The picture shows the inside view of the workshop of the world's first 10,000-ton casting 3D printing and molding intelligent factory in Yinchuan, Ningxia. (File photo)
China's first architectural 3D printing pavilion was officially opened in Guangdong recently. From the outside, this double-story building and ordinary house is not different, but in fact, the whole building does not use a brick and tile, all printed with adhesive mixed materials.
If you have a 3D printer, what can you make? The answer is: small to precision parts, cookies, molds, clothes, large to medical equipment, industrial equipment and even cars, rockets, buildings ...... can be manufactured. No wonder some people would say that in the future, a 3D printer can almost create a world.
In 2018, 3D printing was officially included in China's strategic emerging industries classification. As an emerging cutting-edge technology, 3D printing carries the infinite possibilities of future manufacturing and subverts the thinking pattern of traditional manufacturing. In recent years, China's 3D printing technology has been developing rapidly, and the application scenarios have become more and more important means to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry.
The Yungang Grottoes in Datong were moved to Hangzhou thousands of miles away
Additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3D printing. Unlike traditional subtractive manufacturing, which removes and cuts raw materials, additive manufacturing is a way of constructing objects from specific materials by layering them on top of each other, which can be useful in a variety of fields such as biomedicine, aerospace, and construction.
Scanning to obtain three-dimensional data, through computer programming, the model will be imported into the printer, and a model of the lungs exactly the same as the real lungs can be printed out from the 3D printer. In June of this year, the Thoracic Surgery Department of Guizhou Provincial People's Hospital completed a precise lung segmentation resection under a three-dimensional model for the first time using 3D printing technology. This model, not only accurately reproduces the location of the patient's lung lesions, and even each blood vessel is lifelike.
Medical devices, organ models, bionic tissues that can be implanted in the human body ......3D printing is good at shaping a variety of details of the advantages of just to meet the medical field of the high standards of various types of molds. Shanxi Additive Manufacturing Research Institute President Gong Tao said, artificial use of steel, plaster and other materials to make molds, products in mass production before, but also many proofing and modification. The 3D printer directly from the computer graphics data to generate any shape of the parts, can be more accurate to shape the complex and fine modeling.
Not only medical, 3D printing of this feature, but also very suitable for application in cultural relics reproduction and repair. Not long ago, the Yungang Grottoes in Datong, Shanxi Province, were "moved" to Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, thousands of miles away. In Zhejiang University Museum of Art and Archaeology, the world's first movable 3D printing grottoes - Yungang Grottoes "music grottoes" reproduced the original style of the original caves and more than 1,000 years of weathering left behind subtle traces. With the help of digital acquisition, the makers of the original cave 1 1 copy, with lightweight materials to print out 110 models, and then assembled like building blocks into a replica of the current grotto. Because it is a replica, visitors can not only be in the middle of the detailed view, but also can reach out and touch, can be said to be full of addiction.
In addition to specializing in the delicate and subtle "embroidery", 3D printing is also very good at building bridges and houses for such a large project.
In April of this year, in the Suzhou River embankment reconstruction project, 3D printing technology was directly applied to the construction process. No need to lay bricks, no need to pour, the scene only printer nozzle moving back and forth. High-strength mortar from the nozzle a little bit out, according to the set program to shape a rich Jiangnan characteristics of the shape.
"3D printing can make the building a one-time molding, saving 60% of the building materials, while the process loss in the construction process is also reduced." Huo Liang, assistant director of the Institute of Materials Engineering at the China Construction Technology Center, said the printing also saves nearly half of the manpower because it uses mechanical automation.
It is worth mentioning that in May this year, the launch of a new generation of China's manned spacecraft test ship, carried a "3D printer". This is the first time in China to carry out 3D printing experiments in space, the print material is widely used in the aerospace field of lightweight high-strength materials - carbon fiber reinforced composite materials.
At present, with the breakthrough of metal material printing technology, aerospace has become one of the most promising application areas of 3D printing. Whether it is the manufacture of rapid prototyping, single customized aerospace equipment parts, or complex structural parts and large heterogeneous components, 3D printing is the ideal technical means. The success of this experiment, more people feel, "space manufacturing" is no longer far away from us.
The sand mold can be made in the past several months and now it takes only a few hours
Yinchuan, Ningxia, the world's first 10,000 tons of casting 3D printing intelligent factory workshop, several sets of more than 5 meters high, white casting sand core 3D printers in the intelligent assembly line in order to work. These devices, all for the enterprise independent research and development.
Compared with the traditional foundry workshop, no crane, no model, no heavy physical force, no temperature difference, no waste sand and dust emissions have become the distinctive features of this factory. Here, casting production becomes fast and easy - sand molds that used to take months to make now take only a few hours. These castings are not only sold domestically, but also overseas.
The factory belongs to the enterprise - *** enjoy equipment Co., Ltd. 3D printing business unit marketing director Li Zhe said, compared with the traditional processing and manufacturing, 3D printing has to shorten the production process, design flexibility, cost savings, reduce the difficulty of manufacturing and other advantages. The industrialized application of this technology for the transformation and upgrading of the foundry industry, foundry intelligent manufacturing and the future of the foundry intelligent factory construction will have a transformative significance.
Not only is *** enjoy equipment, in recent years, more and more manufacturing enterprises began to use 3D printing for parts or whole machine production. This emerging technology has changed the concept and mode of traditional manufacturing.
Recently, in the Harbin Electric Machinery Plant Limited Liability Company of HEC Group, the first domestic additive manufacturing impact hydraulic turbine real machine runner was successfully developed. If the runner meets expectations in the future use of the power station, it proves that 3D printing technology has the feasibility of manufacturing impact runners, providing a solution for the future manufacturing of enterprises in the past difficult to manufacture or unable to manufacture ultra-small, ultra-large impact runners.
With 3D printing technology, the manufacturing of a runner that used to take four months to complete has now been reduced to less than three months.
"The traditional casting process for manufacturing rotors involves a lot of work processes and many types of jobs and workers. Workers labor intensity, not to mention the casting of the runner is also prone to defects, poor precision, large machining allowance, product quality and forgings gap is also large." Cheng Guangfu said, "Especially for high-quality runner, you need to use the whole forging round billet, a little bit of CNC machine tools will be processed out of the runner, we usually call 'the whole key', from the word can be seen in this way of processing the difficulty of how long the cycle, and the corresponding cost will also be very high. High. And now the use of 3D printing manufacturing runner, directly from the three-dimensional model to the product, eliminating a number of links, processing is small, the cost and cycle time can also be reduced."
The future of 3D printing will be as popular as ordinary printing
"No matter what you want, just download the drawings, press the print button, and the rest is left to the printer." This is the future scenario that some people think about. In this regard, many industry insiders said that in the future, in order to realize more 3D printing application scenarios, the key lies in the materials, especially the development of diversified printing materials.
"A skillful woman can't cook without rice. Material science is the underlying foundation of the manufacturing industry, the landing application of 3D printing is limited by the characteristics of the material, resulting in a series of problems such as low yield." Dr. Yu Lei of the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University said, "The development of materials is a prerequisite for the development of 3D printing. As far as the construction field is concerned, the current 3D printing building is limited to the use of concrete materials, but concrete this material 3D printing flexibility is not high."
In the field of bio-3D printing, the importance of material innovation is even more prominent, especially for human implants.
Hydroxyapatite is currently the world's universal material for humanoid bone, but the acidic binder used can cause post-operative pain for implanted patients. At the same time, due to the complex internal structure and varying density of human bones, the materials used in traditional 3D printing have a uniform density and a single powder, making it impossible to realize the printing needs of bionic bone.
In order to create a bionic bone that is as close as possible to the nature of the human skeleton, the team of Prof. Yanen Wang at the School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, scientifically proportioned hydroxyapatite, adhesives, and cellular fluids in accordance with the nature of the skeleton of different individuals, to form a printing material more acceptable to the human environment. And developed a set of 3D printing control system to realize the complex structure, uneven density, composite powder and other requirements needed for bionic bone printing. The active bionic bone printed in this way is highly consistent with the composition, structure and mechanical properties of natural bone, and can even "develop" in the organism.
Prof. Wang Yanen said that the team has also mastered the technology of 3D printing cartilage and skin. Next, they will continue to explore techniques for stabilizing sweat glands, hair follicles, sebaceous glands, and other structures in the dermis.
In the printing and manufacturing of highly sophisticated devices like chips, breakthroughs in new materials will also lead to more printing results. Last month, Westlake University's Zhou Nangjia team successfully designed a new 3D printing functional materials, with new materials as a breakthrough, to achieve micron-level electronic 3D printing. This is the highest precision electronic 3D printing technology in China.
Shanxi Additive Manufacturing Research Institute technician Zhu Yue believes that how to develop more new materials to produce higher quality 3D printing products, is a major challenge in the industry. In May this year, Zhu Yue's team independently developed a 3D printing photosensitive resin officially put into production, changing the past this 3D printing raw materials rely on international imports, the high cost of the situation. Zhu Yue said that the next step, the Institute will continue to develop materials, printing processes, software data development, he believes that the future of 3D printing will be as popular as ordinary printing. (Yawei Wang)