Application of 3D Printing in the Metamaterials Designing

Abstract

In the last couple of years, 3D printing has become one of the most popular manufacturing techniques in designing of the new prototype parts, mechanisms and machines. Available and relatively cheap 3D printing techniques allows fast manufacturing of different complicate prototypes (rapid prototyping) by using plastics as base material, like FDM. In the most cases, these prototypes are used only for functionality testing and design analyzing, yet that is a small part of the possibilities that 3D printing can give in parts design. For example, 3D printing can be utilized for creation of the cheap personalized limb prosthesis, toward specific needs of each patient. One of the biggest advantages of the method is production of the complex geometric shapes, done layer by layer, which provides a new level of freedom in part design and significantly impact their final characteristics, since conventional techniques of parts manufacturing have many limitations. By modifying the inner geometric structure of the parts produced from regular material, new properties of the engineered part are obtained, with different behavior, which the starting material didn't have. This, engineered materials are named metamaterials. Using the metamaterials it is possible to produce parts with properties that doesn't appear in nature. This paper will present how new parts, mechanisms, and machines can be designed and manufactured using metamaterials and 3D printing.