Tag: video

1000x faster Metal Printing

The challenge with all these claims is that there’s no standard measure for printing speed, making these hard to compare. The best seems to be kg / h.

The SPEE3D printer has the potential to turn 3D metal printing, which currently is just making prototypes of parts, into a tool for manufacturing actual parts for use. It is up to 1000x quicker than conventional 3D metal printers.

Copper Rocket Nozzle
Print Time: 199 minutes
Weight: 17.9KG
Cost: $716
Speed: 5.4 kg / h

This 265mm x 300mm high, aerospace rocket nozzle liner was printed in pure copper on the WarpSPEE3D. Parts like these are typically machined out of solid wrought copper, a process that takes weeks and costs 10s of 1000s of $. The lead time for producing these parts is also typically around 6 months.

2022-03-20: Seurat uses a pixelization type approach to speed things up.

With the equivalent of 2.4m pixels projected in each square, the machine can print parts with layers just 25 microns thick at a rate of 3kg an hour. This is 10X faster than a typical L-BPF machine at such a fine resolution. Production versions of the Seurat Large-Area Pulsed Laser Powder Bed Fusion printer are now being built, and future generations of the machine should end up being 100x faster.

Area printing will be competitive with mass-production factory processes, such as machining, stamping and casting. By 2030 it will be possible to produce silverware for $25 a kilo. “That means we could actually print silverware cheaper than you could stamp them out”.

2023-05-13: Seurat lands a big customer

The part Seurat will produce for Siemens Energy is a turbine sealing segment made from a nickel-based alloy — it’s a component the company hadn’t previously considered as a candidate for 3D printing.

Over the 6-year length of the contract, Seurat will produce 59 tons of the sealing segments and related components. The big benefit is the potential cost savings, but the approach also reduces the emissions associated with producing the part, because Seurat’s technology is powered with solar and wind electricity that the company sources locally. The equation Seurat uses to talk about this is 1 metric ton of emissions reductions for every ton of components made. The approach also dramatically reduces the feedstock needed for production, which cuts down on scrap.

Parker Solar Probe

The first spacecraft to fly into the sun’s atmosphere will also be the fastest human-made vehicle ever, at 195 km / s.

2019-07-29: There’s a related experiment that simulates the solar magnetic field in a lab:

The twisting loops of the sun’s magnetic field control the flow of charged particles throughout the solar system. For the first time, researchers have created a scale model of this mysterious environment. “Because they’re a lab experiment, they can change some of their parameters, right?. And we can’t. The sun does what it’s going to do.” As the Parker Solar Probe circles the sun over the next few years, it will pass through the corona and collect data that researchers can compare to the laboratory results. “Stuff that they’re seeing, if it’s real, we should see it.”

2021-12-15: This has now happened.

The first passage through the corona, which lasted only a few hours, is one of many planned for the mission. Parker will continue to spiral closer to the Sun, eventually reaching as close as 8.86 solar radii from the surface. Upcoming flybys, the next of which is happening in January 2022, will likely bring Parker Solar Probe through the corona again.

Microdosing

Janet Lai Chang, a businesswoman, endurance athlete and psychedelics biohacker, reports on her year of psilocybin microdosing. “I’ll share data from my 12+ month experiment with sub-perceptual doses of psilocybin for the purposes of increasing social skills through decreased anxiety and elevated mood, empathy, and verbal fluidity.”