Development of Multi-Material 3D Printer

Abstract

The aim of developing a multi-material 3D printer is to print an object with a different kind of soft and hard material in a single run. It is expected that the combination of printing soft and hard material will be a new kind of 3D printer. The main printing material for this printer is the conductive based soft filament made by our laboratory “Soft & Wet Matter Engineering Laboratory”, along with other different soft filament and hard plastic filament to create a fully functional, multi-material printer to print objects in a single printing run with greater diversity and lower cost than any other single material printer. The biggest challenge for making this printer is to develop a soft material’s extruder because in 3D printer most of the materials are used is hard filament. So, to overcome this we are developing a special type of screw-based Extruder, where a huge range of polymer material can be processed in an application of 3D printer objects. This type of extruder is not so common in 3D printing field. Instead of the filament, we will use the conductive material as pellet or powder for this screw-based extruder. It is assumed that this type of screw-based extruder can solve the problem of combination of printing soft and hard material in a single run. Such type of screw base extruder will be a new era of the 3D printer and it could be a good STEM tool in Sensor and Robotics. Moreover, it is expected that it will be a new addition to the additive manufacturing process.