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Neat to see this! As the technology improves, I am skeptical of the necessity of sacrificing resolution. I can think of a half-dozen ways to improve on this as
by frognumber 3y ago
Neat to see this!
As the technology improves, I am skeptical of the necessity of sacrificing resolution. I can think of a half-dozen ways to improve on this as it moves from V0 to V1 to V2.
The video mentions post-machining, but aside from that, we have:
- More sophisticated media than uniform glass pallets. In particular, an outline could be preplaced, so it is more like casting. For example, one could have large glass pieces, smaller glass pieces, etc. arranged prior.
- Combined methods, where this prints the coarse shape, and slower techniques fill in details. This could even be the same technique but with successively smaller nozzles.
And simple process improvements (esp. refining nozzle design, temperature, and flow rate, so in some ways). I suspect moving from liquid to something more like extrusion, could help as well. Extrusion can be quite precise. Better process control, with some form of feedback loop, would help too. Imaging aluminum in realtime through the glass pallets in realtime should not be fundamentally hard.
By "not hard," I mean "known engineering process with known technologies" (e.g. solvable, but a serious multiyear engineering effort).
First press release + video I've seen from MIT which doesn't oversell / overhype results or grossly exaggerate potential impact. That's refreshing too.
- Animats 3y agoWasn't this on HN a few days ago? There are already good metal printers. They're usually sintering systems - put down a powder and fire it in a furnace. There are systems for 3D printing sand molds for casting.[1] Both of those processes are much more precise than this one. Metals do usually have a phase in which they're solid, but malleable, and can be worked with modest forces. "Modest" usually means hammers, large presses, or a rolling mill. A good metal extruder working with red-hot but not molten metal would need to be able to apply similar forces. That's what the 3D printers that work with wire and are similar to welders do.[2] There's directed energy deposition, which converts metal powder to molten metal for a fraction of a second at the deposition point.[3] This liquid system has the same problem as the 3D printing systems for concrete that were being touted a few years ago. Some kind of molding or die is needed to guide the material at the point the metal becomes a solid, or the result is very rough. [1] https://www.voxeljet.com/3d-printing-solution/sand-casting/ https://www.voxeljet.com/3d-printing-solution/sand-casting/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3nNlVcoba8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3nNlVcoba8 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL7bMhPTtDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL7bMhPTtDI
- iancmceachern 3y agoAlso the Mantle printers look promising