The University of Maine today unveiled a new large-scale 3D printer, and university officials said it will allow researchers to create bigger projects in less time.
The new printer, called Factory of the Future 1.0, is about four times larger and can print four times faster than the university's previous record-breaking printer.
It can print objects up to 96 feet long, 32 feet wide and 18 feet high, with a rate of 500 pounds of deposition an hour.
Among those on hand for the unveiling was Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Dr. Heidi Shyu.
"The University of Maine Factory of the Future initiative stands as a beacon of innovation," she said. "It is poised to propel the manufacturing sector into the next decade."
University officials said an expansion of the lab will break ground this summer, and anticipate having an even larger and faster printer installed in that space.
The university has utilized 3D printing to create a house, or biohome, and the new machine can print almost four times faster than the previous version. That means printing a biohome could take just 80 hours.
Dr. Habib Dagher, executive director of the Advanced Structures and Composites Center, said the printer could be vital in addressing Maine's housing crisis, since it doesn't require the same materials and manpower as a conventional home.
"And as you know, the big issue right now is labor in Maine, we don't have the construction labor, we don't have enough people to build the homes we need to build," Dagher said. "We need to build 80,000 homes in Maine by 2030, who's going to build them. So what we need to do is we need to automate these processes."
Dagher said the center has partnered with the non-profit Penquis to print nine homes for the unhoused over the next two years.
Officials said the larger, faster printer will be used to create a variety of projects, from homes to bridges to a new 50 foot long transport vessel.
All of the research done at the lab can be scaled up for projects around the world, university president Dr. Joan Ferrini-Mundy said.
"We'll be able to do the development work that's going to be needed to scale these technologies in a variety of places," she said. "And so it's groundbreaking work literally for the University of Maine, and we're excited about it."
The unveiling kicked off a two-day workshop focused on large-scale additive manufacturing, and how industries can use new technology for national defense and commercial production.
