The Best of Both Worlds: A New Take on Metal–Plastic Hybrid 3D Printing | Hacker News Reader

The Best of Both Worlds: A New Take on Metal–Plastic Hybrid 3D Printing

waseda.jp

25 pointsrustoo7 comments

“Our hybrid 3D printing method has opened up the possibility of fabricating 3D electronics so that devices and robots used in healthcare and nursing care could become significantly better than what we have today.”

And right there, the PR operation blew their credibility.

Here's a useful video on the metallurgy of 3D printing metal.[1] Actual X-ray movies of what's going on during laser sintering, why 3D printed metal parts have crack growth problems, and what's being done about it.

[1] https://youtu.be/fzBRYsiyxjI

This process has nothing to do with sintering - it's a new material for FDM that supports electroless nickel plating.

The hypothetical medical application is probably to seal a surface and/or apply functional coatings, eg various antimicrobial structures.

Right, but when it comes with excessive claims, it has to be compared against other approaches.

Plating on ABS is quite common. That's how plastic auto trim parts that look like metal are made. They don't have a smoothness problem.

[1] https://www.sharrettsplating.com/blog/what-do-you-know-about...

Isn't palladium expensive and rare?

Yeah, but they aren't looking to print bulk palladium. It looks like rather than printing bulk metal as well as bulk plastic, they are printing bulk plastic and trace palladium, which serves as a catalyst for targeted chemical plating with cheaper metals.

this is close to subtractive PCB manufacturing, the palladium is 'soaked' onto the FR4 substrate then build up with electroless copper. seems the only difference is the filament has the required trace of paladium embedded in the filament.

certainly easy way to make pcb's by direct write to substrate and then additive plating up.

I didn't say it's better, but might have quick turn use.

I wonder how these hybrid artifacts are going to be recycled? Burn them like plastics? Re-use the metal?

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