3D Printing News: Printed Robot Hand, TPU Shoes & More
By Dynafabs
3D printing news: open robot hand files, fully printed foamed TPU shoes, Elegoo's first 3D scanner, oyster bricks and seats from harbour rope.
This week's 3D printing news has a lovely practical streak. A robot maker has shared the files for a hand you can print on a desktop machine, researchers have printed whole shoes from foamed TPU, Elegoo has jumped into 3D scanning, and two projects are printing things for the sea and the city. Here's what happened and why it matters if you get parts printed.
PathOn Robotics shares its printed robot hand
PathOn Robotics, which has teams in the San Francisco Bay Area and Shenzhen, has released the files for the three-finger hand its own robot uses. 3DPrinting.com reports that founder Rex Zhang announced it on X on 3 November with a demo of the hand picking up a toy bear.
The design is deliberately simple. Each finger is a single printed link with a soft printed fin at the tip, so the grip wraps around an object without needing a second joint. Four small DYNAMIXEL servos do the work: one per finger, plus one that spreads two of the fingers through a pair of printed gears. Bearings, pins, screws and heat-set inserts are bought in, and everything else is FDM printed. Rigid parts are PLA or PETG, the finger links and turrets call for PETG, and the soft fins are TPU.
The repository holds STL files for 13 printed parts and a 23-step assembly guide. The licence is personal and non-commercial only, and companies, schools and universities need written permission, so check the terms before you build one.
Fully printed shoes in foamed TPU
A study covered by Scienmag looked at complete printed shoes rather than just midsoles. Imjoo Jung and Sunhee Lee of Dong-A University printed an open-source gyroid shoe design on a dual-nozzle FDM printer, using lightweight PLA, standard TPU and lightweight microfoamed TPU, with PLA supports.
Print orientation made a real difference. Tilting the shoe to 45 degrees gave the largest printable size within the build volume, at the cost of longer print times and more support. The lightweight PLA shoe took roughly 45 hours, weighed about 193 g and behaved as a rigid, brittle structure. The TPU shoes came in lighter, at about 142 g for standard TPU and 133 g for the foamed version, and stayed flexible far longer under compression. It's a neat reminder that the material choice changes how a part behaves, not just how it looks.
Elegoo launches its first 3D scanner
Elegoo has moved into scanning with the M1 Ultra. According to Elegoo's announcement, it has a 3-inch touchscreen, Wi-Fi 6 and a swappable 4,800 mAh battery that's good for up to 1.5 hours of wireless scanning. Its software exports STL, OBJ, PLY and ASC files. UK pricing is £1,399, or £1,319 with early-bird pricing that runs until 12 November.
3D Print Core notes that despite the "all-in-one" label, you still need a computer running Elegoo Scan nearby. Scanners like this make it easier to capture a broken part and turn it into a printable file.
Printed clay bricks for oysters
A University of South Florida class is printing hollow, six-sided clay "hexa-logs" to rebuild oyster habitat on Tampa Bay seawalls, 3DPrinting.com reports. The Oyster Restoration Brick project started in 2022 and each class has refined the design. The stacks include a removable brick so young oysters can be moved to new sites, and course leader Tina Piracci hopes to release the design as open source.
Swinging seats from Rotterdam harbour rope
Rotterdam studio The New Raw has robotically printed Buoy, a series of swinging public seats made from discarded harbour rope that was recycled into polypropylene in the Netherlands. The write-up says the colours come straight from the old ropes with no added pigment, and the series used 45 kg of recycled plastic.
What it means if you're ordering prints
A few themes run through this week's stories:
- Mixing materials is normal now. The robot hand uses PLA, PETG and TPU in one build. Telling us what each part has to do helps us pick the right material for it. Our material comparison guide is a good starting point.
- Flexible parts need thought. TPU behaves very differently from PLA, as the shoe study shows. Our TPU guide explains hardness, walls and infill.
- Orientation matters. It affects size, strength and support. See our print orientation guide.
- Check the licence. Open files aren't always free for commercial use. If you send us a design, make sure you're allowed to have it printed.
FAQ
Can Dynafabs print parts with heat-set inserts, like the robot hand? Yes, we can design holes for inserts. Our heat-set inserts guide explains how they work.
Can you print from a 3D scan? Often, yes. Scans usually need some clean-up first, and our file prep checklist covers what to check.
Can I order a print that uses both rigid and flexible parts? Yes. Send us the files with a note on which parts need to flex and we'll suggest suitable materials.
Got a part in mind?
Whether it's a gripper, a flexible pad or a replacement part you've scanned, we'd love to help. Get a quote from Dynafabs and we'll recommend the best material and settings for the job.
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