Colin Lecher
Metal, despite being one of the most ubiquitous building materials, isn’t something we see in 3-D printing too often. (Seriously: we’ve got pizza before small-scale, consumer steel printing.) But software company Autodesk, working with Dutch designer Joris Laarman, created a new system that could make the process at least a little more affordable.
The project, MX3D-Metal, uses custom software and an off-the-shelf robot arm to lay quick-cooling molten metal down in strands. The metal cools down fast enough that it can be manipulated into forming long, detailed pieces, like what you see here.
