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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 every bit the medium, and that plastic needs to be supported during the press procedure. An experimental printer developed by Harvard's Wyss Plant and the Schoolhouse of Engineering and Practical Sciences (SEAS) uses nanoparticles and lasers to make metallic 3D printing feasible in midair.

The printing medium is a special formulation of silver nanoparticle ink. The ink is fed through a printing nozzle that can move forth the ten, y, and z axis. The silvery ink itself would simply drip out of the nozzle and splash on the floor before 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 correct corporeality of thermal free energy to solidify information technology into a wire thinner than a human hair.

The upshot shown in the video beneath is fascinating — the silver wire anneals so apace after leaving the nozzle that information technology doesn't look like liquid ink at all. The team was able to create complex designs and structures similar spirals, zig-zags, and even little argent butterflies. The silverish ink is highly electrically conductive when solidified, and the team says the system can be used to print flexible circuit boards. All you demand is an inexpensive plastic substrate.

Getting this level of detail from the nozzle was a substantial challenge. The nozzle can be programmed to move wherever you lot want, merely the laser needs to follow precisely and expose the ink to the right corporeality of free energy. As well lilliputian and the ink won't solidify, merely likewise much and the silver nanoparticles would clog the nozzle. Keeping the rut consequent at the nozzle actually means the laser can't just be on at a consistent level. The researchers had to devise a model that takes into business relationship how rut is transferred beyond a given wire structure. That affects how fast the nozzle moves, the menses of ink, and how much energy is applied past the laser.

You put all that together and you lot take a automobile that can impress almost any shape without a bunch of supporting structures that are just going to be trimmed away. The team envisions this sort of technology existence used to make flexible electronics, custom sensors, and medical device prototypes. This is just an experimental organisation right now. The build volume is small and it'south complicated to maintain. But in the future? Who knows?