New laser and computer technology is drastically changing the way we might manufacture everything from your dental crown to aerospace components. It’s called '3D printing' or 'laser-sintering' and after seeing some of the results this morning in the Antenna Gallery—everything from hinged nylon structures formed all in one piece to a detailed miniature chess set the size of a cracker—I have to say that I'm fairly smitten.
In addition to just being fun to watch, sintering could be a greener option to traditional manufacturing processes which often require heating up a lot of material (using a lot of energy), and then leaving a lot of scrap (which frequently cannot be re-cast). In laser sintering a thirty watt laser atomizes and then re-deposits the source material layer by layer—everything from nylon to stainless steel—creating complex three-dimensional structure from a two-dimensional computer sketch. This relatively new technology, explained Stephen Crownshaw from Electro Optical Systems, can 'infinitely reuse leftover metals from manufacture' because the leftovers can always be re-atomized. Engineers are also beginning to find ways to reuse a large portion of plastics in a 50/50 mix with new material.
Aside from being green, this new process enables many individually-customized items to be manufactured simultaneously from the same block of raw material, like hundreds of personally-fitted dental crowns. This saves material and makes customizing objects easier than before. It is also opening up the doors of design as it can create objects which could not have been manufactured just a few years ago— everything from structurally-improbable design objects like the Artificial Intelligence Lamp by Assa Ashuach to light-weight aerospace components. Its ability to quickly create in 3D from 2D design sketches means that it could also significantly reduce the time it takes to prototype and test new parts and designs.
Want to see it in action? Please do. The laser sinter, a weird and wonderful array of objects crafted by it, and several designers and engineers who employ it in their work will be on hand from the 25th to the 27th of August at the Science Museum's Antenna Gallery.
Aside from being green, this new process enables many individually-customized items to be manufactured simultaneously from the same block of raw material, like hundreds of personally-fitted dental crowns. This saves material and makes customizing objects easier than before. It is also opening up the doors of design as it can create objects which could not have been manufactured just a few years ago— everything from structurally-improbable design objects like the Artificial Intelligence Lamp by Assa Ashuach to light-weight aerospace components. Its ability to quickly create in 3D from 2D design sketches means that it could also significantly reduce the time it takes to prototype and test new parts and designs.
Want to see it in action? Please do. The laser sinter, a weird and wonderful array of objects crafted by it, and several designers and engineers who employ it in their work will be on hand from the 25th to the 27th of August at the Science Museum's Antenna Gallery.
Image: Fluid Forms - Flickr
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