3D Printing with Carbon Fibre.
Massachusetts-based startup company Impossible Objects received $2.8 million in funding to help realise their vision for a composite based 3D printing technology. Impossible Objects uses a technique that almost resembles a combination of the Selective Deposition Lamination technology of Mcor and inkjet 3D printing, it combines additive and subtractive manufacturing by jetting a binder on to materials such as cotton, silk polyester, Kevlar and carbon fibre into the desired shape. The shapes are cut and layered before they are compressed and baked in an oven to bond, excess material is sand blasted away revealing the part.
While the machines shown here are only in the prototyping stages there is no doubt a market exists for it, the big benefit to this style of 3D printing is scale, enormous large form inkjet printers already exist so the possibility is to translate this technology to create car sized objects!
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