This made me wonder about a 3D printer alternative that builds things by folding a thin sheet of metal into arbitrary shapes instead of extruding filament.

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whilenot-dev 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I made an artwork in 2013-ish, where I attached an aluminum foil to a good DC motor. I mounted it from the ceiling with 2 stepper motors to control height and one orthogonal axis. The motor would unwind the foil by accelerating quickly in either direction (CW/CCW). By changing directions it would also create folds and stabilize the emerging shape: https://imgur.com/a/gaRKGtQ

I always imagined an additional stepper motor to cover an area like a delta 3D printer and liked to think about the difficulty in creating the 3D software, and the need to find a solution to simulate the unwinding-into-shape through some physical model.

EDIT: unwinding GIF here: https://imgur.com/a/VP3gEiv

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aradaelli 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Imgur is not working anymore in UK :(

	▲	whilenot-dev an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Alternative links: https://postimg.cc/Q9vjhdrk https://postimg.cc/9D1Vzphj

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toast0 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My college had a 'rapid prototyping' machine circa 2000 that worked in paper. Roll out a layer of paper, cut through the top layer, something something glue, roll out the next layer, etc. No reason that couldn't work with aluminum foil.

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whilenot-dev 43 minutes ago | parent [-]

I can just tell you from experience that aluminum foil is much more fragile than paper, your college might face some difficult challenges in making it work and need to rework their machine. Maybe very lightweight paper comes close, but certainly not the standard 80gsm printing paper.

I created an embossing machine than would emboss aluminum foil with the scratch marks of a teaspoon. Aluminum foil tends to get a fold rather quickly, doing that for 40m was quite a challenge.

The embossing machine: https://postimg.cc/67wkVGBy

The embossing process as GIF: https://postimg.cc/3W6zSqKx

The embossed aluminum foil as GIF: https://postimg.cc/yDh5NY0D

	▲	kragen 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		This is very impressive!

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iancmceachern 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They do this. This is the coolest one IMO:

https://mantle3d.com/

	▲	daveguy 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's not how mantle3d works. It's 3d printed metal alternating with CNC machining after several layers for precision: https://mantle3d.com/how-it-works/ This is optionally followed by a pressurized furnace for sintering.