large format 3d printing picks up speed
the egg heads at MIT have done it again
Now that large part 3D printing has really begun to make a noteworthy splash on the market in
general, some of the brightest minds around are contributing to its engineering development. It has proven itself to be
effective and as such it´s garnering a lot of attention, which is sure to be
welcomed news for business people that have been seeing the writing on the wall
and therefore see the sense in investing and shifting their business practices
to be in step with this technology in the hopes of being fortunate enough to
take full advantage of what addictive manufacturing has to offer the world at
large.
One figure
leading the charge is associate professor John Hart who is the director of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity
as well as the Mechanosynthesis Group that conducts studies that determine benchmark
rates for 3D printing big parts. As a career technological engineer expert he
has been drawn to the idea of making a 3D printer that can produce parts, not a
matter of hours, but rather minutes. As he explains the reasoning for his
efforts, ¨If I can get a prototype part, maybe a bracket or a gear, in 5 to 10
minutes rather than an hour, or a bigger part over my lunch break rather than
the next day, I can engineer, build, and test faster. If I’m a repair
technician and I could have a large format 3D printer in shop, I could
3-D-print a repair part on-demand,¨ meaning that by streamlining the process
professionals in a plethora of fields could save on not only all kinds of
costs, but on valuable time they need since, as he states, commercial desktop
extrusion systems for large format 3D printing so far have been ¨really slow.¨
Along with
the research team he has been leading for a number of years now he has been
working to make this desire come true. As they went about analyzing the
workings of large part 3D printing systems they turned their focus towards the
printer pinch-wheel mechanism that is typically used on a large number of both
professional and conventional large scale 3D printing units. Although it
does yield reliable degree of accurate resolution for the vast majority of
machines on the market it is simply inefficient for getting a job done quickly
and leaves much to be desired as it.offers a work speed of about only about 15
cubic centimeters on the hour when laying out .2 millimeters of thickness. With
the support of a grant that was given to them by the Lockheed Martin
Corporation as well as considerable governmental and MIT support, this last of
which has has maintained a trend of propelling research that improves upon
existing 3D design systems in order to raise the stakes of sophistication.
Instead of
pinch wheel gears, which have been proving to be fairly inefficient because of
way that they require the use of wheels in a track cartridge to extrude
filament at a measured rate, the team completely revamped the print head by
developing a heated laser polymer liquified that is added to it. This addition
works quite well as it is manipulated by a servo-driven gantry, or small crane,
system that works in direct coordination with the head to achieve a ¨high
extrusion force, rapid filament heating, and fat gantry motion.¨
Their
efforts have led to their latest announcement, what they have dubbed Fast Fused
Filament Fabrication, or FastFFF that they claim is able to produce printed
objects at its mean speed at a rate that´s 7 times faster than most large part 3D
printers that are commercially available today, however, when it is sped up to
its maximum capacities it can even double that speed. To get an idea of what
that means just imagine a printer that´s capable of manufacturing at a
volumetric build rate of 127 centimeters cubed an hour. This new technology
owes its speed to a better printhead as well as a more efficient gantry for
overall movement. If you take the time to see it on Youtube, you´ll appreciate
what all this ends up being. Seeing it in action is quite the treat and reminds
one of science fiction movies where robots are mass produced.
It could make production a pretty snappy process for many. The
sheer variety of potential implications that are involved with this
level of advancement in procedural
acceleration is mind boggling and may be
seen as very welcomed throughout the business world. Like the camera was
destined to become more and more compact, so too was large scale 3d printing
sure to encourage innovation from the highest technological institutions in the
land. There’s no mistake about it, 3d printing of large parts is going to play
a significant role in how things are made, especially when the desire is to make customizable goods. There are
many things, such as electronics, that require a particularly large
amount of detail and have a considerable demand eagerly waiting for them. Especially
when one takes a moment to think of how in modern society people are generally
quite obsessed with having the latest gizmo, those companies that can keep up with all sorts of
different and unforeseen trends are the ones that are bound to succeed and
surpass their competitors.
Of course there are concerns about what repercussions excelling additive
manufacturing may incur, which may be feared by some as drastic scenarios as whole
sectors of the economy could
very well greatly diminished in terms of manufacture employment. It´s not crazy to consider as
leaps and bounds are made in the this arena. The truth of the matter is that as a society we
strive to progress and we rely quite heavily on the ingenuity of scientists and
engineers to pave the way.
Because of
the size of this particular machine, it isn´t intended to be used by simple
hobbyists any time soon, but it was developed with the goal of keeping costs
down to a minimum. One thing is for sure, if it is brought to market you can
bet that over time costs will begin to lower so that FASTFFF will be within reach
of the layperson at some point. There is even talk about exploring ways to
adapt this system to the manufacture of composite materials and the
high-temperature thermoplastic products, such as PEEK, that will widen the
horizons for its implementation.
It’s pretty thought-provoking to keep in mind that this leap
forward is just because of
a few engineers that are weighing in to lend their expertise in the hopes of pushing additive
manufacturing to where it belongs. The role that it will play on the large scheme
of things is hard to pin down,
but there could be a shift in work ethics and the general approach we take towards
manufacturing as
well as the prior
steps of design. When we’re free to try out going down paths without the over abundant fear of committing the benefits
are sure to be obvious, for example a growth of variability. We think of manufacturing as
something that happens in far flung places like China, but this perception could change considerably.
Going over
these ideas is interesting to contemplate, especially if you have concrete ideas of how
different industries could incorporate them, be they ones that already exist or
ones that have yet to be founded. Who knows, this kind of technological
advancement could serve to thin the ever present line between what we want to
have and who is actually able to make it a reality. We may be coming upon a new dawn of
customizable birthday gifts, creative interior decor production at an involved personal level or even
interchangeable auto accessories
to reflect what our vision of the road is and the way we want to represented before others in public.