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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.
I see things like this written: 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.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
They use regular, low-cost, easily available MIM powders.
This press release is overstating the toughness of the things this can produce. You won't be making transmission parts or turbofan blades that will last very long if at all.
There's shapes you can't make on a lathe or mill since you've got to hold onto something and can't get to the inside.
Also this is an additive process which can be nice with expensive material. Instead of throwing away most of a block of material you build it up out of powder.
Another thing is that this might actually be cheaper than machining for some very hard to machine materials.
I don't see this as being useful for everything but instead really useful in a few situations.
If this takes off as a hobby early adopters should not that you do not want the powder in your lungs and do not want the fumes from the burning organic additives there either - face masks and some sort of fume extraction should be used. It doesn't need to be expensive, take a look at what some hobby woodworkers do for dust extraction and that's going to get enough air moving to take care of a lot of fumes as well.
Yes, but the retooling time to produce a different part takes time and re-calibration. Assuming this machine works as advertised (and the team behind it has an impressive list of credentials), then it will outright slay previous casting processes because the retooling time is now negligible. Hell, each run could be twenty or thirty different parts out of a specific assembly.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.