MCOR on Golem

By on March 20th, 2011 in Hardware

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MCOR chief Conor MacCormack was interviewed by German IT news site Golem, in which he takes us on a detailed technical tour of their amazing paper-based 3D printer. Here’s the highlights:
 
  • Up to 3 full reams of common A4 paper is accepted by the machine
  • Sheets are fed, one-by-one, into the build chamber (or should we say cutting chamber?)
  • The machine cuts with a microscopic tungsten-carbide blade that is adjustable on the micron scale to account for different paper thicknesses
  • The cutter is so fine it is able to slice a page without disturbing the sheet beneath
  • The chamber is 1500mm high, and that’s the maximum size of a build
  • Adhesive (that sticks the layers together) is applied selectively to avoid waste
  • Completed builds emerge as a full ream of paper; you must peel off the waste paper by hand to reveal the final object
  • Proprietary software was shown, and it appears to offer similar features to other 3D printing control systems
 
You might think printing an object in this way produces a lot of waste. Well, it does – but remember, paper is recyclable, and it’s perhaps the least expensive print material we’ve seen. 
   
Via Golem.de (in German, but English is spoken for most of the interview)

By Kerry Stevenson

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has written over 8,000 stories on 3D printing at Fabbaloo since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!

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