The winter of Substance Source started with more than 50 tweakable materials for 3D printing.
The new collection gives designers and artists the ability to generate new tactile experiences with help of the “process-driven” textures. The materials bring a specific set of modifiable parameters to change the visual attributes. Change color and roughness, shape and regularity, and other parameters.
The process here involved the 3D printer using STL files as blueprint to deposit thin layers of material at the micron scale to build the final object.
Here are some of the new categories:
Ferro-fluids are colloidal liquids made of ferromagnetic nanoparticles, which are tiny particles suspended in a fluid. Each particle is completely coated with a surfactant to prevent agglutination. Ferrofluids are used in electronic devices to form liquid seals around the spinning drive shafts in hard disks or more commonly in Mechanical engineering or even for artistic experiments combined with inks to create colorful patterns. This material has also very promissing applications in many advanced research domains like spacecraft propulsion, optics, medical (magnetic drug targeting) or future energy harvesting solutions.
The continuous process happens in a pool of liquid photopolymer resin. An ultraviolet light beam shines through the bottom of the pool, illuminating the precise cross-section of the object. The light causes the resin to solidify. The printing process is continuous and allows for quick production cycles.
DMD uses a laser to melt metallic powder. Unlike most of the other technologies, it is not based on a powder bed but it uses a feed nozzle to spray powder into the laser beam. It is very similar to Fused Deposition Modeling as the nozzle can move to deposit the fused metal.
You can learn more about the new set here.