The human arsenal has always been expansive beyond all known limits, and yet it hasn’t anything more significant than that desire of ours to improve at a consistent pace. We say this because the stated desire has brought the world some huge milestones, with technology emerging as quite a major member of the group. The reason why we hold technology in such a high regard is, by and large, predicated upon its skill-set, which ushered us towards a reality that nobody could have ever imagined otherwise. Nevertheless, if we look beyond the surface for a second, it will become clear how the whole runner was also very much inspired from the way we applied those skills across a real world environment. The latter component, in fact, did a lot to give the creation a spectrum-wide presence, and as a result, initiate a full-blown tech revolution. Of course, this revolution then went on to scale up the human experience through some outright unique avenues, but even after achieving a feat so notable, technology will somehow continue to bring forth the right goods. The same has turned more and more evident in recent times, and assuming one new discovery ends up with the intended impact, it will only put that trend on a higher pedestal moving forward.

The researching team at Washington State University has successfully developed a method to 3D-print two types of steel in the same circular layer using two welding machines. The incentive behind doing so is creating an iteration of bimetallic material, which has so far looked 33% to 42% stronger than either metal alone. According to certain reports, the researchers used welding equipment commonly found in automotive and machine shops, integrated inside a computer numerical control or CNC machine, to facilitate the stated development. Talking on a slightly deeper note, they leveraged a set of two wielding heads, and during the initial demonstration, each head worked right after the other on a circular layer to print two metals, both boasting their own advantages. These metals were, in turn, stuck together by a corrosion-resistant, stainless-steel core, thus resulting in greater overall strength. Such a mechanism could, by all means, mark a major breakthrough, considering how 3D printing with multiple metals in a welding setup currently requires constant stopping and changing of metal wires. Hence, by putting two or more metals in the same layer while the metals are still hot, we will effectively take a big step towards streamlining the necessary procedure, while simultaneously making it a cost-effective affair.

“This method deposits the metals in a circle instead of just in a line. By doing that, it fundamentally departs from what’s been possible,” said Lile Squires, a WSU mechanical engineering doctoral student and the study’s first author. “Going in a circle essentially allows one material to bear hug the other material, which can’t happen when printing in a straight line or in sandwiched layers.”

We referred to the point of cost-efficiency; the team in question has notably used relatively inexpensive tools to make the technology accessible for automotive shops, shops that can use it to quickly create strong, customized steel parts.

For the future, though, the idea is to apply this method in medical manufacturing processes that print joint replacements with durable titanium on the outside and an inner material such as magnetic steel with healing properties.

“This concept has both welders printing, so we can use multiple materials in the same layer itself, creating advantages as they combine,” said Amit Bandyopadhyay, a professor in WSU’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. “And it doesn’t have to stop at just two materials. It can be expanded.”