DIWire Bender Bends Metal Wire Into 2D Or 3D Curves; It's A 3D Printer Really.

In recent years, 3D printing is fast taking pace. We have seen #-Link-Snipped-#, #-Link-Snipped-# and even a printer that #-Link-Snipped-#. These machines work on the principal of creating a form on PC, splitting the volume of material into thin slices, and building up the form by printing layers of material and bonding them together.  There is, of course the difference between materials and the bonding methods. But, what happens when we want to print wires in space rather than volumes. Most 3D printing technologies that we have now are not well suited for this because the materials are weak, the machine uses a lot of 3D-print support material, and the process is slow. Yep, we have the CNC wire bender, but that is used for mass production and requires trained personnel to run. Here in comes in to picture the DIWire Bender.

The DIWire Bender is a rapid prototype machine that bends metal wire (or for that matter even colored electrical wires, plastics, memory metals or light pipes) to produce 2D or 3D shapes.





Users just have to draw curves on their computers, import the file into DIWire software and press print. The input gets converted into DIWire motor commands. This software can read vector files, Rhino or Wavefront OBJ 3D files, text files of commands or pure coordinates. You can use it for designing furniture or even engineering parts. In fact, the PENSA team who is behind this 3D printing product, thinks that if you get enough rapid prototype machines in a room hooked into a data line, you may be able to fax a bicycle! Well, see this machine in action here:



Via: #-Link-Snipped-#