3D Printing News Unpeeled: Cooling Ceramics, HangPrinter & Large Format UK

I’ve said before that I’m very enthusiastic about 3D printed ceramics cooling systems. Now Simon Pavy and Entreautre have used Olivier van Herpt´s grounbreaking ceramics 3D Printing technology to make a cooling element. This terracotta object uses Water Evaporative Evaporator Effect (WEEE) or evaporative cooling to in a low cost, low energy way provide for cooling. 

Torbjørn Ludvigsen, the man behind the HangPrinter, successfully challenged the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DoE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) ‘SkyBAAM’ patent. HangPrinter is an open source material extrusion that is suspended in space by wire started in 2014. In 2018 ORNL obtained a patent on its very similar SkyBAAM printer. The open source team has now successfully crowdfunded a challenge which has lead to a broad rejection of the original patent. This is a rare win for the little guy in the patent game. It’s also a super important patent since there are only so many ways through which you can infinitely build things. You could use conveyors in all directions, mount a printer on a ground or flying vehicle or suspend it in some way. 

The UK is playing catchup in 3D printing and now is funding its own large format 3D printing startup. For now, Evo 3D, the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS) at the University of Strathclyde, engine firm Rolls-Royce, Filamentive, AI Build and Baker Hughes will work together using £1.1 million in funding from Innovate UK. The resulting technology aims to be an accurate, reliable large format system that will then spin out as a startup called RapidFusion. This is an important step since large format is crucial for defense, boatbuilding and more.