They've added a lot of direct compression "paths" through the vertical web so it's not surprising it's unloaded the corners where the stress used to "go around" the void.
I'm also curious how the human immune system reacts to it, though I'm sure it's not known yet.
This is like a 3D printed metal scaffold, in the paper they’re doing compression tests. Probably more likely structural applications than medical I’m guessing
This is a laser method, but binder jet printing is getting cheaper and easier by the year but it is still fairly slow.
Even a slow space elevator that can only be used for transporting cargo would already be extremely useful. You could even load it with a container filled with life support if you really need to ship living cargo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tether
There are still challenges, of course.
However, here [1] is a cool paper looking at optimizing similar meta material structures using polymer filament printing - if you could do something similar in metal FDM that might be interesting?
I mean, obviously metal is going to be stronger than fused plastic, but I gather here that what makes it stronger than normal is the structure.
Wouldn't FDM plastic objects made with this structure be stronger than FDM objects made with a more conventional structure? That would be very useful even if it's not as strong as metal.
I think I'm going to print up some test pieces and do destructive testing.
I agree in relative terms, I’d think this cellular structure should have better compressive strength than a different structure made of the same material
I guess where I’m coming from is that FDM titanium (if you can realistically print that, I don’t know) isn’t going to have the same properties as SLM titanium, so the headline strength (in absolute terms) is probably not achievable in FDM Ti
Seems doable, but I haven’t seen it yet.