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MX3D
The multi-axis metal 3D printer, the MX3D, designed by the Joris Laarman Lab team.
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MX3D
The multi-axis metal 3D printer, the MX3D, designed by the Joris Laarman Lab team.
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MX3D
The multi-axis metal 3D printer, the MX3D, designed by the Joris Laarman Lab team.
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MX3D Dragon Bench
The Dragon Bench (2014) by Joris Laarman. The piece was made using the MX3D, and is part of the Joris Laarman Lab: Bits and Crafts exhibition at Friedman Benda in New York City.
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MX3D Dragon Bench
The Dragon Bench (2014) by Joris Laarman. The piece was made using the MX3D, and is part of the Joris Laarman Lab: Bits and Crafts exhibition at Friedman Benda in New York City.
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MX3Dprinting
Sometimes real, functioning technology achieves something you have never seen before and has the ability to astound. The MX3D from the Joris Laarman Lab is one such technology.
The MX3D is capable of drawing a limitless number of complex and organic geometries without the need for support structures - in metal.
Laarman and his team began work on the MX3D after successfully building a resin printer of a similar design. Owing to the physical limitations of resin, work commenced on a machine that could build support-free structures with metal. Laarman is a polymath. A designer, artist, businessman with numerous startup ventures in his growing portfolio and additive manufacturing pioneer, he claims to be "always looking for new ways to make designs that create new form languages".
Start with art
Dissatisfied by his experiences with 3D printing and digital fabrication, Laarman began exploring 3D printing without support structures and then experimenting with the shapes and the art that could be made using this technique, without really knowing where this development work would lead.
"That's the weird thing about how we work," he explained. "We start with art and design, but the technology has a far larger range of applications. We're working with other partners, for instance we have the support of Autodesk, who are supporting us in several ways to bring [this technology] to a higher level and turn it into something that can be sold as an application for people to use."
"It's a simple idea," Laarman added. "You add a welding machine to a robotic arm. These are two very dumb machines but with the right software you can make them really smart and communicate with each other in such a way it can 3D print in mid-air without a support structure."
But where will this technology be used? So far, Laarman explained, there have been enquiries concerning MX3D technology being used in shipyards, building and construction sites, and railways.
"If you want to make something custom with metal, any kind of metal, this is exactly the technique you want to use. It's very fast, it's very precise, it's very strong."
Any kind of metal? Laarman explained how the MX3D has been tested with a range of metals already including aluminium, bronze, copper, steel and stainless steel, but because every metal has different properties, a different approach needs to be taken with each element or alloy.
"It's a MIG weld," he said, referring to the welding process whereby metal is melted using the electric arc between a wire electrode and the metalwork from the nozzle of a welding gun. In essence, this makes the MX3D a filament-based 3D printing process. Every metal has different properties and therefore variations need to be made as to how much power and what kind of shielding gas need to be used to achieve the 3D printing process.
"Precious metal is something we're looking into now and [producing] the machine on different scales. We can do this on a more refined, smaller scale for the jewellery industry, while we can also do this at a much larger scale," Laarman stated.
Support-free
The MX3D is also claimed to be cost-efficient. Unlike other 3D printing technologies - metal or otherwise - the fact Laarman and his team can create objects without support structures saves the user money.
"If you can print in mid-air you can print structures, open structures, that are lightweight and strong. If you use support structures you have so much more material and you need to get rid of it in the end and you need time to print support structures so this way really is much more efficient."
But what about the finished item? Even without support structures there must be post-processing, which also requires time and money, but Laarman explained that the post-processing required for the metal items he and his team have already built with the MX3D have been simple but effective systems such as sandblasting and brushing the lines.
Moreover, the hardware itself is not as expensive as many industrial metal additive manufacturing systems.
"To make a machine like this is super simple," Laarman explained. "You basically put a welding machine onto a second-hand robot arm. I mean it is more complicated than that, but the metal printers that are around at the moment, for instance direct metal laser sintering machines are around €500,000 (£406,000, $680,000) and upwards, but this machine can be made for just €20,000 - or even less if you already have a robotic arm."
Laarman, who is currently exhibiting Joris Laarman Lab: Bits and Crafts at Friedman Benda in New York City, maintains his artistic enthusiasm for the project, for which he can truly take ownership.
"It's a really exciting time to work and the development of the technology is going so fast. There's access to so much. The internet is super exciting, I mean when I set up the company when I graduated ten years ago, I didn't even have a computer. The whole world is changing so fast that anything's possible."
