Engineering news
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) team has developed a 3D printer which can print a record 10 different materials at once.
The 3D printer, called MultiFab, uses a scanning technique that is cheaper and quicker than current 3D printing methods.
In a paper accepted at the SIGGRAPH computer-graphics conference, a CSAIL team presented the technology which delivers a resolution at the level of 40 microns, or less than half the width of a human hair. The 3D printer is the first to use 3D scanning techniques from machine vision, offering greater accuracy and speed over traditional 3D printing. It also bypasses many challenges associated with other multi-material 3D printers which are often limited to 3 materials at a time, cost as much as $25,000 each, and still require human intervention.
MultiFab, which was developed from low-cost off-the-shelf components that cost a total of $7,000, can self-calibrate and self-correct, freeing users from having to do the fine-tuning themselves, said CSAIL. For each layer of the design, the system’s feedback loop 3D-scans and detects errors and then generates so-called 'correction masks.' This approach allows the use of inexpensive hardware while ensuring print accuracy.
The technology can also give users the ability to embed complex components, such as circuits and sensors, directly onto the body of an object, meaning that it can produce a finished product, moving parts and all, simultaneously.
Javier Ramos, a research engineer at CSAIL who co-authored the paper with members of professor Wojciech Matusik’s Computational Fabrication Group, said: “The platform opens up new possibilities for manufacturing, giving researchers and hobbyists alike the power to create objects that have previously been difficult or even impossible to print.”
So far, the team has used MultiFab to print everything from smartphone cases to LED lenses, and envision an array of applications in consumer electronics, microsensing, medical imaging, and telecommunications, among other things. They plan to also experiment with embedding motors and actuators that would make it possible to 3D-print more advanced electronics, including potentially even robots.
This is possible as rather than using extrusion technology, which can lead to low-quality finished items, MultiFab mixes microscopic droplets of photopolymers together that are then sent through inkjet printheads. This computationally intensive process involves crunching dozens of gigabytes of visual data and is said to be much more easily scaled to larger objects and multiple materials.
In the future, Ramos says that he could imagine printers like MultiFab being used by researchers, manufacturers and consumers.