jagatia:
wildbill:
According to wikipedia's 3d printing page, Z-corporation (acquired by 3d systems) use the method you describe. The domestic systems (reprap, makerbot) just melt plastic filament to make their objects. What are you trying to do?use zcorps method seeing how it produces cleaner models and easier to produce.
Im curious about a strong plastic powder and binder
The powder is likely fairly easy - probably just white (ie - uncolored) toner, or some other kind of fine plastic powder (I've also read about people using cake flour and wood flour).
The liquid binder, though, isn't as easy to find information on. I first thought it might be superglue of some sort, but that turned out not to be true (although I did read that some systems use cyanacrylate glues, like superglue, as an "after-printing" infusion to strengthen the models printed). The information on the liquid binder seems to be lacking; I would think it would be some kind of either air-drying solvent, or something like cyanacrylate.
Now here's an interesting thought: What if you built this kind of system, but used standard black toner (nasty stuff, to be certain!), and for the "print head", you used a focused, somewhat high-wattage red or IR laser? There's an instructable (or Make?) article out there of a guy who used CD drive parts to make an el-cheapo laser cutter (I think he used a DVD writer laser), so the amount of heat to melt the toner should be achievable...
This isn't the project I was thinking about (one among many, though) - but it gives an idea:
http://hackteria.org/wiki/index.php/DIY_Micro_Laser_Cutter
So - sweep a thin layer of toner, scan the laser "fuser" head for the layer, drop down layer, sweep another layer of toner, fuse, etc...