3d printer for metals and their accuracy

[bford903]

great looking work. what did you use for the 3D modelling and I would be interested to know a bit more about the casting process you used to keep the detail. We have not done casting before, at least not to this standard.

Actually that's a stock photo I grabbed from Google but that really is how they look after removing the support material. I use Rhino for 3D modeling. We cast it the same way you would cast wax (lost wax casting). With a slightly runny mix of investment, you can get some better detail in the casting. However, the difficult part is not polishing away all of your detail later.

[awerby]

I am looking into possibly buying a 3d printer for printing in metal or ceramics.
The parts that I need to print are very small (less than 3mm square by less than 1 mm thick) they have very small features (protrusions) that are about 100 microns square.
I need to have an accuracy of +/- 20 microns or better.

Am I dreaming or is this now possible?
If so, who sells the machines that are capable of this and at what price range?

Thanks for your help,
Dan

There are machines that can do that, or come pretty close to it. EOS of Germany makes a micro-laser sintering machine that prints directly in metals. Here's some information about their process: http://www.eos.info/eos_pressemitteilung_3dmicorprint Of course, these machines aren't exactly cheap - last time I heard, they were about 1 million USD each. But you might be able to find a service bureau that has one and can make these parts for you.

If you want ceramic parts instead of metal ones, there's an Austrian company, Lithoz, that uses a process called lithography-based ceramic manufacturing to make small highly-detailed objects. I'm not sure they can hold the tolerances you need, but you could ask them about it: http://www.lithoz.com/en/products/cerafab-7500/

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com