3-D Printing, Now in Stainless Steel

Have your designs fabricated in metal, quickly and cheaply, from the comfort of your computer

By Molika Ashford Posted 08.04.2009 at 2:34 pm 9 Comments

Stainless Steel Moebius Strip courtesy Shapeways

You can stop pounding on that anvil now; steel fabrication has moved onto the web. Shapeways, a company that made its name offering custom 3-D printing in plastic and resin, will now print your designs in stainless steel. All you have to do is upload your brilliant CAD design (or pick from a range of stock items). Shapeways will print it out in cold, shiny steel, and mail it to you.

As with any 3-D printing, the object is built up in layers. In this case, powdered steel is laid down, alternating with a binding material, in thin layers until the whole piece appears. Then your finished model is heated, cured and, according to Shapeways, "infused with bronze."

Steel printing from Shapeways is limited to models that pass specific size and detail guidelines. The printing leaves some lines and visible layers in the object, they say, so be prepared: your finished piece probably won't look as smooth and perfect as other bits of metal you own. Shapeways' cost chart quotes $10 per square centimeter for steel printing, which could add up to a hefty price for larger items. That said, being able to make your own metal objects without big equipment or the threat of horrible burns is pretty cool at any price.

[Shapeways via Crunchgear]

Previous Article: Inventor Scales Building Using Homemade Vacuum Gloves

Next Article: Green Dream: The Swiss Cheese Staircase

Want to read more articles like this, plus tips and tricks, home hacks, DIY projects, and more? Subscribe to Popular Science and enter to win $5,000!

9 Comments

link to this comment

sciencegeek14

08/04/09 at 6:06 pm

wow thats pretty neat

link to this comment

extremechiton

08/04/09 at 10:33 pm

i want to print my own legos

lol

link to this comment

vladimir6113

08/04/09 at 11:56 pm

wowww...
very impressive ..

link to this comment

vladimir6113

08/04/09 at 11:57 pm

could anybody tell me how this machine do the job..tq..

link to this comment

kstauff

08/05/09 at 10:06 am

Vlad,

It's something like an ink-jet printer that sprays ink on a page, only in this case, it's spraying a powdery substance on a substrate in multiple passes. Each pass builds up the next "level" or "layer" of the object. Consider a stack of coins, for example. By using varying coin sizes, you could create a simple "3D" tower of varying width over the height of the tower. With this kind of printing, they can build an object of hundreds or thousands of layers, and of course the shape is not constrained to a coin.

I'm no metallurgist, but I have to wonder if the stainless steel object created in this process has the same strength properties of something similar that is cast, forged or machined. I would think not, but again, I'm not an expert on this process.

link to this comment

adam 101

08/05/09 at 10:36 am

go to

h t t p://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/RepRapOneDarwin

h t t p://fabathome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Just remove the spaces

link to this comment

blaxpear

08/05/09 at 11:03 am

It's similar to cold casting. Look-up cold casting. Basically a resin, infused (mixed in) with a fine metal powder.

This gives the impression of actual metal, for the fraction of what it would cost to make a full metal casting. Metal casting also requires huge amouonts of heat to smelt the metal and a trained professional.

The downside is, you cannot cold cast any kind of stress-component or load-bearing member.

It's basically plastic, with metal flakes inside. :-)

Still, it's great for making relistic prototypes though.

link to this comment

joey3002

08/06/09 at 1:53 pm

ProtoCAM is where we get all our 3d printing needs fulfilled. 2 day turnaround from quote to in my hands. Can't beat that with a stick!
www.protocam.com has full info on this.

link to this comment

joris

08/11/09 at 9:24 am

Blaxpear,

The stainless steel process that we use at Shapeways results in metal objects. The objects are stainless steel and bronze all the way through. There is a little binding material in there also.

So you could use it for stress components. It is not "plastic with metal flakes inside", it is metal.

Joris