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Top 5 materials for 3 d printing
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Sintered powdered metal • Used for “3D printing” injection molds and sacrificial fixtures that accelerate the design process for traditional manufacturing methods like injection molding, casting, and lay-up. “One of the cooler applications is for carbon fiber lay-up,” Darley says. “You print the lattice and lay out the carbon fiber [around the mold]. Then you put it in a bath, and the support material melts away.”
Metals Like stainless, bronze, steel, gold, nickel steel, aluminum, and titanium • These are printed directly by binding metal dust and firing it to become a hard part. This process can replace casting and post-processing and turn material directly into a functional metal part that can be electro polished or machined to finish the items. Prototyping is the best example of this application, but it is also being used for medical devices, jewelry and other custom items, according to Darley.
Other composites & Carbon fiber • A 3D machine first prints a plastic, like ABS, and then prints carbon fibers on top. “This is a more cost-effective and quicker way to print something as strong as or stronger than metal,” Darley says. “If it can be scaled up (right now the printers are fairly small), I see it replacing carbon fiber lay-up, a slow and time-consuming process.” This material is used in the bicycle and aeronautics industries.
Nitinol • Nitinol is an alloy of nickel and titanium used in a lot of medical implants. Darley notes that this metal has two “amazing” properties: its superelasticity and the ability to change shapes. For catheter wires and stents, nitinol can bend further than anything else, he explains. “You can fold it in half and it will come back into its original shape.” Darley adds that because the metal is not an easy material to machine or create in a lot of different forms, 3D printing allows you to do things with medical products you couldn’t do before.
Water-absorbing plastic • Water-absorbing plastic is printed using a 4D printing process. The fourth dimension refers to a form an object can take after it is printed that is a different shape, possibly leading to self-assembly. For example, if something is being inserted into the body (or sea, or space), in a narrow tube but the end product needs to be a different shape, the object can transform itself after it is inserted.
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