How metal can now be 3D printed (additive manufacturing?) like you can with by dripping plastic layer by layer and it dries up over time?
In: 51
Three ways:
You have powder which you selectively melt, with a laser or electron beam. This is sort of like resin printing. This has the best resolution, finish and pretty good material properties, but it’s pretty slow and expensive.
You use a binder in a giant inkjet printer to glue powder together, then sinter it in an oven. It’s the cheapest and easiest way, pretty good detail too, but not much faster than the above and the strength of the parts will be comparatively trash. Good for ornamental stuff, not really for structural parts.
You directly melt a metal wire, like a filament polymer printer. Pretty cheap and comparatively fast, but pretty rough in detail and will need heat treatment because the material properties won’t be great right after solidifying. But you can print gigantic parts compared to the others, meters by meters instead of like 20-50cm.
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