The possibility of being able to print your own robot from home and in a few simple steps may be closer than ever thanks to a recent advance in 3D printing technology led by engineers from the University of Colorado, in the United States. In a new study, the team lays out a strategy for using currently available 3D printers to create materials that fuse solid and liquid components together, a very difficult feat if you don’t want your robot to short-circuit.
The scientists who have developed the first prototypes are optimistic in predicting a future in which we could, for example, manufacture simple robots using the 3D printing process that is currently being carried out, for example, in the creation of prostheses.
A technology still in its infancy
3D printers have long been an uncharted field of research for scientists and lab staff. They are quite good at making plastic dinosaurs or individual machine parts, like gears or simple structures. But the researchers think they can do much more: By mixing solids and liquids, 3D printers could produce devices that are more flexible, dynamic and potentially more useful. They include wearable electronics with wires made of liquid contained within solid substrates, or even models that mimic the texture of real human organs.
Color printers combine a small number of primary colors to create a rich range of images, as would 3D printer materials. If you have a printer that can use multiple types of materials, you will be able to combine them in new ways and create a much wider range of mechanical properties.
Similar to conventional printers
To understand these properties, it is useful to compare the operation of 3D printers with that of normal printers that everyone has at home or in the office. Paper printers create an image by depositing liquid inks on thousands of flat pixels. Inkjet 3D printers, by contrast, use a print head to drop tiny droplets of fluid, called voxels (a portmanteau of the words volume and pixel), on top of one another.
Very shortly after those droplets settle, they are exposed to bright ultraviolet light, and that’s when the liquids the machine releases turn into solids in a second or less. However, there are many cases where liquids may be intended to remain liquid. Some engineers, for example, use liquids or waxes to create small channels within their solid materials, which they then empty at a later time. It is a bit like the drops of water that go drilling an underground cave.
Engineers have also come up with ways to make those kinds of voids in 3D printed parts, but it usually takes a lot of time and effort to clean them up and get them to work properly. The channels also have to be relatively simple, since if there are many twists and turns, there can be problems.
