A Moving 'Pin Platform' for 3D Printers Reduces Waste

A new, sustainable take on the 3D printer, developed by USC Viterbi researchers  , eliminates the need for printed supports. The system instead has a dynamically-controlled surface made of moveable metal pins, which holds printed layers in place. The pins rise up as the printer progressively builds the product. Lead researcher and USC professor Yong Chen says that tests of the new prototype have saved about 35% in materials.

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00:00:00 additive manufacturing processes such as fused filament fabrication stereolithography and direct ink writing require support to print parts with overhang features these additional supports are a waste of material since they need to be removed after the printing process and cannot be reused the printing of supports also lowers

00:00:19 printing efficiency for nozzle-based material extrusion processes inspired by pin art and lego blocks professor yang chen's group at the university of southern california figured out a novel support strategy and designed a programmable and reusable pin support the work is published in the journal additive manufacturing

00:00:37 the main idea is to use a single motor to drive a large number of pens serving as a movable printing platform to different sea heights the pins will be lifted if prefabricated hollow tubes of standard lengths with magnets are inserted from the base into the pin rods for an arbitrary cat model the researchers developed support generation

00:00:56 software that optimizes the part layout on the platform to save material and printing time as much as possible before generating a tool path the software will also tell the user which tube or combined tubes to select from the set and be inserted onto which metal pin when a printing job starts the pins with inserted tubes will move

00:01:14 up by one layer thickness after printing a layer for a metal pin at a certain height 3d printed material can be deposited on its top surface the experimental results of several test cases show an average of nearly 40 percent saving on the printing time and material with increased reliability and

00:01:31 robustness when the printing job is done the pin support can be easily removed from the built parts without damaging fragile features since each pin top is a washer connected by a magnetic ring after peeling off the attached washers the created object is separated from the reusable support the pins can be reset to their initial

00:01:51 positions automatically finally the pin top washers detached from the 3d printed object are inserted back to the pin tips now the reusable support is ready for another printing job [Music] the researchers would like to investigate the reusable support for the big area additive manufacturing

00:02:49 which may provide a feasible solution to significantly reduce printing time and may be applied to construction and furniture 3d printing for 3d bio printing the researchers envision a further increased saving on expensive bio-related materials with the reduced pin size the researchers will also extend the reusable support to other am

00:03:07 processes such as projection based stereo lithography and powder based selective laser melting the reusable support could provide a new direction to address support related issues in the future