Apparently New 3D printing technique

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-depth/fruits-of-the-loom/1013156.article

Hope it works out.

I am curious if we could use an extrusion/injection head to eliminate the mould?

... some years ago I was tinkering with ideas to build a 'crocheting'-fabber, that would be knitting 3D-objects from metal wires ... but dropped this idea, because of LOM-fabbing was easier to realize and produced more accurate and rigid objects ...

But another of the 'stringy'-methodes could be interesting too:
- placing the tip of a thin wire on a surface and melting the tip with a laser will result in a single fused drop of the wire-material with nearly the same size as the wire-diameter ... I've managed to get around 12 microns wide and maybe 5 microns high blobs from a 10 microns thick platinum wire ...

When continuously feeding and melting the wire with a rotating feeder-head on a XYZ-stage you can draw 'endless' filament tracks as with a RepRap printer ... but with much more accuracy and with any material you can melt/fuse to the surface ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

@Viktor: Pictures, pictures, ... we want to see pictures!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/21/2012 02:44PM by rhmorrison.

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Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse

Hi Bob,

sorry, no pictures available, as the development of the 'wire-plotter' was under NDA.

You can see the only 'free' picture related to this project here: [www.reprap.org] ( from my Laser Cutter Wiki ) - the 'big' blob of gold-tin-paste holding the 1µ-wire was placed manually and molten with a diode-laser, but I've made some much smaller droplets with the tips of 30µ-goldwires and the 10µ-platinumwire, that is the 'thick' wire in this picture. Made some really funny/sophisticated structures then with this wires ;-)

One of my first LOM-fabbed steel objects can be seen here: [forums.reprap.org] (from here: [forums.reprap.org] )
Made some other LOM-parts too, that were used in developments for microassembly and applied nanotech - way to small for normal microscopy ... attached is a REM-image of a 'nano-module', I've made then for a special project.

Actually I'm in a similar situation - in my company we're running some developments regarding additive manufacturing (SLS and direct melting with metal) and super-support structures, that will be really interesting for RepRap too ... but still under NDA.

Some of my older developments in this area are open (my own IP's or already published), but it would cost me some time and effort (needed for other tasks) to reactivate them ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]