Topological printing : Siemens does 5axis printing now

[LambdaFF]

I saw a representative from Siemens Gmbh yesterday, from their 3D printing branch. He had a whole luggage of parts and demonstrators. Most of which are no news at all but he did have something that caught my eye.
He had something that looked like a turbine compressor stage, printed in 5 axis topological printing. The printing of the material followed the geometry. Instead of layers, it looked like the part had just had the opposite of lathing : the matter had been added just the opposite way. Therefore less prone to debonding. The semi translucent material showed that the infill was not arbitrary plane gridfill.

Really good looking. Really strong.

The Doktor was not in my building on 3D printing business however so I couldn't get much details on that but apparently the hardest part had been to get the software right, not the hardware. I hope we can reap part of the benefits of that on our machines. Sadly, I don't see Siemens getting involved in that anytime soon.

There was similar talk over a year ago from Topolabs... didn't seem to pan out.

Let's face it 5 axis can't be done on our rep rap machines but perhaps at least some of the code could be put to good use ? Here's to dreaming someone smart not working for a big company figures it out.

[Sebastian Finke]

They will probably just patent everything and forbid anyone else from ever building something similar. seems to be the way companies do business these days...

[awerby]

It's probably been patented already (although it seems like a fairly obvious idea). So we'll have to wait another 20 years or so for the patent to expire before we can afford machines like that.

[Sebastian Finke]

It's probably been patented already (although it seems like a fairly obvious idea). So we'll have to wait another 20 years or so for the patent to expire before we can afford machines like that.

Or build it yourself...