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Vision-Assisted 'MultiFab' Printer Can 3D Print Ten Materials At Once

Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a 3D printer that can print an unprecedented ten different materials at once by using 3D-scanning techniques that save time, energy, and money. Delivering resolution at 40 microns - less than half the width of a human hair - the 'MultiFab' system is the first 3D printer to use 3D-scanning techniques from machine vision, which offers two key advantages in accuracy and convenience over traditional 3D printing. First, MultiFab can self-calibrate and self-correct, freeing users from having to do the fine-tuning themselves. For each layer of the design, the system's feedback loop 3D scans and detects errors and then generates 'correction masks.' This approach allows the use of inexpensive hardware while ensuring print accuracy. Secondly, MultiFab gives users the ability to embed complex components, such as circuits and sensors, directly onto the body of an object, meaning that it can produce a finished product with moving parts in one step. The researchers have used MultiFab to print everything from smartphone cases to LED lenses, and they envision an array of applications in consumer electronics, microsensing, medical imaging, and telecommunications.

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Electronic Components Electronics & Computers Imaging LEDs Lighting Machine Vision Manufacturing & Prototyping Materials RF & Microwave Electronics Rapid Prototyping & Tooling Sensors

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 - The state of 3D printing today goes two ways, there's people who are developing machines that can print with materials that we currently use through traditional manufacturing processes, and there's people that are developing platforms based on multiple materials. And this will enable a broad range of new applications by being able to manufacture products that we were not able to manufacture

    00:00:30 through traditional techniques. We've developed a low cost multi material 3D printing platform that can print with up to 10 materials, and it's machine vision enabled. So we use machine vision techniques to enhance, or amplify, the capabilities of current multi material printing technologies. We call our project MultiFab. And with MultiFab you integrate these two worlds of traditional manufacturing, and 3D printing.

    00:00:56 And by putting them together you can create a whole new range of objects that we haven't been able to make to date. The machine vision system integrated in MultiFab allows us to easily and very quickly calibrate the printing system. Second, we use machine vision to integrate existing components into that printing process. So imagine we put components into the printers

    00:01:22 build platform, we scan the objects, and then we use that 3D geometry information to print the objects around those existing objects. Right now a big portion of the 3D printing kind of hardware that's available is focused on printing form, and on objects for prototype. The holy grail is to print things that are fully functional right out of the printer, combining multiple materials with many different properties, but also existing objects that have

    00:01:50 some inherent functionality. We've printed lenses on top of LED's. We put this existing LED into a printer. We print a Lens. On top. Designers and engineers are used to designing with one material. So the whole design paradigm, how we actually designed products and objects, will have to change. And that's going to require new hardware, that's going to require new software, and that's going

    00:02:16 to require whole new platforms. We're going to have to change the way engineers and designers think about design and creating products and objects.