• Question: what sort of chemicals make a reaction to form a 3D leg

    Asked by 542arth34 to Alejandra, Ana, Daniel, Sophie, Todd, Zach on 14 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Ana Gallego

      Ana Gallego answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      Well, nowadays there are a lot of different techniques and materials that can be used for 3D printing.
      The cheapest method is FDM (fused deposition modelling) which is basically, extruder like a piping bag, You can print a few different plastics such as ABS and PLA. PLA is quite cool, it stands for polylactic acid., a biodegradable plastic that is made out of things like corn starch. It actually smells a bit of popcorn when you use it.
      For this case, in FDM there is no such thing as chemical reaction. All you do is partially melt a filament and leave it to cool in layers so that it sticks to itself.

      Does this make sense?

    • Photo: Alejandra Aranceta

      Alejandra Aranceta answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      I think Ana has explained this perfectly 🙂

    • Photo: Daniel Morse

      Daniel Morse answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      I don’t really know about making a 3D leg, but for my model of the mouth we use a large range of chemicals..too much to go into here in any detail..

      But we use cells, liquid nutrients for them to grow (lots of these), and other chemicals that stimulate growth in a 3D manner

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