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Indium?

Posted by vidiot5533 
Indium?
January 17, 2014 06:08PM
I am doing some random research, thinking about buying/building a reprap, and I was wondering out of curiosity if there was a metal that could be used in a PLA capable 3D printer. PLA melts at 150-160* Celsius, so I searched for a similar melting temperature metal, and came across Indium, which has a 156* melting point. I am not familiar with the inner workings of a reprap, so I don't know if the consistency of the molten metal would cause malfunctions or inaccurate designs, but in theory (at least in my head) if a small canal were designed with PLA, the printer could fill it in with molten Indium. Naturally it is a soft material so it wouldn't be a good structure material, but as far as circuitry is concerned, would this be a possibility?
VDX
Re: Indium?
January 18, 2014 06:40PM
... there are some alloys with even lower melting temps - especially "Roses metal" with melting temperatures around 100degC schould be interesting, as it's much more rigid/stable than pure indium and less toxic than "Fields-" and "Woods metal" alloys, that contains Cadmium (and melts at or below 70 degC).


Viktor
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Re: Indium?
January 18, 2014 07:59PM
There are several examples of a PLA-capable printer printing with a low-temperature metal listed here:

Quote
Technical Questions and Answers Sticky Post
Has anyone thought about 3D printing metal?
Yes. There are many established technologies for 3D printing metal parts, but most of these are beyond the reach of individual experimenters. There are many groups working on accessible low-cost technologies for 3D printing metal. Please see these working examples: A new approach to printing metals, Metal printing on a Lulzbot, Fused Deposition Modeling of Metals, Metal Delta RepRap v1.0, and these forum threads: Metal FDM thread, Metal-print Reprap, 3D Metal Printer Projects?, Induction Heated Nozzle, 3D Electroplating?, and these other resources: Metalbot.org, and MetalicaRap.

In particular, you would probably like the "Metal printing on a Lulzbot" link. In the past, I did some experiments with placing low-melt alloy in channels made of HDPE (link here) and other people have used the same method and gotten nicer results. So, yes. It is possible. smiling smiley
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