Accelerating 3-D printing
Recent work from an MIT lab may help 3-D printing fulfill its long-standing promise to transform manufacturing by enabling the rapid design and production of customized and complex objects. The key to 3-D printing is the printhead, which deposits successive layers of material onto a surface until the final three-dimensional object is complete. The researchers have designed a novel printhead that can melt and extrude material with unprecedented speed, creating a complex handheld object in a few minutes rather than the hour required by a typical desktop 3-D printer. The researchers have also demonstrated a room-temperature process for 3-D printing with cellulose — a renewable, biodegradable alternative to the plastics that are now generally used. To show the chemical flexibility of cellulose, they’ve mixed in an antimicrobial dye and printed a pair of bacteria-resistant surgical tweezers. Imagine a world in which objects could be fabricated in minutes and customized to the task at hand. An...