The United States develops a new 3D printing process that can use a variety of materials to print car/aircraft parts

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, uses digital manufacturing processes to produce light and strong parts without the need for special molds

According to foreign media reports, James and Sally Scapa Professors Hod Lipson, Department of Innovation (Mechanical Engineering), Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science, said: “Additive manufacturing is the key to economic recovery, but the problem Yes, SLS technology can only print one material at a time: the entire part is made of one powder

To solve this challenge, Lipson and his PhD student John Whitehead used their expertise in robotics to develop a new method to overcome the limitations of SLS technology

Generally speaking, selective laser sintering (SLS) technology uses a laser directed downward to heat the print bed to fuse material particles together

If only one material is used when printing, the SLS process will work well

In addition, in a standard printer, because the materials placed on each layer are the same, the materials that are not fused together will make people unable to see the object being printed until the printing cycle ends and the printed parts can be removed.

The researchers decided to find a method that does not require a powder printing bed at all

The researchers showed a prototype of its printed product, using thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) powder with an average layer height of 43.

Now, researchers are still experimenting with metal powders and resins to directly make more types of mechanical, electrical and chemical parts than those made with SLS systems