Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have been hard at work coming up with new technologies for… science or something. What really caught our eye though, is that tiny ice-topus.
Ok, to be serious for a bit, this is actually very cool. They’re 3D printing these tiny structures using ice, submerging them in resin, then sublimating the ice out in order to make very precise molds for medical use.
If you think about it though, this is much harder than it looks. Water and ice don’t behave like we would always expect. For example, we all know most things shrink when they get cold, but water expands when it freezes. This makes 3d printing with it a peculiar endeavor.
In the image above they show more of the peculiarity of 3d printing with water. If you try to build layers vertically without changing anything, they make these inverted cones. To get around this, they have to change the rate at which the system deposits new water at the top.
[via Additive Manufacturing]
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