Monday, February 11, 2013

3D Printing








1 comment:

gottingen said...

Hi, 3D printers produce a real solid object, but as you suspect there is a catch in that you can only print a limited number of materials, and only certain very special printers allow you to mix multi materials in one same print; furthermore the materials available often do not correspond to what you would want. So, you guessed right, it's a big limitation of 3D printing. However, you can print any SHAPE you want. So, if you have a beautiful wood chair, you can print it in 3D, but it will be made of plastic, not wood, because no printer exists as far as I know that prints wood. In fact, no printer exists that prints fibrous materials at all; so, no fiberglass, no wood, you get the drift.High quality metals, suprisingly, CAN be 3D printed, so you can make for example a medical prosthesis out of aeronautical titanium with a 3D printer. In that case, what goes in the printer is a fine titanium powder, which gets melted in the printer to produce the shape.