these robotic arms for improving printed part strength, we needed to combine our collective knowledge of design optimization, advanced materials, robotic controls, and additive manufacturing. Our early results of putting these pieces together are really exciting.”
The Team Behind the Tech
The core team consists of four Mechanical Engineering faculty members: Pinar Acar, whose group builds virtual models and uses machine learning to identify optimal material-property combinations; Michael Bartlett, who leads research in engineered materials; Erik Komendera, a former NASA engineer applying aerospace robotics expertise to new lab innovations; and Christopher Williams, who heads the Design, Research, and Education for Additive Manufacturing (DREAMS) Lab.
“This project needs all of us, because any individual researcher can’t make the progress needed to enable the materials, the process, the design, and the robotics,” Bartlett said. “You can’t put this work in a single lab because you will not have the expertise needed to push it forward.”
Building the Workforce of the Future
Beyond the technology itself, the project prioritizes preparing future engineers. Lisa McNair, professor in the Department of Engineering Education, is integrating these emerging manufacturing approaches into student learning—from K–12 outreach to embedding a “manufacturing spine” throughout the College of Engineering. Her work will assess how these innovations shape the skills and readiness of tomorrow’s manufacturing workforce.
Nature-Inspired Additive Manufacturing
Virginia Tech’s research is part of a broader trend in nature-inspired 3D printing, where engineers look to biological structures for guidance in creating stronger, lighter, and more efficient components. Other teams are exploring similar strategies.
In 2022, researchers from Princeton University and Georgia Tech developed a new type of porous structure inspired by bone and wood. These designs feature spinodal microstructures—pores that can be adjusted to fine-tune part properties and performance. Components with these structures are typically lighter than fully dense parts, while offering customizable stiffness profiles. The team has already used SLA 3D printing to prototype applications such as facial implants and lightweight aircraft engine components.
Scientists from the UAE have developed a one-step 3D printing method to create lightweight, cellular gyroidal shell-core structures using a two-material composite. Their research, published as “Nature-Inspired Lightweight Cellular Co-Continuous Composites with Architected Periodic Gyroidal Structures,” demonstrates that these architectures are stronger than equivalent single-material structures. The team also showed that adjusting the spatial composition of the gyroidal structures allows control over mechanical properties, enabling a range of performance characteristics for different engineering applications.
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Featured image shows Isaac Rogers works with a 3D printed piece in the Design, Research and Education for Additive Manufacturing Systems (DREAMS) Lab at Virginia Tech. Photo via Virginia Tech.
