[HN Gopher] Researchers demonstrate rapid 3D printing with liqui...
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       Researchers demonstrate rapid 3D printing with liquid metal
        
       Author : clouddrover
       Score  : 78 points
       Date   : 2024-01-27 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
        
       | reactordev wrote:
       | This is exciting but incredibly niche atm. The parts it produces
       | have to be milled and machined afterwards which in some cases
       | could increase the manufacturing time overall. I do like their
       | approach of keeping it hot and printing inside the sand. Much
       | like casting. The nozzle however pushes sand all over the place
       | and is probably pushing it into the path, causing the poorer
       | quality prints. I spent a couple years as a young adult in a
       | metal part manufacturing plant while going to school.
       | 
       | It's exciting though because I believe we'll have a time, not too
       | far from now, where a design can be fed to a molten printer to
       | print a base part, transferred to cnc mill for final refining,
       | and then polished and painted for shipping. It won't cost $10M to
       | create a fabrication facility. It won't require 25 years of
       | industrial mechanics to build your "plant". Just get "Bubba the
       | Boiler" metal 3D printer, "Michael the mill" CNC miller, and the
       | cast and crew of smaller tools to buff, polish, powder coat.
       | 
       | I'll stick to wood and plastic for now. More my "level".
        
         | IshKebab wrote:
         | It's not actually sand, it's glass balls.
        
           | bavent wrote:
           | Fancy sand!
        
           | reactordev wrote:
           | Same thing
        
         | quatrefoil wrote:
         | It doesn't cost $10M _in equipment costs_ to create a basic
         | fabrication facility for short-run metal parts today, right?
         | You pay for land, permitting  & compliance, construction, etc.
         | Machinery to cut "consumer-sized" parts out of metal stock, or
         | to stamp sheet metal, usually costs six figures or so.
         | 
         | Lost wax casting, which is done with CNC-machined molds, isn't
         | a capital-intensive process either.
        
       | carterschonwald wrote:
       | I saw a video about this a few days ago, one thing that's not
       | addressed is what aluminum alloys this works best with. Some
       | alloys aren't suitable for casting. And separately you need to
       | flux the molten solution to separate out oxides and make sure
       | there's no voids or inclusions in the metal object.
       | 
       | That said, this is brilliant and could easily have huge impact in
       | non structural applications or prototyping.
        
         | kjkjadksj wrote:
         | Would this device actually work out to be cheaper than a cnc
         | machine milling out a solid alloy block?
        
       | kjkjadksj wrote:
       | It seems like there are still a lot of challenges from the
       | physics of printing liquid aluminum. To me this seems like it
       | overcomplicated the task because they chose to print the
       | aluminum, rather than just printing a form that can hold molten
       | aluminum as a traditional casting might. Maybe that is already
       | done though, this is academic work after all and not necessarily
       | done to seek optimal solutions but to scope out future
       | challenges.
        
         | nullc wrote:
         | There are useful shapes you cannot form through casting or
         | subtractive manufacturing, such as shapes with complex cooling
         | channels inside them or weight reducing voids.
        
       | ijhuygft776 wrote:
       | kind of remind me of a pistol slide at 0:27... but yeah this isnt
       | 3d printing, it is molding... and I haven't watch the whole video
       | but I don't think they show you how they make the mold.
        
         | drtgh wrote:
         | They insert a probe deeply into glass beads to deliver hot
         | metal liquid as the probe moves along the programmed path.
         | 
         | That part that looks like molding is for to show how the metal
         | liquid will cool down inside the such beads.
         | 
         | (You should have watched the whole video)
        
       | apienx wrote:
       | Title should read "molten metal". Liquid metals are a thing, and
       | the title is ambiguous.
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_metal
        
       | progre wrote:
       | Nice. But Cranktown did this 2 years ago, in his garage.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7sv3HkDyok
        
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       (page generated 2024-01-27 23:00 UTC)