Interesting products

[CNCer]

3D printing is always coming up with new products. Here is one made by Roboze as a challenge - a skateboard made from different materials and tested by professional skateboarded Fabiano Lauciello. The board itself is made in Carbon PA which is in the FFF material category, the wheels are in polypropylene and the washers and nuts in PEEK and the bearings in Flex a thermoplastic rubber compound. Fabiano was surprised how good it was after putting it through some demanding moves. You can read more here

[admin]

For the last few IMTS shows they have 3D printed a car and driven it out of the show on the last day

[admin]

When I was last in the US I was talking to an engineer from the US Navy. He was telling me that they were looking at additive for use on board navy ships as part of the repair workshops they have on the ship.

The thinking was that a replacement part made in high performance plastic could be made at very short notice and would last long enough for a proper replacement part to be delivered.

I wonder if they were looking at 3D scanners as well? These would be useful as then the engineers would not need to spend time getting a solid model  from the massive nuber of parts that go to make up the ship. They then should be able to get the key information from the broken part and build a functional component from that.

[Dave]

Crane Payment Innovations has come up with a different take on additive. Firstly it was using it to make models for new designs, but then it came up with the idea of using it to make all its jigs and fixtures for assembly an other applications.

Previously these were fabricated or made in wood. Using fused deposition modelling (FDM) they can produce functional jigs and fixtures which are repeatable. Now the company uses about 80% of its additive capacity for jigs and fixtures and the remainder for prototypes at a tenth of the cost it was previously buying them in for.

Dave Taylor from the company says it was a no brainer! Read it here

[Dave]

The AMRC is working on a solution for heat transfer mats for fusion reactors. Previously they were made of steel with a considerable number of welds and were limited to 500 degrees C. 

The solution they came up with is a 3D printed mat in silicon carbide type of material with some sacrificial material in the tubes which can be easily removed. Elswhere in the forum I have read about his type of sacrificial material, which can simply be melted and washed out of small and complex tube structures.
 
It is going to be tested, but first indications are that it is a good solution and something which can be easily replicated, which is an important consideration. You can read the full article here