3-D Printing with Molten Steel (Video)

Steve Delaire is making a 3-D printer that uses steel instead of plastic. Specifically, he's using TIG welding to build up layers of steel, just as most 3-D printers build up layers of plastic. He says he's "still working it out," but eventually hopes to use 3-D welding to make larger than life art pieces that are strong enough to be placed safely in public areas such as parks, where children are likely to climb on them. Steve's blog is called Molten3D, and it's a diary of his work, including the problems he encounters and how he overcomes them. He's not the only one doing metal 3-D printing; a Texas company has even made a printed metal gun. So there's plenty of people working in the field of what we really should call "additive manufacturing" instead of "3-D printing." But whatever you call it, every year we see this kind of process being used to make stronger and more complicated shapes, using an ever-increased variety of materials in ways that have been developed since this seminal paper, Liquid Metal Jetting for Printing Metal Parts, was written in 1997. (Alternate Video Link)

Comments

Interesting but not new

[Registered Coward v2]

I saw a demo, around 2003, of a sintering machine the military used to build prepare parts in the field. Rather than shipping a part they could produce and machine it as needed remotely; all they needed was the appropriate instruction set and they were good to go. When I asked abut the strength and durability of the parts they said it was as good or better than normal spares.

Re:Wow

[Charliemopps]

This guy wanted to be able to weld cool stuff without having to sit there holding a welder for hours at a time, plus he wants to have the welds be of uniform quality. What makes this a "3D printer" is that it uses an X-Y drive rather than an arm with elbow/wrist joints like most robotic welding machines.

dom

But that's the thing. If the environment isn't also controlled, the weld will not be of uniform quality. Welding is an art. You have to pay close attention to ambient conditions, the material being used and the settings on your welder. You need more or less Gas pressure, to adjust the gas mix, higher or lower welding speed, and need to change the voltage. You can also reverse the polarity of the weld depending on if you want the puddle to push or pull based on the direction you're welding. When I welded for a living, storms coming would mean I had to re-setup my machine if I was on a big job. I don't know if it was the barometric pressure, temperature or humidity that did it, but it was definitely something we had to deal with. As soon as I'd lift my helmet to make the change (back then there were no auto-dimming helmets) I'd see everyone else in the shop doing the same thing. Moving to someone elses welder meant re-setting it up to, so personal style must have had an effect as well.

On assembly lines they do just that... they control the environment. It's at a relatively constant temperature, humidity and the welding arm is doing the same exact weld over and over again so they operator can program exactly what it's supposed to do. But it's by no means as simple as feeding in a cad file and pressing "weld" You can do that for sure... crappy welds are good for several metric tonnes of force and can hold on a bumper as well as a good weld... but you're not going to get consistent quality or a "Pretty weld"