Idea for metal-printing extruder

I've been checking out the RepRap project, and I had an idea that might help you guys work with high-melting point metals like copper. I have neither the expertise to do this myself nor the money to get into RepRapping anytime soon, so if there's any merit to this it'll be up to one of you to develop it. But I wanted to throw it out there in case it helped.

The idea comes from a combination of two simple facts:

1) even a weakly magnetic metal like copper can easily be levitated with magnets if you're dealing with a small enough piece, and

2) objects hanging in a vacuum have a hard time shedding heat.

First, you need to design an extruder with a small chamber in it that you can pump the air out of to create a vacuum. Then drop in a small piece of metal, create the vacuum, suspend the metal with magnetism and heat it up (perhaps with a laser). Since it's suspended in a vacuum it should retain heat rather than shedding it, allowing you to get it to a much higher temperature than normal.

What do you guys think? Any potential here?

I request that this be moved to the mechanics forum. I should have put it there to begin with, but there were so many forums that I missed it in the crowd. Sorry about that.

Sounds like an overkill to me.
The Laser & the Pump alone would cost a fortune. How would you maintain the vacuum if the molten metal needs to be extruded?
And if you are using a magnetic field with high magnitude you could skip the laser & the pump and go straight to induction heating and materials which can withstand the temperature. (almost all ceramics do that and there are plenty of machinable ones, all you need is a mill)

ElectricMucus Wrote:
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> How would you maintain the vacuum if the molten
> metal needs to be extruded?

You wouldn't. You'd extrude some metal and then reestablish the vacuum. Not very quick or elegant, I admit, but it would beat not being able to print heat-resistant metals at all.

As for the rest of your points, I'm not knowledgeable enough to dispute you there. As I said, I don't have the expertise for something like this. I'm just brainstorming in the hopes that something useful comes of it.