MCOR on Golem

MCOR chief Conor MacCormack was interviewed by German IT news site Golem, in which he takes us on a detailed technical tour of their amazing paper-based 3D printer. Here's the highlights:

 

• Up to 3 full reams of common A4 paper is accepted by the machine
• Sheets are fed, one-by-one, into the build chamber (or should we say cutting chamber?)
• The machine cuts with a microscopic tungsten-carbide blade that is adjustable on the micron scale to account for different paper thicknesses
• The cutter is so fine it is able to slice a page without disturbing the sheet beneath
• The chamber is 1500mm high, and that's the maximum size of a build
• Adhesive (that sticks the layers together) is applied selectively to avoid waste
• Completed builds emerge as a full ream of paper; you must peel off the waste paper by hand to reveal the final object
• Proprietary software was shown, and it appears to offer similar features to other 3D printing control systems

 

You might think printing an object in this way produces a lot of waste. Well, it does - but remember, paper is recyclable, and it's perhaps the least expensive print material we've seen. 

   

Via Golem.de (in German, but English is spoken for most of the interview)