NEW SYSTEM TO 3D PRINT DESIGNS IN REAL TIME

Scientists have developed aninteractive 3D printing system that allows designers to make changes to their model while it is still in the printer.

Three-dimensional printing has become a powerful tool for engineers and designers, allowing them to do “rapid prototyping” by creating a physical copy of a proposed design. However, if you decide to make changes, you may have to print the whole thing again, perhaps more than once.

Researchers at Cornell University in the US have come up with an interactive prototyping system that prints what you are designing as you design it. The designer can pause anywhere in the process to test, measure and, if necessary, make changes that will be added to the physical model still in the printer.

Researchers used the WirePrint technique, in which the nozzle extrudes a rope of quick-hardening plastic to create a wire frame that represents the surface of the solid object described in a computer-aided design (CAD) file.

WirePrint aimed to speed prototyping by creating a model of the shape of an object instead of printing the entire solid. The On-the-Fly-Print system builds on that idea by allowing the designer to make refinements while printing is in progress.

The new version has “five degrees of freedom.” The nozzle can only work vertically, but the printer’s stage can be rotated to present any face of the model facing up; so an airplane fuselage, for example, can be turned on its side to add a wing. There is also a cutter to remove parts, say to give the airplane a cockpit. Read more