3D is the New Print

Additive manufacturing presents: the fully printed electric motor

Material extrusion additive manufacturing can process a wide variety of functional materials including electrically conductive, magnetic, and mechanically compliant polymer composites.

Is it possible that we've somehow overlooked (or perhaps undervalued) 3D printing, amidst the avalanche of digital innovations over the past few decades? Recent work from the Virtual and Physical Prototyping publication provides us with a stark reminder.

"While filaments developed for 3D printing often exhibit limited functionality, highly loaded functional composites originally formulated for specialized manufacturing processes can be processed via material extrusion," begins the abstract from a group of researchers focused on devising fully 3D printed electric motors.

In this work, a commercial multi-material extrusion 3D printer was modified to process conductive inks, soft and hard magnetic composite pellets, and rigid and compliant polymeric filaments. Using this system, solenoids, hard magnets, and springs were fabricated. These components were combined through straightforward assembly to demonstrate "the first fully 3D-printed electric motor — a linear actuator composed of five distinct functional materials: dielectric, electrically conductive, soft magnetic, hard magnetic, and flexible," according to the abstract. The solenoids reportedly produced up to 2.03 mT magnetic fields, the magnets generated up to 71 mT magnetic fields, and the linear actuator attained a maximum displacement of 318 μm at its resonant frequency (41.6 Hz).

"This study demonstrates the capability of multi-modal, multi-material extrusion 3D printing to fabricate all critical components of electrical machines, with magnetisation of the hard magnets being the only post-printing step," the study continues, adding that "this milestone advances multi-material, multi-functional 3D printing towards implementing in-situ, customised, low-waste, and low-cost functional hardware."