Exciting news from the rapid prototyping world: For those of you put off by the plastic-like consistency of most RP'd parts, the i.materialise shop has just announced the ability to crank out custom titanium parts.
Their process uses Direct Metal Laser Sintering, which...
...has hereto only really been used by high end research organizations and multinationals making tooling, aerospace components, medical tools, surgical implants or for pure research. We're skipping the "trickle down" affect in technology and now making this revolutionary technology available worldwide. Titanium opens jewelry, high end engineering and high tech applications to this growing segment of people that produce online. Titanium is by far the hardest and strongest 3D printing material. It is also extremely accurate and biocompatible. We are very curious to see which of the host of possible applications that are open to designers will be used by them We think that titanium 3D printing is a powerful production technology that really adds to a designer's arsenal.(more...)