Fresh printing process advances 3D capabilities

Extra sturdy prosthetics and scientific devices for sufferers and stronger parts for airplanes and vehicles are staunch a pair of of the merchandise that may per chance per chance be created through a brand original 3D printing technology invented by a UMass Lowell researcher.

Substances akin to plastics, metals and wax are feeble in 3D printers to impact merchandise and parts for increased items, because the educate has disrupted the prototyping and manufacturing fields. Merchandise created during the 3D printing of plastics consist of all the pieces from toys to drones. While the global market for 3D plastics printers is estimated at $4 billion and growing, challenges remain in making certain the printers create objects that are produced rapid, retain their strength and accurately mirror the form desired, based fully mostly on UMass Lowell’s David Kazmer, a plastics engineering professor who led the be taught challenge.

Known as injection printing, the technology Kazmer pioneered is featured in the academic journal Additive Manufacturing posted on-line final week.

The invention combines parts of 3D printing and injection molding, a technique all the diagram through which objects are created by filling mold cavities with molten materials. The marriage of the 2 processes increases the manufacturing rate of 3D printing, while enhancing the strength and properties of the resulting merchandise. The innovation on the general produces objects about three times sooner than outmoded 3D printing, which methodology jobs that after took about 9 hours now simplest steal three, based fully mostly on Kazmer, who lives in Georgetown.

“The invention vastly improves the quality of the parts produced, making them fully dense with few cracks or voids, so they are worthy stronger. For technical applications, here is sport-changing. The original process will probably be model-efficient due to it’s going to merely additionally be feeble in existing 3D printers, with simplest original application to program the machine wanted,” Kazmer mentioned.

The process took about 18 months to create. Austin Colon of Plymouth, a UMass Lowell Ph.D. candidate in plastics engineering, helped validate the technology alongside Kazmer, who teaches applications in product originate, prototyping and process withhold an eye fixed on, among other matters. He has filed for a patent on the original technology.

Extra data:
David O. Kazmer et al, Injection printing: additive molding through shell cloth extrusion and filling, Additive Manufacturing (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.addma.2020.101469