With my metal 3D printing efforts I came across the Iro3D Printer (http://iro3d.com/)

which is a 3D printer which deposits fine and coarse metal powder + fine and coarse sand as support in a crucible, which later gets heated in a furnace and infiltrated with copper to create solid metal parts. I like the idea very much to create metal parts this way because there is no binder which needs to be removed and because after infiltration the printed objects are 100% dense. The only problem is the printing time. They say they need almost 24h to print the volume of the crucible which is quite long. 

Maybe I can find a way to increase the speed of sand deposition for this project which also needs a lot of sand.

Test run of a toolhead which should later be used for printing sand or powder. The toolhead consists of a geared Nema17 stepper motor (14:1) which drives a 8mm stone drill bit and some fittings. There will also follow some 3D printed parts which will hold everything together.