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1、3D printing3D 打印A new brick in the Great Wall 构筑长城的新砖石Additive manufacturing is growing apace in China 中国的叠层制造正在飞速发展ALTHOUGHit is the weekend, a small factory in the Haidian district of Beijing is hard at work. Eight machines, the biggest the size of a delivery van, are busy making things. Yet the f
2、actory, owned by Beijing Longyuan Automated Fabrication System (known as AFS), appears almost deserted. This is because it is using additive-manufacturing machines, popularly known as three-dimensional (3D) printers, which run unattended day and night, seven days a week.虽然是周末， 北京海淀区的一座小型工厂还在努力地运转着。
3、厂里的八台机器正在忙碌地制 造产品， 最大的机器有厢式货车大小。 然而这家隶属于北京隆源自动成型系统有限公司 (亦 称AFS的工厂看上去就像废弃了一样。这是因为工厂使用的是叠层制造设备，即广为人知 的三维(3D)打印机，可以一周七天，不分昼夜的无人化运转。The printers require an occasional visit from a supervisor to top them up with the powdered materials they use as their “ inks ” , or to remove a completed item, but apart
4、from that they can be left on their own. They build up the objects they are making one layer at a time, as the ink is sintered into place with a laser in a way that creates little waste and can make shapes impossible to achieve using the traditional “ subtractive ” technology of lathes, milling mach
5、ines and cutting tools.这些打印机需要管理员不定期的来为其加满粉末状原料，作为它们的 “墨水 ”，或者取走完成的物品，但除此之外，这些打印机可以自行运转。 它们一次一层的逐步构造物品， 用激光以 一种不会产生什么废料的方式将 “墨水”在适当位置烧结， 可以做出采用传统 “削减 ”技术的车 床、铣床、刀具不可能做出的形状。Though it is not yet ready for use in mass production (building things up is slower than trimming them down), 3D printing is exc
6、ellent for making prototypes, customised jobs and short production runs, for there is no need to retool each time the specification changes. All that need be done is to alter the software that controls the print heads.虽然3D打印目前不能用于大批量生产(叠层造物比削减造物要慢)，但3D打印非常适用于制造原型件， 定制加工及小批量生产， 因为改变规格时不需要每次都更换 刀具 ，需要
7、的只是 更改控制打印头的软件而已。Western countries led the development of 3D printing, and the technique has been praised by Barack Obama as a way to revive America s manufacturing industries. It may y.eBt udtothseoextent to which that revival will be brought about by the return to America of production which has m
8、igrated to countries like China is harder to predict for China has plans of its own.西方国家引领了 3D 打印的发展，该技术还被巴拉克?奥巴马誉为复兴美国制造业的一种途径。3D打印或许能不负所望。让以前转移到像中国这样的国家生产的产品回到美国生产会 带来复兴，但复兴的程度更难预料 因为中国也有自己的计划。Keep your powder dry 做好一切准备At the moment AFS is in the prototyping business. Its customers are mainly aer
9、ospace firms and vehicle-makers that need experimental designs turned into metal quickly. The powders in its machines hoppers are plastics, waxes and foundry sand. The results are sent off to foundries, where they are used to make moulds for the sand-casting of metal objects.目前AFS从事的是原型设计业务，其客户大多是需要
10、将实验设计快速转化为金属实样的航空 公司及汽车制造商。 其设备料斗中的粉末是塑料， 蜡及铸造用砂。 完成品送到铸造厂， 用来 制作金属件砂模铸造用的模具。According to William Zeng, AFSdseputy general manager, all the parts needed to make a prototype car engine can be printed and cast in this way in under two weeks. A conventional machine shop would need several months to do
11、that not least because many of the components would have to be made by hand.据AFS的副总经理 William Zeng称，制作一个汽车引擎原型所需的全部零件均可以这种方式 打印并铸造， 用时不到两周， 而传统的机工车间需要数月时间才能做到 主要是因为许多 组件需要手工制作。AFS also has a second line of business. It sells the laser-sintering printers it makes to others, for this is a rapidly grow
12、ing industry. And some of its machines, which cost up to 1.5m yuan （about $250,000）, can do more than just sinter plastics, wax and sand; they can sinter metals directly.AFS还有一块副营业务，即将其制造的激光烧结打印机出售给其它公司，因为这是一个飞速增长的行业。 其某些设备的售价高达 150万元人民币（约合 25万美元），不只可以烧结塑料， 蜡和砂子，还可以直接烧结金属。Indeed, one of the countrys
13、 largest 3D printers （though it was not made by AFS） does just this. Itis 12 metres long and it belongs to the National Laboratory for Aeronautics and Astronautics at Beihang University. Wang Huaming, the laboratorys chief scientist, tol-dmanduigfaitcatluringseminar organised recently by the Laborat
14、ory of High Performance Computing, a government research institute, that this behemoth is being employed to make large and complex parts for China s commerc-iailrcraft programme, which plans to build planes to rival those turned out byAirbus and Boeing.实际上，中国最大的3D打印机（虽然不是 AFS造的）也有此功能。该设备长12米，拥有者是北京航
15、空航天大学的航空航天国家实验室。 该实验室的首席科学家王华明最近在一次由 高性能计算实验室 （一家政府研究所） 组织的数字制造研讨会上说， 这个大家伙是为中国的 商用飞机项目制造大型复杂部件的， 该项目计划制造出可以与空客和波音制造的飞机匹敌的 飞机。These parts include titanium fuselage frames and high-strength steel landing-gear objects that require the metal they are made from to be free of flaws which might cause them
16、 to fail. Printing such things, rather than making them from precast metal, will be a technical tour de force, and Dr Wang steam is therefore working on the tricky problem of controlling the recrystallisation of metals after they have been melted by the laser.这些部件包括钛机身骨架及高强钢起落架， 制造这些部件所用的金属要求没有任何瑕疵， 否 则会导致部件无法使用。 打印这些部件，而不用预制金属制作，将会是一项技术绝活， 因此 王博士的团队正在致力解决的棘手问题是激光将金属熔化后对金属重结晶的控制。Making planes is about as high
