Water-fused plastic as a print medium?

[ezrec]

I'm wondering if this product (also known as 'Aquabeads') could be pulverized into a powder, and conventional ink used to wet and bind them?

http://www.beadosbeads.com/media/692889/beados_faqs.pdf

[dragonator]

From what I have gathered in the datasheet, they are plastic beads covered in a PVA glue. Water melts the surface and when the water evaporates, the glue sets again. Grinding the beads up will probably leave a lot of the powder without glue, because it is only applied to the surface (from what I have read).

On a side note, this is already how conventional 3DP works, having powder with PVA glue, though the use of plastic is still open for discussion. Maybe it offers special properties or features. Maybe it can be post processed into a solid plastic part, even though I do not yet know how that could be done.

[ezrec]

Good point - thanks for the analysis. Looks like something that's already been covered by others.

Given the way my BrundleFab system is set up, I could swap out the halogen lamp for a UV lamp, and experiment with using SLA liquid (UV curable resin) as a binder for powders (lignin powder, nylon, etc).

Hmm....

[dragonator]

If you can manage to print SLA resin with a printhead you basically have an Objet printer, one of the most versatile techniques around. The real challenge is that most printheads are bubblejets and they need to heat the liquid to print them. I do not know if bubblejets can handle light sensitive resin. I don't say it is impossible, I say I don't know, so please test it to be sure. If you manage to find or hack a piezo inkjet, then you start to get something nice. Piezo inkjet printheads work with any liquid.

You don't even need a powder to print in. You can just print parts droplet by droplet. To save resin or make a composite, you could still print in powder.

[ezrec]

All Epson printheads are piezeo...

I'll look into that once I get my thermal fusion process tuned.