The Taub Faculty of Computer Science Events and Talks

The transition from analog to digital has revolutionized many fields over the past century – most notably computation and communication – and can be used to similarly revolutionize additive manufacturing technology. In contrast with continuous (analog) materials produced by traditional rapid prototyping, digital materials are composed of many discrete, self-aligning voxels placed in a massively parallel layer deposition process. Digital principles allow for perfect replication and zero noise despite using a noisy and inaccurate substrate. The paradigm of digital printing with prefabricated voxels enables parts composed of multiple materials with mutually incompatible processing characteristics and specific functionality to be combined in a single freeform fabrication process. This talk will describe the concept as well as demonstrated a proof of concept digital fabricator capable of printing spheres of multiple materials at mm-scale resolution, including printing of hybrid metal/polymer parts.