University of Maine’s Composites Center: Researchers Awarded Three Guinness World Records in 3D Printing

3D printing has been described in many elevated terms, from magical to miraculous—and while users around the world are indeed enamored, it is certainly news to find that they are now breaking world records too.

Receiving three awards from the Guinness World Records, Habib Dagher and his team from The University of Maine’s Composites Center are behind the creation of what is now recognized as the world’s largest 3D printer.

Along with this epic hardware, the team also unveiled the largest ever 3D printed part, in the form of a 25-foot patrol boat weighing 5,000 pounds—and printed in only 72 hours. To prove its seaworthiness, the vessel was placed in the facility’s wave-wind basin during the event.

In total, the impressive team from the University of Maine received awards for three separate records in 3D printing, with the ceremony live on Facebook on October 10th for an impressive event recognizing the many individuals involved. Using plastic polymer pellets to extrude material for layering, this massive new 3D printer uses up to 500 pounds in one hour.

This is beyond what even the 3D printer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee can do. The University of Maine team was handed Guinness World Records for the following:

• Largest polymer 3D printer
• Largest 3D printed boat
• Largest solid 3D printed item

Members of the state legislature attended the ceremony, and numerous other names and organizations were credited with assisting in the project. While many developers today have created 3D printed works, this project obviously did not come together easily—and was not without an immense amount of planning, interaction, and collaboration.

Although the team was goal-oriented toward setting a record, their work has shown the validity of 3D printing for applications such as the marine industry; undoubtedly, however, this could expand on many other levels and for many other industrial uses today.

The world of 3D printing expands amidst an ever-growing and progressive community of ambitious users who continue to stretch the limits of innovation, along with refining new technology in terms of a wide range of new materials (from plastics to metal to many different alternative forms), hardware, software and more—usually as they are fabricating new products that they would like to perfect for their own creative uses.

Numerous records have been set during this ongoing 3D printing and additive manufacturing process too—and especially in the past few years—from bioprinting viable human tissue to creating massive works of art, and even recreational items like entire campers.

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