Emanuel Sachs, PhD

Sachs is the Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and co-founder of Desktop Metal, and coined the term “3D printing” and holds foundational patents on binder-jet 3D printing technology. Sachs earned his S.B. (1975), M.S. (1976), and Ph.D. (1983) in mechanical engineering—all from MIT. His doctoral research, supported in part by his Hertz Fellowship, focused on edge-stabilized ribbon growth, a novel method for manufacturing photovoltaic substrates that dramatically reduced the cost of producing silicon wafers for solar cells by eliminating the need to saw through crystalline ingots. Beginning in the late 1980s, Sachs and colleagues at MIT developed the concept of three-dimensional printing—a process in which components are built layer by layer by spreading powder and selectively binding it with an ink-jet system. He coined the term “three-dimensional printing” and holds foundational patents on the technology, which forms the basis of commercial binder-jet 3D printing systems.