Interesting idea, but not all that useful. I was expecting a pancake motor, since those are mostly flat plates. Printed circuit pancake motors, where the windings are printed circuit traces, do exist. The 3D printer setup they have ought to be able to make most of the parts for such a motor.
Good bearings will be tough. Their structural material is PLA, which is not a good bearing material. Nylon might work, but at some point you need to smooth out the bearing surfaces. That may be why they chose to make a vibrator, with flexures rather than bearings.
One of the applications I was really hoping for was for 3d printers to be able to, by themselves, do things you could ask a human to do. Insert components (like screws, nuts, nylon wire, ...) maybe even bend copper wires into place while printing a 3d model and, you know, just make that work.
Printing silver conductive ink, I mean nice and useful, I'm sure. But not quite what I need.
A vibrator, not a rotating motor.
Interesting idea, but not all that useful. I was expecting a pancake motor, since those are mostly flat plates. Printed circuit pancake motors, where the windings are printed circuit traces, do exist. The 3D printer setup they have ought to be able to make most of the parts for such a motor.
Good bearings will be tough. Their structural material is PLA, which is not a good bearing material. Nylon might work, but at some point you need to smooth out the bearing surfaces. That may be why they chose to make a vibrator, with flexures rather than bearings.
Metal capable CNCs are getting as cheap as 3D printers. It look forward to designing my own lamination stacks.
ScholarlyArticle: "Fully 3D-Printed electric motor manufactured via multi-modal, multi-material extrusion" (2026) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17452759.2026.2...
NewsArticle: "3D-printing platform rapidly produces complex electric machines" https://news.mit.edu/2026/3d-printing-platform-rapidly-produ...
No pictures
The paper has plenty of pictures. You do have to click through to the PDF.
One of the applications I was really hoping for was for 3d printers to be able to, by themselves, do things you could ask a human to do. Insert components (like screws, nuts, nylon wire, ...) maybe even bend copper wires into place while printing a 3d model and, you know, just make that work.
Printing silver conductive ink, I mean nice and useful, I'm sure. But not quite what I need.