New 3D printing technology with liquid metal
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Revolution in manufacturing technology
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed an additive manufacturing process that allows liquid metal to be printed quickly and large parts such as table legs and chair frames to be produced in just a few minutes: In "Liquid Metal Printing" (LMP) technology, molten aluminium is poured along a predefined path into a bed of tiny glass beads. The aluminium quickly hardens to form a 3D structure. This innovation could open the door to a wide range of applications, from flexible electronic devices to advanced medical implants.
According to the researchers, LMP is at least ten times faster than comparable additive metal manufacturing technologies, while the process of heating and melting the metal is more efficient than some other methods. But it takes a toll in terms of resolution: although this method can print components that are larger than those typically produced using slower additive techniques, and at a lower cost, it cannot achieve high resolution.
“This is a completely different direction in how we think about metal manufacturing that has some huge advantages. It has downsides, too. But most of our built world — the things around us like tables, chairs, and buildings — doesn’t need extremely high resolution. Speed and scale, and also repeatability and energy consumption, are all important metrics,” says Skylar Tibbits, associate professor in the Department of Architecture and co-director of the Self-Assembly Lab, who is senior author of a paper introducing LMP.
Parts made with LMP are accordingly well suited to some applications in architecture, construction and industrial design, where components of larger structures often do not require extremely fine detail. It could also be used effectively for rapid prototyping with recycled metal or scrap. The team chose aluminium here because it is commonly used in construction and can be recycled cheaply and efficiently.
High speeds and high temperatures
LMP keeps the material in a molten state throughout the process. Building on the group's earlier work on fast liquid printing with rubber, the researchers developed a machine that melts aluminium, holds the molten metal and deposits it at high speed through a nozzle. Large-format parts can be printed in just a few seconds, then the molten aluminium cools in several minutes.
"Our process rate is really high, but it is also very difficult to control. It is more or less like opening a faucet. You have a big volume of material to melt, which takes some time, but once you get that to melt, it is just like opening a tap. That enables us to print these geometries very quickly," explains Zain Karsan, PhD student at ETH Zurich and lead author of the paper.
Enormous progress, enormous potential
The entire process is already a significant step forward, but is still being refined. In the future, the machine in particular will be further improved to enable uniform heating in the nozzle to prevent the material from sticking and to better control the flow of molten material. However, larger nozzle diameters can lead to irregular printing, so there are still technical challenges to overcome.
A machine that could be used to melt down recycled aluminium and print parts would be a significant advance in metal manufacturing.
The technology can be used to produce furniture-sized aluminium parts in just a few minutes.
© MIT Self-Assembly Lab
