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100x Faster, 10x Cheaper: 3D Metal Printing Is About To Go Mainstream (newatlas.com)
Big Hairy Ian shares an article from New Atlas: Desktop Metal -- remember the name. This Massachussetts company is preparing to turn manufacturing on its head, with a 3D metal printing system that's so much faster, safer and cheaper than existing systems that it's going to compete with traditional mass manufacturing processes... Plenty of design studios and even home users run desktop printers, but the only affordable printing materials are cheap ABS plastics. And at the other end of the market, while organizations like NASA and Boeing are getting valuable use out of laser-melted metal printing, it's a very slow and expensive process that doesn't seem to scale well.
But a very exciting company out of Massachusetts, headed by some of the guys who came up with the idea of additive manufacture in the first place, believes it's got the technology and the machinery to boost 3D printing into the big time, for real. Desktop Metal is an engineering-driven startup whose founders include several MIT professors, and Emanuel Sachs, who has patents in 3D printing dating back to the dawn of the field in 1989. The company has raised a ton of money in the last few months, including some US$115 million in a recent Series D round that brings total equity investments up over US$210 million. That money has come from big players, too, including Google Ventures... And if Desktop Metal delivers on its promises -- that it can make reliable metal printing up to 100 times faster, with 10 times cheaper initial costs and 20 times cheaper materials costs than existing laser technologies, using a much wider range of alloys -- these machines might be the tipping point for large scale 3D manufacturing.
But a very exciting company out of Massachusetts, headed by some of the guys who came up with the idea of additive manufacture in the first place, believes it's got the technology and the machinery to boost 3D printing into the big time, for real. Desktop Metal is an engineering-driven startup whose founders include several MIT professors, and Emanuel Sachs, who has patents in 3D printing dating back to the dawn of the field in 1989. The company has raised a ton of money in the last few months, including some US$115 million in a recent Series D round that brings total equity investments up over US$210 million. That money has come from big players, too, including Google Ventures... And if Desktop Metal delivers on its promises -- that it can make reliable metal printing up to 100 times faster, with 10 times cheaper initial costs and 20 times cheaper materials costs than existing laser technologies, using a much wider range of alloys -- these machines might be the tipping point for large scale 3D manufacturing.
Basic metallurgy. Metals have a crystalline structure - things like turbofan blades are oftentimes carefully cast so they are one single crystal, and they do this to maximize strength. The grain boundaries are places where the metal is weaker, and where it is more likely to fail. I don't know the metallic properties of the supposed 3d-printed metals - if they are just sputtering tiny metal blobs, you are probably going to end up with a metallic glass, which won't be very strong at all.
This is a normal 3d printer, with filament that is heavily laden with metal, so they probably use a nozzle that is tougher (like carbide or sapphire).... the magic is the metal gets sintered after a bath to remove most of the plastic. Enterprising folks could probably use a different extruder on their existing 3d printers, and get similar results.
I have no problem believing this thing works, as there is nothing really revolutionary happening.
This Australian startup has a new additive metal process that is 1000x faster, and 100x cheaper!
Seriously - and it's working today, not still in development. No filament, no lasers - they have a six-axis arm holding the part over a nozzle that blasts it with high-speed metal particles that stick to the part. Sounds crude, and it looks crude, but a quick bake to sinter it and a run through the CnC mill to finish it, and the completed result is as good as any slow laser-sintered part (which will also require milling).
They figured that since existing additive metal processes still require a final milling step to smooth out the surfaces, it takes just as much time to mill off a few hundred microns as a couple dozen, so you might as well go quick & dirty for the additive stage - same result, and much faster overall.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?