MIT engineers have 3D printed a working electric motor.
That’s quite a feat because electric motors are made of metal and plastic, and most 3D printers can make objects in one or the other materials only.
In their experiment, they developed a specialized 3D printer that includes four different materials that can be printed in the same job. The trick here is that some of these extruders can handle conductive or magnetic materials, along with the usual plastic extrusions.
It sounds like the design of the system had to be carefully considered. They explain:
“They carefully designed each extruder to balance the requirements and limitations of the material. For instance, the electrically conductive material must be able to harden without the use of too much heat or UV light because this can degrade the dielectric material.”
MIT explains:
“The researchers used this system to produce a fully 3D-printed electric linear motor in a matter of hours using five materials. They only needed to perform one post-processing step for the motor to be fully functional.”
They describe the resulting motor as being well performing, so this wasn’t something on the edge of possibility.
The MIT team is really working towards the goal of producing complete, end-use machines with printing technology. This is very different from today’s “print parts and then assemble” approach. That method tends to be slower and separates the production of the different parts for a given machine, making assembly more time-consuming.
If successful and widespread, that approach could be of incredible value to industry: imagine being able to print replacement components on demand, right in a factory! That could substantially reduce line downtime, since you would wait far less time than ordering a spare part. It would also reduce the cost of inventorying spare parts, if you kept them on site to reduce downtime. Instead, print them when you need them.
As for the rest of us, the ability to print truly functioning machines would be a revelation.
Can you imagine Thingiverse or Printables full of actual, functioning machine designs, all ready for immediate printing?
Via MIT
