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Ely Sachs, Ph.D

Co-founder + Technical Fellow
  • Portrait of Ely Sachs

Emanuel “Ely” Sachs, a pioneer of 3D printing, is the inventor of binder jet printing. Sachs is a co-founder of Desktop Metal and professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.

Founded in 2015 by leaders in advanced manufacturing, materials science, and robotics, Desktop Metal is addressing the unmet challenges of speed, cost, and quality to make metal 3D printing an essential tool for engineers and manufacturers around the world. As a visionary and inventor of the MIT 3D printing process and binder jet printing, Prof. Sachs has played a key role in the development of Desktop Metal’s mass production system, which builds metal parts in a matter of minutes instead of hours with high precision, single-pass technology.

At MIT beginning in the late 1980s, Prof. Sachs became a visionary in rapid prototyping. With colleagues, he developed the concept of 3D printing, ultimately allowing engineers to create functional parts rather than models or patterns for prototyping and testing, as well as for creating finished product components. 3D printing technology has since been applied to a wide variety of systems and application areas including metal end-use parts. His work in this area yielded more than 40 patents and launched a brand new industry.

Prof. Sachs became a member of the MIT faculty in 1986. In addition to 3D Printing, Prof Sachs is also known for his invention of conformal cooled molds and contributions to the manufacturing of photovoltaics, particularly for the invention of processes which make silicon wafers directly from molten silicon with no sawing required. He has co-founded several companies in this field including 1366 Technologies Inc, of Bedford, MA. He is also known for his work on process control of microelectronic manufacturing. He has been recognized for pioneering new approaches to teaching undergraduate education, focusing on active, hands-on participation by students in the discovery of knowledge. Sachs’ numerous honors and awards include membership in the National Academy of Engineering, the Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1995; the Institute of Corrosion’s T.P. Hoar Award in 2001; the R&D 100 Award in 2004; and the TMS Champion H. Mathewson Award in 2006.

Sachs earned his SB, MS and Ph.D., all in mechanical engineering and all from MIT. He has authored more than 110 technical papers and holds more than 55 patents.