xPrint: A Modularized Liquid Printer for Smart Materials Deposition.

Manufacturing
Written By Lining Yao

Guanyun Wang, Lining Yao, Wen Wang (MIT), Jifei Ou (MIT), Chin-Yi Cheng (MIT), Hiroshi Ishii (MIT)✉.

The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2016 PDF | DOI
News: 3dprint.com; 3ders.org; 3dprintingindustry.com
Project Video: xPrint

To meet the increasing requirements of HCI researchers who are looking into using liquid-based materials (e.g., hydrogels) to create novel interfaces, we present a design strategy for HCI researchers to build and customize a liquid-based smart material printing platform with off-the-shelf or easy-to-machine parts.

For the hardware, we suggest a magnetic assembly–based modular design. These modularized parts can be easily and precisely reconfigured with off-the-shelf or easy-to-machine parts that can meet different processing requirements such as mechanical mixing, chemical reaction, light activation, and solution vaporization.

In addition, xPrint supports an open-source, highly customizable software design and simulation platform, which is applicable for simulating and facilitating smart material constructions.

Lining Yao
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