3D printing certainly has a bright future, but just like any other new technology it has frustrating hurdles to overcome. Anyone buying a 3D printer today has to pay hundreds of dollars to get a good one. Printing isn't fast, and if the object you want to print is complicated it can mean breaking it down into several objects to print separately. And if you don't like the end result? That's a long wait for an expensive block of waste plastic.
Fast, cheap 3D printing is highly desirable, and Cornell University has come up with a way to bridge the gap until it becomes a reality. What the team led by Huaishu Peng have done is to modify a 3D printer to create an interactive prototyping system that prints on-the-fly as you sit there creating the model. That's right, it starts printing before you've finished creating.
The key to this super fast model printer is a switch from the traditional 3D print head to an extruder that pumps out a line of quick hardening plastic. It's the exact same system used to create 3D models by hand with the 3Doodler pen.
As the plastic hardens so quickly, it's possible to create strong wireframe structures. The Cornell team complimented the extruder with a plug-in for 3D modeling software Rhino. The plug-in takes the model information, converts it to machine code, and uses that to instruct the 3D printer how to proceed. It can also recheck the model and update the 3D printer as to what to print next, which allows for the on-the-fly printing.
Another key upgrade to the printer is a modification to the building platform adding two more degrees of movement: yaw and pitch. This gives it 5D capability and therefore allows for much more complex models to be printed as a single wireframe. They even added a cutting feature for removing sections of the wireframe after the extruder has finished.
While the end result is just a wireframe, most models will be created in a handful of minutes using very little plastic. This gives creators a physical prototype of the model to assess before continuing on and 3D printing the final product that will likely takes hours and requires 10x more plastic.
Both the National Science Foundation and Autodesk Corp supported the On-the-Fly-Print research projects. Hopefully it now gets turned into an actual product, as well as a mod pack for existing and future 3D printers.
Source ↔ Download Free Music
