An electric motor is typically built in a factory full of stamped steel and copper wire, but MIT researchers recently produced their own linear motor — it was cheap, fully functioning and produced from a 3D printer.

The outcome stems from teaching the printer new tricks.

The team used a commercial extrusion system that could handle the full caboodle of materials, including plastic filament, magnetic pellets and conductive silver ink and produced all of the structural parts: printed coils, permanent magnets, a flexible spring and soft magnetic cores.

The only thing left to do was magnetize the printed magnets.

The resulting linear actuator was able to move back and forth by 318 micrometers at 41.6 hertz. The produced solenoids (coils) generated magnetic intensity up to 2.03 millitesla and the permanent magnets reached 71 millitesla.

These numbers are small, but the proof of concept is anything but.

Other 3D-printed motors rely on store-bought magnets and copper coils, but these mechanical necessities were printed in-house and on the same platform.

Though this won’t power a car in the very near future, the big-picture implications could be significant. Printed motors and other electromechanical systems may one day be printed completely on-site. This could reduce costs and reliance on complicated global supply chains for fields including robotics and space-based manufacturing.

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