What is 3D printing?
And can you 3D print using sound?
So nice of you to click on that link! Welcome to another edition of the newsletter. Every Wednesday I share news that I find interesting from the world of science and academia. I do my best to write small explanations about them and start a discussion. If you found this newsletter online and want to get them right in your inbox you can subscribe using the cute button below! It’s free!
It was an exciting week as usual for science news. From a shirt that could slow charge your phone while you’re wearing it, to a new diabetes drug that helps patients lose a lot of weight it was a fascinating week to read what’s happening in the world. However, today we will focus on 3D printing. Before we talk about what’s new, we’ll discuss a little bit about the basics of 3D printing, and the history and then we will see if you could 3D print stuff using… sounds!!
What is 3D printing?
You are printing things… but in 3D! Ok, let me elaborate a little bit more in case that wasn’t very clear. 3D printing is a process in which a digital object is generated layer by layer. Each layer is deposited on top of the previous one. In principle, it’s the opposite of milling or sculpting, when you’re taking a big chunk of material and cutting stuff out of it.
The first idea of 3D printing came from sci-fi writer Murray Leinster who, in 1945 described a machine that would take his drawings and use a metallic arm would make them into objects with 3 dimensions. Since then some efforts to make that reality happened but it wasn’t until the 80s that 3D printing took some shape and form. It was a Hideo Kodama from Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute that created a “rapid prototyping device” using a laser to cure the polymer. Sadly, he abandoned the idea a year after filing a patent since it was hard to find funding for it.
It took several years and experiments before the first 3D printer was invented in 1987. Different technologies for 3D printing were further developed in the 90s and 00s however, the cost of these machines was quite high. In the mid-2000s and early 2010s, more than 200 3D printing patents expired which ushered in a new wave of 3D printers that were more commercially available.
3D printing is generally preferred when the shapes are complex and you want to use less material in the whole process. It all starts with the digital model of what you want to print. Once you have that, a program slices the model into hundreds or thousands of layers. That’s the file the 3D printer can work with and start creating your model layer by layer. But how does that happen you might ask?
Exactly… how?
Chill… I’ll get to it. And some of them include… LASERS… pew pew
Different 3D printers work differently so obviously it’s not as easy to answer this question. But we will focus on 3 different ways these printers work. Let’s start with simple things first.
Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is an extrusion-based printing technology where the material is squeezed out of a hot nozzle. The material then melts and is deposited layer by layer on a platform. This one was my first introduction to 3D printing and it is great for big parts or many smaller parts (even though it might take a long time). The biggest problem with FDM is that the parts are not usually tip-top quality.
Stereolithography (SLA) is where lasers come in! Instead of solid material being melted and subsequently solidified again in the layer of the part, SLA uses liquid resin and a laser beam that cures the resin at specific points to make the part. The platform is suspended and dipped into the resin and it’s raised little by little until your part is ready.
Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) is the most typical industrial 3D printing method. Up until now, we have had solid and resin as raw materials but for SLS we need powder. Once again a laser is needed here that selectively melts the powder and it fuses it together to form layers and layers of the 3D printed part. The power of the laser can vary which makes this method quite versatile in terms of materials used. Another benefit of SLS is that the parts don’t need separate support to stay on the platform since the surrounding, not fused material can be used as a support.
What’s new in 3D printing?
Oh, I’m so glad you asked. This week I read that researchers from the University of Concordia in Montreal, Canada used focused ultrasounds to create tiny bubbles of very high temperature and pressure that last only trillionths of a second. These bubbles or cavitation rings (if you want to learn more about cavitation listen to Edition 7 of the podcast) can drive chemical reactions that would transform liquid resin into a semi-solid with complex geometry.
You might be wondering how high is this temperature and pressure? The temperature reaches more than 14500 degrees Celcius and pressures 1000 times higher than the atmospheric pressure. However, these conditions are so brief and localized that the surrounding material remains unaffected. You can read more about the discovery and some comments from the authors of the paper in the press release here.
Positive news of the week
In this new section, I will try to share some positive news every week just to have something positive to talk about. On May 26 and May 27, Denmark managed to generate more than enough electrical energy from their wind turbines to cover the country’s demand. Specifically, on May 26, they generated 111.5% of the country’s demand from wind while on May 27 they generated 108.1% of their demand. We have talked about the value of renewable energy and wind farms in the past, it’s just nice to see with numbers that the demands can sometimes be met. Read more about this news in the article from Renew Economy here.
Any more news this week?
People in academia are constantly coming up with new and exciting things so if you need more to quench your curiosity here are some more headlines.
Study shows how mothers calm their distressed infants with soothing signals, by EurekaAlert
Higher testosterone levels reduce men’s risk of becoming or staying unemployed, study finds, by PsyPost
That’s all for this week! I hope that the rest of the week will be calm and rewarding. Did you like this newsletter? If you did you can subscribe to it at the top of the page and why not share it around using this sexy little button here
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Until next week… take care and be kind [=