Project II. idea

For what I am interested in, is - ICE.

My initial idea is to use some liquid materials for example water, as the most basic printer material, through the combination with other chemicals that will print out by nozzle, so whatever liquid (water) can be rapidly froze with a solid shape. Of course, the frozen ice sculpture could be any kind of shapes which are controlled by the electronic control system of 3d printer itself.

Materials

I am pretty like to find out some interesting materials that are probably very special to be used in 3d print, I have done some researches on malt sugar and wax, but I could not create a new idea which could get rid of normal 3d print style. These two materials are hard for me to make a development. Then, I came out an idea with water which is base on the researches that I did in the first project. Water is a very usual material that is easy to use. Reducing the temperature of water could change it into ice state, so it is possible to change the shape of water. According to my research on how to reduce the temperature of water rapidly, the liquid nitrogen is the best choice to achieve this.

Liquid nitrogen is more safety, it is non-toxic and non-corrosive material, and also it is easy to store in common material containers but must be vacuumed.

How does my ideal 3d printer work?

To design this liquid nitrogen printer, hopefully I am gonna use arduino to control the whole working system that the nozzle could move along X, Y and Z axis. Normally, the nozzle will put under water so it must be waterproofed, and it must effectively separate liquid nitrogen and water.  

Nozzle – the inside diameter of nozzle should be as small as it can. It is aim to keep it safe, but also to prevent if big nozzle may freeze more area that lead to the inaccurate output of my 3d printer.   

I know to create a completely ice sculpture is difficult because normally it will melt a bit when water surround, so in order to prevent this defect, I am thinking to update the nozzle forever stay under water, and randomly comes out with a number of liquid nitrogen. The whole water contain will show a beautiful view with some frozen look.