After finally driving an F1 car there was nowhere left to go, so now he is here! New filament means you can print metal on any 3D printer. More than just metal. Another great Kickstarter success story? Companies are into this too The technology has attracted big names like Calvin Klein and a company that wants to license the technology to fabricate consumable parts for its facility that 3D prints Uranium fuel cells for nuclear reactors. Nick Hall Nick is a freelance journalist who has covered the cut and thrust of Formula One and the technical side of the supercar industry for the likes of The Sunday Times, Automobile and Penthouse on these shores, Tatler and The National in Dubai.
More on this topic Evonik commits to HP open platform. In fact, you consume less material and time by doing so. Full Automation: Metal 3D printers require minimal designated operator time. Once you kick off a print, it can operate without supervision, so you can maximize machine uptime by letting the printer run during non-working hours.
Minimal Tooling or Setup: When making a part with traditional methods like milling, turning, or molding, some amount of effort and time needs to be spend non-revenue generating parts.
These are parts that support the manufacturing of the final part, including custom tooling, workholding, or molds. Metal 3D printers can create parts without extra manufacturing work or machine setup — all you have to do is press print to get the machine started!
From these three benefits we can derive many different applications in a variety of industries. Where do you face challenges that impact yield? What is the cost of these inefficiencies? When metal 3D printed parts increase or maintain part performance with lower effort, cost, or time, they are valuable. After printing, the pieces have to follow a chemical washing and sintering process in an oven so that the metal powder is fused into a single solid metal piece.
Here is a video where you can see what results can be achieved with this type of 3D metal printing. What is the filament made of? The content of the BASF Ultrafuse L filament is, as its name suggests, L stainless steel, a very popular steel used in applications where corrosion resistance is a critical feature, as it is more expensive and stronger than the most common stainless steel As you can see, the parts that go through the whole post-processing process have the characteristic lines of 3D layered printing and some filament sticking.
As an alternative to hollow sections, parts can be designed with skin and cores. Skin and cores are processed using different laser power and scan speed, resulting in different material properties.
Using skin and cores is very useful when manufacturing parts with large solid section, as they significantly reduce the print time and the likelihood of warping and produce parts with high stability and excellent surface quality.
Using a lattice structure is also a common strategy in metal 3D printing for reducing the weight of a part. Topology optimization algorithms can also aid in the design of organic light-weight form. SLM and DMLS can produce parts from a large range of metals and metal alloys including aluminum, stainless steel, titanium, cobalt chrome and inconel.
These materials cover the needs of most industrial application, from aerospace to medical. Precious metals, such as gold, platinum, palladium, and silver can also be processed, but their applications are fringe and mainly limited to jewelry making.
The cost of the metal powder is very high. For this reason, minimizing the part volume and the need for support is key to keeping the cost as low as possible. A key strength of metal 3D printing is its compatibility with high strength materials, such as nickel or cobalt-chrome superalloys, that are very difficult to process with traditional manufacturing methods. Significant cost and time savings can be made, by using metal 3D printing to create a near-net-shape part that can is later post-processed to a very high surface finish.
Compare the costs of metal 3D printing Get instant quote Post processing Various post-processing techniques are used to improve the mechanical properties, accuracy, and appearance of the metal printed parts. Compulsory post-processing steps include the removal of the loose powder and the support structures, while heat treatment thermal annealing is commonly used to relieve the residual stresses and improve the mechanical properties of the part.
CNC machining can be employed for dimensionally crucial features such as holes or threads. Media blasting, metal plating, polishing, and micro-machining can improve the surface quality and fatigue strength of a metal printed part. Satellite antenna manufactured using DMLS. Metal 3D printing processes can be used to manufacture complex, bespoke parts with geometries that traditional manufacturing methods are unable to produce. Metal 3D printed parts can be topologically optimized to maximize their performance while minimizing their weight and the total number of components in an assembly.
Metal 3D printed parts have excellent physical properties and the available material range includes difficult to process otherwise materials, such as metal superalloys. The material and manufacturing costs connected with metal 3D printing is high, so these technologies are not suitable for parts that can be easily manufactured with traditional methods.
The build size of the metal 3D printing systems is limited, as precise manufacturing conditions and process control are required. Already existing designs may not be suitable for metal 3D printing and may need to be altered. Detailed design guidelines form metal 3D printing are given in this article of the Knowledge Base. Learn the difference between metal 3D printing and CNC Download our guide on producing metal parts Introduction to material jetting 3D printing.
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