Bengaluru engineering students accidentally build a 3D printer and it only took them 20 days to make it.
Akhil MS, Adarsha, M, Anish SA and Amar Sale,third-year mechanical engineering students from CMR Institute of Technology (CMRIT), displayed a 3D printer that they built, at the state level exhibition. The device only cost rs 43,000, one fourth the cost of a standard 3d printer in the market.
Economic Times, reports that mech students originally intended to build a device that could produce biodisel, but when that failed, they decided to completely change their direction and make it a 3d printer instead.
Under the guidance of professor Sagar M Baligidad, the students came up with the 6kg device, which makes use of digital light processing to produce 3d printout, opposed to fused deposition modelling (FDM) technology, used by regular 3d printers.
“FDM printers are known to have low accuracy and bulky .Here, we use ultraviolet light from a projector for printing,” Akhil said.
The printer creates models in the form of layers and uses computer aided design software to do so.”Each layer is then separately projected onto the liquid resin and the projected area gets solidified. This is done for each layer,” Anish explained. The inventors claim that this approach will drastically cut down time taken to print, compared to normal printers.
The printer competed along with other projects at the national-level competition and took home the cash prize. The team looks forward to further improving the device as a final-year project.
