Research on 3D printing (also called additive manufacturing) has increased the accessibility of the technology to the general public. Today you can even buy your own 3D printer, although at a steep price—the cost of these systems has hindered their wide-scale use. Recently, an interdisciplinary team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) has partly addressed this limitation by building a relatively cheap printer that can handle multiple materials.
From the beginning, the team was interested in a 3D printing platform that relied on commercial, off-the-shelf parts. Over the past three years, they’ve developed an impressive multi-material 3D printing platform that costs around $7,000—over an order of magnitude cheaper than other multi-material systems.
The printer is 1.2m x 0.6m x 1m (w, l, h), and its frame is made of aluminum attached to UV-blocking acrylic sheets. An exhaust duct is connected to the rear of the panel where two electric fans are used to expel gases and particulates.
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Andrea Alù, an engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has an amazing job description: he
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LISA Pathfinder, ESA’s demonstrator for spaceborne observations of gravitational waves, is ready to leave for Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
