We can indeed print steel with direct metal laser sintering. I think that the object needs heat treatment afterwards, though to be fair it is almost ten years since I properly read up on it and things have probably advanced since then
I find it difficult to believe that breaking down steel to be 3d printed into large structures for a bridge is faster or more energy efficient than casting the parts instead.
Maybe, we could just print off rectangular prism-shaped modules, around the right size to fit in a hand, and then assemble them on site. We could even make them out of ordinary clay and fire them for strength. I wonder why nobody has thought of that. /s
3D printing has it’s place, but more conventional methods have theirs too. If you are counting on a lot of human labour anyway you might as well not reinvent the wheel.
To be fair, you don’t need a very huge 3D printer for that, if you divide it into a lot of smaller parts which can be assembled later.
Idk, if we can already print steel though and whether we can make it structually sufficiently stable.
We can indeed print steel with direct metal laser sintering. I think that the object needs heat treatment afterwards, though to be fair it is almost ten years since I properly read up on it and things have probably advanced since then
I find it difficult to believe that breaking down steel to be 3d printed into large structures for a bridge is faster or more energy efficient than casting the parts instead.
Steel beams get extruded and rolled, or… 3D printed with a large custom-shaped hot end! 🤯
https://youtu.be/lHTq-zLk-fw
Maybe, we could just print off rectangular prism-shaped modules, around the right size to fit in a hand, and then assemble them on site. We could even make them out of ordinary clay and fire them for strength. I wonder why nobody has thought of that. /s
3D printing has it’s place, but more conventional methods have theirs too. If you are counting on a lot of human labour anyway you might as well not reinvent the wheel.
OP said use AI, not humans… /s