“Turned inside out” sintering technology can reduce the cost of 3D printers for metal many times

    The University of Southern California ( USC ) has developed a new 3D printing method for metal products. In September 2014, researchers Payman Torabi, Matthew Petros and Beroch Hoshnevis presented an article describing their development.



    The idea is to use a special type of inkjet technology called selective inhibition sintering (SIS).

    Existing systems of budget home 3D-printers (printers worth no more than $ 5000 are considered to be home-based printers) operate on the principle of fusing , or, less commonly, laser stereolithography, but the speed of such printers is very low. In addition, home printers working with metal simply do not exist, since the use of powerful lasers for sintering metal powder dramatically increases the cost of the system.

    Researchers, striving to improve the performance of 3D printers, work in two directions. You can try to make new materials that are suitable for existing printer technologies, or you can invent new technologies for working with existing materials.

    Typically, printers using the powder sintering method tend to speed up this process to connect the layers to each other. SIS technology, on the contrary, delays this process. In a sense, this is the opposite of the traditional manufacturing of parts in 3d printers. When using this technology, a special head places a liquid inhibitor substance around the perimeter of each layer of the future part, which prevents the sintering process. Upon completion of printing of all layers, the part is removed and brought to condition in a conventional furnace. The inhibitor that separates the part goes solid and prevents sintering. After that, the part is removed from the resulting shell, as if from a conventional casting mold.



    Thus, instead of expensive and complex laser sintering, printheads resembling conventional inkjet heads are used. At the moment, the authors have built a working prototype of the printer and are experimenting with various inhibitors. They successfully managed to create parts from various metals, including bronze. Among the interesting examples of parts is an adjustable wrench, all four of which were printed and then assembled by hand.


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