http://www.e-catworld.com/2013/11/rossi-plans-to-3d-print-e-cats/
Rossi: Plans to 3D Print E-Cats
November 15, 2013 • 1 Comment
Here’s an interesting coincidence. After having posted about the 3D printed metal gun today, someone posted a link to the CNS story on the Journal of Nuclear Physics and asked Rossi’s opinion about the chance of 3D printing E-Cats.
Rossi responded:
Italo R.:
You read out thoughts: yesterday in the meeting room of the US factory ot our US Partner we talked about the 3D Printing application for the manufacturing of our reactors. Our model id the work done by Rolls Royce to manufactire their turbines.
Your comment sounds smart.
Warm Regards,
A.R.
The Financial times just published an article by Jeevan Vasagar which discusses Rolls Royce’s plans to start 3D printing parts for their jet engines as a way to speed up production and make lighter parts. In the aerospace industry it can take up to 18 months to receive a part after it is ordered, because of the time it takes to machine it. 3D printing would speed up the lead time involved.
This is encouraging news from Andrea Rossi — 3D printing could be a factor that will help speed up manufacturing and proliferation of the E-Cat, and it sounds like the the team is planning to keep up with the very latest production methods. The E-Cat seems to be a far simpler device than a jet engine, and it could be that 3D printing techniques will become the predominant method of manufacturing the reactors. This could mean a reduction in the number of staff required to produce the cats, and maybe less need for the robots Rossi has often talked about.
I guess I was not the first one to ask that question.
I don't know about "3d printing", but it has long appeared to me that the optimal reactor structure will be a bunch of micro-cores, printed either by photolithography or "3D" onto a flat surface.
The "nuclear active enviroment" seems to be mostly a surface/minimal depth effect, so what you ultimately want is something that is mostly surface, but with the "back side" of the micro-core bonded to what will become the heat-exchange/heat-removal surface. H2/D2 access the "front" of the surface, and heat is removed from the "back". Have "many" micro-cores, so if a few of them fail, device integrity remains high.