Low Cost Metal 3D Printing by Electrochemistry

>"[Billy Wu] has been writing for a few years about electrochemical 3D printing systems that can handle metal. He’s recently produced a video that you can see below about the process. Usually, printing in metal means having a high-powered laser and great expense. [Wu’s] technique is an extension of electroplating.

Boiling down the gist of the process, the print head is a syringe full of electroplating solution. Instead of plating a large object, you essentially electroplate on tiny areas. The process is relatively slow and if you speed it up too much, the result will have undesirable properties. But there are some mind-bending options here. By using print heads with different electrolytes, you can print using different metals. For example, the video shows structures made of both copper and nickel. You can also reverse the current and remove metal instead of depositing it."

PDS: I wonder if this process could print a single transistor...

(Perhaps if silicon, or some other semiconductor (as opposed to metal) were mixed in an electrolyte solution (not sure of the chemistry of this at this point, or if it can be done -- more research is necessary) then maybe that could be deposited in addition to the metals, and then a transistor, or transistor-like circuit, could be created...)

Key Phrase: "Electrochemical Additive Manufacturing"

Long way from that, and quite likely never going to be viable for printing actual parts.

There already is a “low cost” desktop metal 3D printing technique via sintering, you can buy filaments with 90%> copper and a sintering forge while expensive is can still be done on a relatively small budget <$2000.

Yes there is shrinking that needs to be adjusted for but that can more easily be done in software.

Electroplating requires a clean environment, high voltage and usually rather odd and sometimes nasty chemicals.

FDM metal printing on the other hand can be done on a $200 printer just as well as on a $3000 FDM one.

Beyond that it would be interesting to see what SLA can offer since there are already ceramic resins that need to be sintered and I don’t see a reason why metal resins can’t be also fabricated in the same manner.

I don’t see powder deposition laser sintering becoming a consumer product either but there are already desktop printers that do that too they are just rather expensive.