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Printing Metal

Traditional 3D printing has limits that have negatively impacted its usefulness. For 1, almost all 3D printers use plastic equally the medium, and that plastic needs to exist supported during the press procedure. An experimental printer developed past Harvard's Wyss Plant and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) uses nanoparticles and lasers to make metallic 3D press feasible in midair.

The press medium is a special conception of silver nanoparticle ink. The ink is fed through a press nozzle that can movement along the x, y, and z axis. The silver ink itself would just baste out of the nozzle and splash on the floor earlier solidifying. However, the team led by Wyss researcher Jennifer Lewis programmed a laser to follow the nozzle around, exposing the extruded ink to just the right corporeality of thermal energy to solidify it into a wire thinner than a human hair.

The result shown in the video below is fascinating — the silver wire anneals so apace later leaving the nozzle that it doesn't look similar liquid ink at all. The team was able to create complex designs and structures like spirals, zig-zags, and even piffling silver butterflies. The argent ink is highly electrically conductive when solidified, and the team says the system tin can be used to print flexible excursion boards. All you need is an inexpensive plastic substrate.

Getting this level of detail from the nozzle was a substantial claiming. The nozzle tin exist programmed to move wherever yous want, but the laser needs to follow precisely and betrayal the ink to the right corporeality of free energy. As well little and the ink won't solidify, just too much and the silver nanoparticles would clog the nozzle. Keeping the oestrus consistent at the nozzle actually means the light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation can't just exist on at a consequent level. The researchers had to devise a model that takes into account how estrus is transferred beyond a given wire construction. That affects how fast the nozzle moves, the catamenia of ink, and how much free energy is applied by the laser.

Yous put all that together and you lot take a machine that tin impress about any shape without a bunch of supporting structures that are only going to be trimmed abroad. The team envisions this sort of technology being used to make flexible electronics, custom sensors, and medical device prototypes. This is just an experimental organization right now. The build volume is pocket-sized and it's complicated to maintain. Merely in the future? Who knows?