Professional Arburg freeformer using plastic pellets

Today I have noticed this interesting 3d printing technique by company Arbug, that I wanted to share.

They have recently announced a 3d printer using plastic pallets, not filament, and piezo technique.

The function of the printing head can be seen in the video on this page:
http://www.arburg.com/us/us/solutions/processes/additive-manufacturing/.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/2013 06:22AM by Vestifex.

this is a similar concept to the first air brush patent in around 1900 by pasch, (not sure of spelling), and similar to something I have been working on,
(on and off) for a while, the polymer forms discrete spheres, (maybe for the salke of the video), metal spheres welded together have also been mentioned on the forum.
so nothing new under the sun, we have no shortage of ideas, but a lack of developers.

P.S thanks for posting the links.

---

Random Precision

One mechanical nozzle movement for each droplet? That's quite a bit.

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

One mechanical nozzle movement for each droplet? That's quite a bit.

yes, but it can handle high viscosity, also the frequency can be high, material dependant of course.

---

Random Precision

Do they have a patent or a licencing agreement?

The 'droplet' approach may very well bypass some patents as well, since existing FDM processes generally assume a 'fused filament fabrication' rather than a 'fused droplet fabrication'.

Also, I was intrigued by their mention of a 5-axis system (which would theoretically eliminate the need for supports) - using a droplet based modeling system undoubtedly makes the software side of things much easier when you can consider 'voxels' in a 5-axis environment rather than individual toolpaths (again, this may help bypass some patents as well).

---

[haveblue.org]