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Will the 3D printer become my personal factory on the balcony?

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Broke, for example, I have a handle from the cabinet. I’m looking for a similar 3D model in Google or I’m doing my own design, I go to the balcony, turn on my native 3D printer and after a few hours I get a warm new part. Is this a myth or the near future? At least, scientists have already proposed a method for increasing at least twice the strength of 3D products. It is based on the study of the relationship between the temperature parameters of the printing process and the properties of the finished part.

The method proposed by scientists of NUST “MISiS” and even published in the international scientific journal Rapid Prototyping Journal , in principle, opens up the real prospect of creating “at home” the necessary household items that are comparable in quality to factory ones.

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The printing process is not even with polymer - clay.

Today, relatively simple and inexpensive desktop machines dominate among additive manufacturing machines, as a rule, belonging to the category of open source hardware and working on the principle of distribution of the melt of thermoplastic polymer.

These are the very ubiquitous 3D printers that have become an integral part of modern hackspace or a youth club of technical creativity, settled in the garages and kitchens of enthusiastic makers. Despite its modest dimensions and low cost, the average desktop 3D printer has a very decent production potential. The annual productivity of the device exceeds 100 kg of polymer products. This is approximately 2 times the number of polymer products produced by factories per inhabitant of the planet annually.

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And here is the plastic seal, the very “thermoplastic polymer melt distribution”

In other words, theoretically a personal 3D printer can fully cover the needs of its owner in plastic products. At the same time, it has not yet been heard about the noticeable use of 3D desktop printers for the production of consumer products, and my neighbors do not print stools on balconies.

One of the reasons for this underestimation of the potential of this class of devices is the lack of confidence in them from designers and engineers. It is widely believed (and, honestly, not unfounded) that the strength of polymer products obtained by desktop 3D printing is incomparably small in comparison with the strength of similar items produced traditionally at the factory.

Residents of the digital laboratory Fab Lab NUST MISiS believe that, to put it mildly, this is not a progressive point of view.

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Fab Lab team NITU MISiS

Young engineers and scientists Fab Lab NITU MISiS profess the same principle and are actively working on converting a conventional 3D printer into a real means of production.

“In the published work, we showed that it is possible to significantly increase the strength characteristics of a polymer product by ensuring a sufficiently high temperature at the boundary between the forming and the preceding layer of the part,” says Azamat Tavitov , one of the co-authors of the study, postgraduate student , we can change the temperature at the boundary of the layers by changing the temperature of the nozzle, the speed of printing, the intensity of blowing the part, and even the number of simultaneously printed products.

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Vladimir Kuznetsov and Azamat Tavitov

Twice - probably not yet enough to print not a pen, but, for example, a sash of a plastic window. However, the trend is obvious. Currently, the team continues to move towards distributed production and conducts experimental studies of polymer printing, studying the relationship between the geometry of a computer model and the strength of the finished product.

In the meantime, it turned out that if the owner of a 3D printer is ready to turn from a user into an interested technologist, then this democratic tool will completely allow producing reliable products with high strength characteristics and, as the technologists themselves say, “predictable behavior under load”. And here already - long live individuality and creativity.

Well, will I go to make room on the balcony? True, you have to master 3D-wisdom, but that's another story.

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