Low-Cost 3-D Printer Makes Metal Parts

These days, a person can buy a basic three-dimensional printer for $1,000 to $2,000 and immediately begin making designer trinkets and lab equipment out of plastic. Building metal objects with a 3-D printer, however, is not as easy: Some commercial machines do work with metal, but they cost $500,000 or more. A research team at Michigan Technological University has changed all that by creating a 3-D printer that builds metal objects and costs only $1,200 in parts. According to team leader Joshua M. Pearce, one of the drivers for designing the machine was a conversation he had with Michigan Tech chemistry professor Patricia A. Heiden. “We were collaborating on making chemical reaction ware out of plastic,” he says, “and she innocently asked, ‘Well, can’t you do steel?’ ” The new printer is composed of a small stationary arc welder and a movable, insulated stage upon which carbon steel layers can be deposited. The blueprints for the device—which the researchers have so far used to make metal sprockets—are available in an IEEE Access report (2013 DOI: 10.1109/access.2013.2293018). Scientists will soon be able to print almost any tool they need now that metal has been added to the mix, Pearce says.