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Researchers at Virginia Tech are leading an effort to further advance 3-D printing -- known among engineers as additive manufacturing -- with copper, a widely used conductor in electronics. The team is using a process called binder jetting in which an inkjet printer selectively jets glue into a bed of copper powder, layer-by-layer.
The printed copper product is then taken to a furnace to fuse the particles together. With support from the National Science Foundation, Christopher Williams of Virginia Tech is addressing a major challenge in the 3-D copper printing process, which is to eliminate the porosity that develops in the part during the process.Image credit: National Science Foundation
