3D Printing - Quo vadis?

"Quo vadis" - that's Latin for "Where are you going?"

In my opinion, the next important area of research is the development of materials that can be pushed through a heated extruder to form stable objects.

The basic mechanical and electronical engineering has been finalised. We can move an extruder head over a building surface with great accuracy, and control the flow and physical characteristics of some thermoplastics. It is no great leap of engineering skill to build a 3D printer with a printable area of 8 feet x 4 feet (2400mm x 1200mm) and a printable height dependent on production needs. After all, the same basic engineering concepts hold true for a T Model Ford and the latest Formula One race car. It's all just a question of refinement.

What we need now is the ability to extrude materials at the high end of the tempereature scale (metals) and also at the low end (waxes, fats etc).

So if you want to make a ground breaking contribution to 3D printing, get involved in Materials Engineering.

Old Man Emu