Aug 24, 2015 | By Alec
While there are obviously some personal variations here and there, the vast majority of 3D printing engineers have in some way or another been motivated by Star Trek’s iconic ‘replicator’. After all, who doesn’t dream of an instant manufacturing machine? While long regarded as some sort of unobtainable holy grail of 3D printing, it is evidently not as unrealistic as you might think. Researchers over at MIT have just unveiled the CSAIL MultiFab 3D printer which can print functional objects out of at least ten different material options in a single printing session.
This fascinating machine has just been introduced in a paper entitled MultiFab: A Machine Vision Assisted Platform for Multi-material 3D Printing by MIT researchers Pitchaya Sitthi-Amorn, Javier Ramos and others. In it, they discuss the very interesting options and capacities of this machine and explain what multi-material 3D printing could do for us and the rest of the manufacturing industry. ‘It has the potential to accelerate innovation – engineers and hobbyists will have the power to create objects that have been previously impossible or very difficult to fabricate. It will also give them the opportunity to iterate over their designs inexpensively and quickly. Multi-material 3D printing will also impact the general population by allowing mass customization of personalized products,’ the scientists write.
Now you might say, but surely multi-material 3D printing options exist, and you would be right. The best machine currently out there is the Stratasys Objet Connex, but that is obviously limited to a very small group of researchers. Priced at a quarter of a million dollars and with material costs of $500 per kilogram, it’s not an excellent prototyping option. That’s just one of the reason why the MultiFab 3D printer is so interesting – its shockingly affordable. ‘Our current system has a bill-of-materials of less than $7,000, and the estimated cost of the printing materials is around $20 per kilogram,’ they write. ‘The current platform is built exclusively from low-cost, commercial off-the-shelf components. The use of a computer vision feedback loop simplifies the design and compensates in software for hardware deficiencies. Our system also pioneers inexpensive and safe LED curing (no other 3D printer we know of uses it) and a simple material feeding system. Our system adapts consumer printheads for polymer 3D printing.’
But aside from that, this MultiFab 3D printer is also simply very capable and has already succeeded in 3D printing lenses, circuit boards, wiring – everything you expect from a promising multi-material machine like this. ‘Our system dramatically expands the range of parts that can be fabricated by providing an extensive material library. This library includes materials with a wide range of optical, mechanical and appearance properties,’ they write. ‘All materials presented in this paper are UV-curable photopolymers. Additional materials such as co-polymers, hydrogels, and solvent-based materials can be adapted to be used within our platform. Currently, our material library includes a rigid material (RIG), elastic material (ELA), high refractive index material (HR), low refractive index material (LR), and a support material (SPT).’. What’s more, those parts can be printed right next to the rest of the components necessary to complete a project, and that in a single session.
Some examples of printed objects.
This machine is obviously also very suitable for the manufacturing of meta-material objects, which they have already tested extensively. Among others, they have created objects featuring a negative Posson coefficient with these meta-materials. ‘[This object is] designed by combining rigid and elastic materials, and with empty spaces, expands when stretched,’ they write. ‘In addition, we design a multimaterial tire with a honeycomb structure that uses four different materials and empty spaces, including both elastic and rigid materials that have different appearances.’ In short, it’s as close to the replicator as scientists have gotten.
However, the CSAIL MultiFab 3D printer contains an even wider range of interesting features. For starters, it 3D prints at a very high resolution of at least 40 µm, while the system itself is fully Extensible. ‘The hardware and software architectures are easily extensible and reconfigurable. Our carriage system allows for reconfiguring the printer by adding and removing different modules quickly and easily. The modular software architecture provides an API for the development and use of new modules,’ they add. The CSAIL MultiFab 3D printer also enables the integration of auxiliary objects into prints.
Javier Ramos about the MultiFab 3D printer.
All of these manufacturing options can be added and altered through the use of a modular rail, to which a series of modules can be added. ‘In our design, each module can be easily removed from or reattached to the rail. Modules can be positioned at any location along the length of the rail, allowing for modules of differing widths to be mounted minimizing rail space,’ they explain. And all these modules offer top-of-the-range manufacturing solutions. The printhead module, for instance, 600 DPI resolution, multiple nozzles that can eject droplets ranging from 6 pL to 26 pL in volume, as well as five independent ink channels.
But the option they are perhaps most pleased with, is the 3D printer’s built in scanning abilities. Not only does it enable them to monitor printing progress, it is also used to analyze the results throughout every session to avoid mistakes (and when possible, correct them during printing). This is all part of their integrated machine vision system. ‘This system allows for self-calibration of printheads, 3D scanning, and a closed-feedback loop to enable print corrections. The integration of machine vision with 3D printing simplifies the overall platform design and enables new applications such as 3D printing over auxiliary parts,’ they say. As you might expect, this scanner can also be used to scan existing objects, or even to 3D print on top of them.
While only one version of this fascinating machine currently exists, the MIT researchers are fortunately envisioning a marketable version of the CSAIL MultiFab 3D printer for research purposes. ‘We believe our platform will allow computer graphics researchers and computational engineers to validate results of simulations against real fabricated results,’ they conclude. And that is exactly what the 3D printing community needs.
Posted in 3D Printers
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Think this is evidence the replicator is coming. Increasing computer speeds r also indicators of the singularity/AI..
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