The quick and easy production of plastic objects is now possible for everyone at home with the help of a 3D printer. The times when 3D printing was still called "rapid prototyping" and was reserved for specialised companies with very expensive devices costing tens of thousands of euros are over. Today, many manufacturers offer very good devices for a few hundred euros for home use.
But if you have such a machine at home, you will soon reach its limits, because creating your own objects on the computer needs to be learnt. This is where the Institute of Electrical Measurement and Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering and the company Fabmaker come in. Students at the institute not only learn how to operate such machines and use them for scientific purposes, they also design and build 3D printers at the institute. The further development of these devices has many exciting facets. The company Fabmaker, which was founded with the support of the Institute of Electrical Measurement and Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering, goes even further: this is where the 3D printers and the associated teaching materials are created, which students can use to learn about this fascinating technology at school.
However, there is still room for many scientific improvements to the devices. The variety of materials that can be processed in 3D printing is currently increasing dramatically. In addition to plastics, metals, glasses, ceramics and biomaterials can also be printed. It becomes particularly interesting when these materials can also be combined in one device. This creates objects with completely new properties.
In order to be able to produce all these things with high precision, many sensors are built into such a device. The Institute is currently investigating the geometric precision with which such objects can be produced in order to fulfil high technical requirements. The collaboration with the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt PTB in Braunschweig as part of the Braunschweig Metrology Initiative and a variety of co-operations with the institutes of the TU Braunschweig are very beneficial in this respect.
