August 2, 2000

NC State Engineers Developing Desktop 3-D Laser Printer

The 3-D laser printer.

Industrial Engineering Assistant Professor Denis Cormier was spending his lunch hour running through the Centennial Campus of NC State University when the idea came to him to use an ordinary office product in a most extraordinary way. Aware of how expensive it is for small manufacturers, entrepreneurs and industrial designers to produce plastic prototypes of products they hope to market, Cormier wondered if the ubiquitous laser printer could be programmed to generate three-dimensional, full-color plastic models as easily as it prints paper documents.

So he and colleague Jim Taylor, also an assistant professor in the College of Engineering's Industrial Engineering Department, set to work designing the software and hardware that would transform ordinary polystyrene printer toner into hard plastic 3-D objects. The results of their experiments are so promising that officials at NC State have taken the unusual step of applying for a patent on behalf of the two professors, something no university does unless the invention has significant commercial viability. Dr. Harvey West, a materials engineer, is the third member of the development team.

One reason the professors' work is so tantalizing - attracting the attention of big printer-industry companies such as Hewlett-Packard - is that the cost to buy a prototype-producing printer would be very low. Machines currently used to produce plastic parts - collectively referred to as rapid prototyping processes - are expensive, ranging from $60,000 to upwards of half-a-million dollars. With prices like that, only the largest companies can afford them, leaving smaller firms and one-person startups to forgo their ideas, rely on paper drawings or come up with the cash to have special industrial service bureaus produce a prototype for them.

"A 3-D laser printer could likely be produced at a price point that would target the personal desktop market," says Cormier. "A desktop 3-D laser printer costing $3,000 or less would be quite attractive in numerous situations."

In fact, say Cormier and Taylor, their process could create entirely new markets, including one in which children could conceivably download a CAD model of a race car or action figure from a company's website and then "print" it out on their special laser printer equipped with the "slicing" software that Cormier and his team have developed.

"If you develop this type of capability, you can eventually get to the point where you can customize everything," notes Taylor. "The term is 'mass customization.' One of the biggest costs to manufacture anything is the development of the tooling and fixtures - this process would help the manufacturer produce goods without that overhead. And with all of that capability, you could actually redistribute manufacturing from factories to homes or other sites. The long-term future is you can use this process to revolutionize manufacturing."

More traditional users of prototypes would likely be the first customers of the 3-D laser technology, though. They include mechanical designers at small- and medium-sized companies, industrial designers working on alternative designs, architects who want to produce inexpensive props for their mockups, and even students, such as art and science majors, looking to produce models for homework and projects.

Here's how the Cormier-Taylor-West prototype process works: Although the image that a conventional laser printer produces appears to be flat, the toner deposited on the paper has a measurable thickness. If images are repeatedly printed one on top of the other, then the image gradually gets thicker and thicker, resulting in a solid piece of plastic. Instead of using a paper tray, the prototype 3-D laser printer includes a platform to support the object. One bonus is that the product could be printed in full color by simply using a color laser printer engine, something that is prohibitively expensive using currently available rapid prototyping methods. Customers would buy the printer hardware and NC State-developed software, which tells the customers' CAD program how to configure the object as the toner is applied to the build platform.

Cormier and colleagues expect to hear from the US Patent Office next spring. In the meantime, they are, ironically, building a prototype of their prototype machine and attending industry-related conferences around the country while talking up their invention. If the patent is approved, the university will likely license the process and software to a commercial manufacturer.

--wood--

Technical contact: for additional information on this new process, contact Dr. Denis Cormier (cormier@eos.ncsu.edu), Dr. Jim Taylor (jtaylor@eos.ncsu.edu), or Dr. Harvey West (hawest@eos.ncsu.edu).

See the News & Observer's coverage of this story.

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