Hanging 3D printer builds Tower of Babel

Sweden’s Umea University has developed a 3D printer that hangs from the ceiling with thin fishing lines. This printer, called the Hangprinter, is in the process of making a ‘tower of Babel’, which is now more than 3.5 meters high.

According to its maker, Torbjørn Ludvigsen, the Hangprinter is the first 3D printer that works without a housing, frame or rails. “The printer is unique because all parts are mounted on the mobile device, independent of the power source, and because it can use existing structures as a frame.” The Hangprinter hangs in the air like a spider. It is attached to the ceiling via thin lines and to two walls on the side. The mounting points on the walls move with the growth of the tower.

The director of an experiment platform at the Swedish university, Therese Dimitriou, saw the potential of the device and suggested that the Hangprinter print a tower of Babel. She says that because of the lack of a frame, prints with this printer can be as high as the structure on which the printer can be hung. In theory, the horizontal space for any prints is also as large as the space in which the print is made. According to her, this allows printing in large volumes both vertically and horizontally over large surfaces. Dimitriou says the Tower of Babel project shows that the concept is feasible. In the future, precision can be increased through the use of sensors.

Ludvigsen started building the printer as a student to investigate how to reduce the production costs of 3D printers. According to him, the frame or box of a regular 3D printer accounts for half of the total production cost, so Ludvigsen thought he could do without. Last year, the maker already showed a prototype of the 3d printer. The Hangprinter can be assembled for about two hundred euros, which is a lot cheaper than large-scale 3D printers.