When Jay Leno replaced car parts, he could only print plastic moulds in 3D. Life’s easier now, because moulds are unnecessary in the creation of custom desk kitsch and car parts as 3D printing got a stainless steel upgrade.
21 days and $US10 per square centimeter is all you need after you send a CAD design to Shapeways, a company who began offering 3D resin and plastic printing quite some time ago. There are specific size and detail guidelines to keep in mind due to models being printed in layers, but based on the moebius strip complete with moving parts, those guidelines can’t be all that limiting. What’s going to be your first 3D steel print? [Shapeways via PopSci via CrunchGear]
Ollie
August 7, 2009 at 12:25 PM
Hate to burst your bubble, but metal 3D printing has been around for a little while.
Report PermalinkNamely Selective Laser Sintering, and Fused Deposition Modelling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fused_deposition_modeling
Business Printing
August 7, 2009 at 2:29 PM
Ollie I believe the “news” part of this story is that metal can now be “3D printed” which is a different technology to those which you have mentioned that were pre-existing (SLS and FDM). 3D printing is different to SLS because it prints layers of the object with an inkjet-like technology, but the printer inkjets contain the metal which will form the object being printed. This is quite exciting because, while SLS technology may have been able to form metal components before, 3D printing has only been able to produce components with layers of resins, but never metal. Why bother doing metal 3D printing when SLS could already do it? The reason is there are huge cost savings to be had using a 3D printer versus SLS technology. I believe it is also much quicker than SLS too.
Also, in the article, when the writer is referring to “layers”, they are commenting on the fact that a 3D printer will print the component in thin layers… One on top of the other, until the whole component is formed. There would need to be some design considerations made to ensure the component can be produced this way and perform as intended.
Report PermalinkC. Toughill
December 23, 2011 at 10:58 AM
In the past it has been ungodly expensive.
Report PermalinkOllie
August 7, 2009 at 12:45 PM
Oh, and it’s got bugger-all to do with layers, it’s the physical constraints of the size of the machine, especially with metal parts. When doing plastics you can make them in sections and glue them together, thus making pieces several times larger than the cavity in the machine.
Report PermalinkAnd “Bronze infused Stainless Steel”… wtf drugs are these guys smoking?
Steel is anything with a Ferrite (read: Iron) base, Stainlesses contain higher amounts of Chromium, Nickel, Molybdenum and a few other elements depending on their intended purpose. “Bronze” contains predominantly Copper alloyed with Tin, Zinc, Lead, and then there’s the Aluminium Bronzes, Manganese Bronzes, Brasses and many others.
Why they would want to “infuse” the two is anyones guess.
Chromii
August 7, 2009 at 10:03 PM
To the highly intelligent metallurgist called Ollie, If you are quite finished stroking your own ego & trying so hard to impress us with your knowledge, can we now get on with enjoying the fact that this NEW process opens the door to great possibilities. I can only hope that an upgrade option becomes available to run this material through my Z450 Printer :)
Report Permalinkasmodyne
April 26, 2010 at 7:07 AM
Fact is, this attractive process could be quite an improvement to the 3D printing community, only if it wasn’t this obscure and confidential. There’s no progress in expensive hermetic proprietary technologies. *sigh*
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