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3D wooden printing

makerbot

3D printing has lost its novelty value a bit, but new printing materials that MakerBot plans to release will make it a lot more interesting again. Source: PC World

MakerBot is one of the best-known makers of desktop 3D printers, it announced that late this year its products would be able to print objects using composite materials that combine plastic with wood, metal or stone.

The company has made a 3D-printed hammer made from composites of maple and iron, which was a bit lighter than a real hammer but still had some heft to it, and the surface of the wood actually looked and felt like wood grain.

It even smelled of wood, because there is real wood in the composite.

MakerBot’s printers use a long plastic thread, or filament, wrapped around a spool. The filament feeds into an extruder, basically the print head, which heats it to a liquid and pours it on the object being printed, where it solidifies again.

For the new materials, MakerBot has figured out how to take particles of wood, metal and limestone and mix it with the plastic to form the composite filaments.

MakerBot plans to release the new materials later this year. The new materials will work with any of MakerBot’s fifth generation Replicator printers, though users will need to buy a new extruder for each one.