1. 3D Printing Digital Materials
Jonathan Hiller, Hod Lipson
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Computing & Information Science
Cornell University
Computational
Synthesis Lab

2. Conclusions Digital Materials Implementation From Analog to Digital
Comprise lattice of physical voxels
High precision, work with incompatible materials,
Tunable properties
Implementation
Parallel (laser printer)
Serial (inkjet printer)
From Analog to Digital
Smart voxels

3. Digital Materials

5. Gershenfeld (2005)

6. 700
10,000
25,000
80,000
187,000
363,000
1,000,000
4,500,000

7. Geometry is “pixelized”
Massively parallel pick-and-place prints layer by layer
Multiple materials: Some sacrificial, some functional
Above: Two materials, spherical voxels

8. Printing Digital Materials
Parallel Assembly

9. Build Chamber
Material Feeder

10. Fabricator

11. With Jonathan Hiller

12. Spheres

14. 3D Circuits

15. 3D Circuits

16. Printing Digital Materials
Rapid Serial Assembly

17. VoxJet

19. Accelerated x4

20. Tunable Material Properties
Voxels
Tunable Material Properties

21. Tiles

22. Modeling - COMSOL

23. Simulating: Relaxation

24. Tile Precision

25. Dithering Materials

27. Tuning Elastic modulus

28. Tuning CTE

29. Auxetic Materials

30. Spheres

31. Precision
x 0.1
x 0.5

32. Smart Voxels
Future Directions

34. 500 µm

35. 3D Micro-fluidics

36. Heterogeneous Tissue Engineering

40. From Analog to Digital

41. Conclusions Digital Materials Implementation Challenges
Comprise lattice of physical voxels
High precision, work with incompatible materials,
Tunable properties
Implementation
Parallel (laser printer)
Serial (inkjet printer)
Challenges
Interfaces and interlocking between voxels
From Analog to Digital
Smart voxels