July 21, 2015 | By Alec
For those of you who are dreaming of 3D printing something aside from PLA or ABS, good news has just come out of Italy. For Italian manufacturers WASP, known for their innovative approach to 3D printing, have just announed the release of the professional grade ceramic LDM extruder, that is compatible with the majority of desktop FDM printers and opens the way for a wide variety of new 3D printable materials.
For those of you who’ve never heard of WASP, it might be a good idea to mention Italian entrepreneur and 3D printing innovator Massimo Moretti. Over the past twenty years he has worked on countless innovative projects, and was one of the first people in Italy to fully embrace 3D printing technology in all its forms. Together with a group of design students, he launched WASP (World Advanced Saving Project) a few years ago, which have been marketing very decent 3D printers since then in all shapes and sizes.
This new and multi-functional LDM extruder (short for Liquid Deposit Modeling) is thus typical for a WASP product, and will doubtlessly find its way into the hands of artists, designers and startup of all levels. Developed over a period of two years, WASP has created a very useful tool for the manufacturing of objects using fluid-dense materials and wide variety of advanced ceramics. Think about functional materials such as ceramic, porcelain, clay, alumine, zirconium and others. This machine will thus open up a whole new manufacturing avenue that will make original design more spectacular than ever before.
Especially interesting about this WASP LDM extruder is that it can, unlike common approaches for ceramic 3D printing, reach precision levels comparable to those of 3D printed plastic polymers. This interesting feat has been achieved through the systematic experimentation with various forms of pressure, nozzles and materials. Finally, they settled on a combination of a screw extruder and a pressure extruder that can even interrupt and restart the flow of the ‘filament’ without damaging accuracy.
Promotional clip for the LDM extruder.
This new system from WASP is complete with a massive 7 kg tank (or a 15 kg one on demand), that can be refilled and cleaned. Inside, there’s a piston with two 4 bar gaskets that pumps the material of your choice to the extruder. A pressure regulater and return prevention valve have also bee incorporated in the design. The material is then extruded at a pressure of 40 bar, with an additional mechanism preventing bubbles from ruining the print. ‘Furthermore, thanks to the screw, the density of the printing materials is higher. This allows to reduce the time for their change of state, from liquid to solid, thus eliminating the risk of collapse of the printed object,’ the Italian designers say about their design.
The full set includes:
- A 3 l tank
- An extrusion piston
- A stand for the tank
- A pressure reducer
- A return preventing valve
- A safety valve
- 1 kg of porcelain
- A cochlea and an interchangeable pressure chamber
- A high-couple stepper engine
- An SD card which contains the .stl file for the two models PowerWASP and DeltaWASP, assembling instructions and some videos for preparation of the mixtures.
The quality of the prints, as you can see, is excellent.
But the best news is yet to come: This LDM WASP extruder has been especially designed to be incorporated into existing WASP 3D printers, but can also be installed on most common desktop 3D printers. ‘It is very easy to install WASP LDM extruder on other machines. Firstly, it is necessary to print the supporting cover (the source files are provided by WASP). Secondly, the extruder must be linked to the wire and the “number of steps per millimeter” must be set to 400. This configurations are provided by the most common slicing softwares, like Slic3r or Cura,’ the designers explain.
Especially this final feature makes the LDM WASP extruder a very interesting option for high-end makers and artists who are looking to incorporate a new and exciting 3D printing feature in their 3D printing. For more information about ordering, go to the WASP website here.
Posted in 3D Printer Accessories
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Re. "Think about functional materials such as ceramic, porcelain, clay, alumine, zirconium and others." Firstly you should not be ordering your readers to think about anything. Secondly: - "ceramic, porcelain" porcelain is a type of ceramics. - "alumine" there is no such word let alone a material.
Richard Soundy wrote at 7/21/2015 11:19:04 PM:
I have a great interest in your product. I reside in central California and wish to distribute this product on an exclusive territory, that being California area. Please contact me at soundyr@sbcglobal.net or USA (805)462-2292 I would like to know the prices, so that I can order a demo and/or training unit for promotions as soon as possible. I look forward to an early, positive response. Best regards, Richard Soundy
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