3d printing is a new and exciting field in the world of
design. It has become an incredible tool
for creating the relics bound within our imaginations and gives us a way to
give them tangibility. 3d printing and
rendering has come a long way since my professors’ education in the nineties
where CAD was a complex programming software that you had to grapple with, let
alone the cost of materials. Now our fortunate generation is the one with
technology at our fingertips. We have
several different auto CAD programs at our mercy that we wield to create
objects from a long list of very cost effective materials that our fore fathers
of the CAD-iverse did not have. It even
has come to the point that I know several people with their own personal 3d
printer and I myself plan to get one. A
few years ago the tech nerd would drop a small fortune on a maker-bot that they
would assemble themselves, and that maker-bot would take several hours to heat
abs nylon through a tube to create your object.
Now we have small 3d printers available for around $2000 that can print
in multiple materials quickly and more efficiently than its maker-bot predecessor.
It’s incredibly the leaps and bounds
that the 3d printing realm has taken in the last few years.
Here I have linked a video of one of the latest feats our generation
has opened up to the world of 3d printing. Printing liquid metal, developed by
a team at North Carolina University, they have found a way to oxidize the surface of a small bead of liquid metal to stabilize it enough so that it can
remain in liquid form to create malleable liquid metal structures. We are very used to heating polymer materials
that quickly cool into non-malleable structures when taken away from its heat
source. Here we have a material that
stays liquid in room temperature allowing further manipulation which can lead
to huge leaps and bounds for the technology field when it comes to computer
parts, wires, connectors, electrodes, etc.
Anyone who has worked with metal
knows that metal, to become liquid, needs intense heat typically from a torch,
and it does not stay liquid when that heat source is removed. It cools far too quickly, but this technique
finds a way around that reality. From what I understand the metal they have chosen to work
with is gallium. It is a very soft metal
that does not appear in nature.
Gallium
has a very low melting point, just above room temperature. It has been reported that if the element is
held long enough it will melt in your hand.
I know it seems less impressive using such a soft malleable metal for
this technique, but the metal does have the conductivity needed for electronics
and it could lead to new ways of printing with precious metals down the
road. I look forward to where this will
lead printing with metals since we typically tend to focus on printing with
polymers.
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