Inscrivez-vous ou connectez-vous pour rejoindre votre communauté professionnelle.
I am interested in CAD design, Design development, product development and rapid prototyping. My interest is advancement in non conventional industrial machining technologies.
Now a days, we can see 3D Metal printers used for custom gold ornaments and other stuffs. The reason why gold is easy to 3d print is that it is having low melting point and high ductility. Other than that, there are people who are continuously developing iron 3d printing machines, which uses laser sintering method. But These 3D printers are not precision type. The technology is developing faster, so we may assume that it'll soon be available to the market.
Anyhow, Humans are intelligent and the idea of precision metal printers is not far-fetched
These machines are very precise and repeatable. Metal products can be used in medicine as implants.
The question is: what precision? - millimeters, micrometers or nanometers. Today, we can have an accuracy of 150 - 200 microns.
As for the danger. Unfortunately, you are right. Such attempts have been made and have been successful.
These devices can produce any shape. This is their advantage compared to the classical methods. Print speed excludes these devices from mass production. However, the production of low-volume are perfect.
They will never replace mass production equipment (CNC machine tools, casting, etc.). It excludes: the cost of buying a printer, the cost of the powder for production and the speed of their work.
In my opinion, the answer will be a Big No at least for coming near times.
There are several concerns regarding this:
For more information http://www.lawjournalnewsletters.com/sites/lawjournalnewsletters/2016/09/01/emerging-legal-issues-in-3d-printing-and-product-liability-2/?slreturn=20170417233215