So far, I've concentrated on 'normal' electrospinning, and just touched on 'near field' spinning. Now I want to wet your appetite with another method, 'melt' electrospinning. While the version of the machine as it sits is not able to do melt spinning, it was designed to be able to add that capability with little trouble.

Melt electrospinning is, instead of using a solvent and extruding as a liquid, you heat the material to it's glass temperature and pull it with the electrical field in a near field method. What that gives you is the ability to lay down very fine amounts in a highly controlled manner. The tracks laid down can be done at the sub micron level, and in some case fine enough to make sub micron seem large. :)

PLA is one material suitable for melt spinning.

One of the main reasons I want to explore 'melt' electrospinning is because it's a natural fit for 3D printing. Many of the materials are the same, and can even be mixed in the same print once we have the machine done, and I'm working on that as hard as I can.

There are drawbacks, as there always is. One is not all materials are suitable for melt spinning. It pretty much depends on the molecular weight of the material. Another is it's sloooww... But using it for where it's really needed and using the other methods the rest of the time is doable. We can also add multiple emitters and mix methods and materials all in one project.

There are so many possibilities it's going to take me years to play with all of them. I'm really hoping a lot of you will pick this up, build the machine, and help me explore a lot of those possibilities. Are we ever going to replace FDM 3D printing? No, not a chance, and I don't want to. Can we enhance it? Certainly., with a community of people working on it, we can.