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Source: 3DPrint.com
Matt Sand, president of 3DEO, discusses the pros and cons of laser sintering and bulk sintering as applied to the 3D printing industry with a particular emphasis on sustainability and low-cost technologies.
Read more: “Metal 3D Printing: Laser Sintering vs. Bulk Sintering in a Furnace – Pros and Cons”
A Swedish producer of metal powders announced recently that it has launched commercial production of the industry’s first high precision binder jetting 3D metal printer, resulting in smaller and more intricate components than any previous technology, and because heat treatment occurs after printing, the process is adaptable for a variety of materials.
Digital Metal®, a Höganäs Group company, developed the DM P2500, which continuously prints in 42 µm layers at 100 cc/hr without the need for any support structures. It has 2500 cm3 print volume available. This makes it possible to manufacture small objects in high quantities (up to 50,000 parts in one print run), comprising shapes, geometries
and internal and external finishes never before achieved. The DM P2500 delivers a resolution of 35 µm and an average surface roughness of Ra 6 µm before additional finishing processes are applied.
Powder removed before sintering is reused for subsequent jobs, resulting in high yield and low scrap rates, meaning downtime is kept to a minimum, and there is no de-generation of the powder that other AM processes experience.
“The Digital Metal business has doubled year on year since its inception,” said Ralf Carlström, General Manager, Digital Metal. “However we’ve barely scratched the surface in terms of the potential this technology offers for designers and engineers. We’ve seen relatively small (but previously unachievable) changes to the internal structure of components result in a 30 percent improvement in overall product efficiency, which would have been impossible to produce using conventional methods. As the design and engineering community begin to explore and understand what our highly repeatable and reliable technology enables, we believe we will see huge demand for this technology.
By making the printers commercially available we hope to facilitate and fuel that demand.”
The second DM P2500 outside Digital Metal was installed in June 2017 and licensed to Centre Technique des Industries Mécaniques (CETIM), France’s benchmark institute and technological innovation hub for mechanical engineering. The machine started production just two days later and is already showing consistent results. The first printer is confidentially licensed to a global leader in fashion design and will see its new serial production items available at the end of this year.
Luxury watch start-up Montfort approached Digital Metal to print the dials for its watches inspired by the Swiss Alps. The binder jetting technique was the only solution that allowed Montfort the creative freedom to make watch dials with a design and finish that resembles the mineral, crystalline structure of rocks.
Additionally, in the U.S., Honeywell Aerospace and Digital Metal are exploring a number of joint 3D printing projects that will merge Honeywell’s expertise in aerospace engineering with Digital Metal’s leadership in additive manufacturing.
“The binder jetting technology Digital Metal uses to print small metal parts has the potential for various applications within the Honeywell Aerospace program,” said Don Godfrey, Engineering Fellow – Additive Manufacturing, Honeywell Aerospace. “We believe this will also be critical to applications in other key areas of the broader aerospace industry.”
What Do Fashion Watches and Aerospace Components Have in Common? 3D Metal Printing Read More »
NASA’s recent tests to design a technique that would allow additive manufacturing to create durable 3-D rocket parts made with more than one metal show great promise for the technique to eventually replace the brazing process.
Engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, tested NASA’s first 3-D printed rocket engine prototype part made of two different metal alloys through an innovative advanced manufacturing process. NASA has been making and evaluating durable 3-D printed rocket parts made of one metal, but the technique of 3-D printing, or additive manufacturing, with more than one metal is more difficult.
“It is a technological achievement to 3-D print and test rocket components made with two different alloys,” said Preston Jones, director of the Engineering Directorate at Marshall. “This process could reduce future rocket engine costs by up to a third and manufacturing time by 50 percent.”
Engineers at Marshall, led by senior engineer Robin Osborne, of ERC, Inc. of Huntsville, Alabama, supporting Marshall’s Engine Components Development and Technology branch, low-pressure hot-fire tested the prototype more than 30 times during July to demonstrate the functionality of the igniter. The prototype, built by a commercial vendor, was then cut up by University of Alabama–Huntsville researchers who examined images of the bi-metallic interface through a microscope. The results showed the two metals had inter-diffused, a phenomenon that helps create a strong bond.
A rocket engine igniter is used to initiate an engine’s start sequence and is one of many complex parts made of many different materials. In traditional manufacturing, igniters are built using a process called brazing which joins two types of metals by melting a filler metal into a joint creating a bi-metallic component. The brazing process requires a significant amount of manual labor leading to higher costs and longer manufacturing time.
“Eliminating the brazing process and having bi-metallic parts built in a single machine not only decreases cost and manufacturing time, but it also decreases risk by increasing reliability,” said Majid Babai, advanced manufacturing chief, and lead for the project in Marshall’s Materials and Processes Laboratory. “By diffusing the two materials together through this process, a bond is generated internally with the two materials and any hard transition is eliminated that could cause the component to crack under the enormous forces and temperature gradient of space travel.”
For this prototype igniter, the two metals–a copper alloy and Inconel–were joined together using a unique hybrid 3-D printing process called automated blown powder laser deposition. The prototype igniter was made as one single part instead of four distinct parts that were brazed and welded together in the past. This bi-metallic part was created during a single build process by using a hybrid machine made by DMG MORI in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. The new machine integrated 3-D printing and computer numerical-control machining capabilities to make the prototype igniter.
While the igniter is a relatively small component at only 10 inches tall and 7 inches at its widest diameter, this new technology allows a much larger part to be made and enables the part’s interior to be machined during manufacturing—something other machines cannot do. This is similar to building a ship inside a bottle, where the exterior of the part is the “bottle” enclosing a detailed, complex “ship” with invisible details inside. The hybrid process can freely alternate between freeform 3-D printing and machining within the part before the exterior is finished and closed off.
“We’re encouraged about what this new advanced manufacturing technology could do for the Space Launch System program in the future,” said Steve Wofford, manager for the SLS liquid engines office at Marshall. “In next-generation rocket engines, we aspire to create larger, more complex flight components through 3-D printing techniques.”
Will 3-D Printing Replace Brazing? NASA says “Yes.” Read More »
The Applied Materials Research, Innovation and Commercialisation Company (AMRICC) is a high-technology center where advanced materials and processes will be fast-tracked into commercial products rapidly and economically – and at the same time scientists of the future will be developed to create a ‘talent pipeline.’
Focused on putting Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire at the heart of the global advanced materials economy, AMRICC’s research laboratory, pilot plant and educational facility will be used to channel the expertise and heritage in steel and ceramics within the region for a new generation.
The launch event, which took place at the Moat House Hotel in Festival Park, followed the official opening of the Ceramic Valley Enterprise Zone, with which AMRICC will be closely associated.
Dr Cathryn Hickey, AMRICC chief executive, said: “AMRICC offers the UK – and Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire in particular – a unique opportunity to become the world leader in the commercialisation of materials and materials process development.”
Traditionally, once a new material or process is discovered, bringing it to commercial use in the marketplace has taken up to 20 years or more.
This is quite an unbelievable time lag which can result in a host of missed opportunities for all involved.
In some cases the flow of innovation to fully commercialised products never happens and it’s this ‘valley of death’ which AMRICC will address.
AMRICC’s unique collaboration between academia and industry partners will help companies drive innovation to develop, manufacture and deploy advanced materials much faster and at a fraction of the cost.
This will enable new business models and approaches to collaboration to be achieved, and these will extend beyond the current open innovation concept.
Fully integrated solutions involving material innovation, as well as new process technology will enable unmet customer needs and new market challenges to be addressed.
With its state-of-the-art facilities, AMRICC will not only deliver commercialisation expertise, it will also be a centre of excellence for a number of exciting new disruptive technologies, which are on their way to market and are set to shake up current ways of working.
These areas include the development of unique encapsulation materials for drug abuse deterrent formulations, which are in significant market demand in the US.
And with the world’s first field-enhanced sintering pilot plant, which is a unique way of reaching extremely high temperatures very rapidly, AMRICC will be developing, with partners, a number of beneficial applications to bring to market.
These include thermal barrier coatings for the aerospace and automotive sectors as well as sensor technologies for the electronics industry.
But it’s not just about developing materials and technologies – at AMRICC we’re also proud to be developing people.
Working with some of the world’s leading universities, AMRICC will be delivering Master’s Degrees and PhDs to develop the ‘commercial technocrats’ of the future – materials scientists with both business acumen and a wide range of commercial and industrial experience.
AMRICC is being set up with the support of the international materials technology company Lucideon as well as Stoke-on-Trent City Council and the Stoke–on-Trent and Staffordshire Local Enterprise Partnership.
It will be initially based alongside Lucideon’s headquarters in Penkhull and, in future, is set to establish within the Ceramic Valley Enterprise Zone – to be developed on along the A500 corridor in Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle under Lyme.
Dr Hickey added: “The launch of the Ceramic Valley Enterprise Zone and AMRICC today marks a significant and exciting day for the region.
In the future, we plan for AMRICC to be positioned within the Ceramic Valley Enterprise Zone where it will help to attract companies to the area, so it’s quite fitting that the company is launched today alongside the Enterprise Zone.
We look forward to working with our colleagues in the Ceramic Valley to drive the reputation of Stoke and Staffordshire in manufacturing and materials processing.
AMRICC to Use Field-Enhanced Sintering Pilot Plant Read More »
Source: Power Transmission Engineering
“During the past 10 years, the PM industry has put a lot of focus on how to make powder metal gears for automotive transmissions a reality. To reach this goal, several hurdles had to be overcome, such as fatigue data generation on gears, verification of calculation methods, production technology, materials development, heat treatment recipes, design development, and cost studies. All of these advancements will be discussed, and a number of vehicles with powder metal gears in their transmissions will be presented. How the transmissions have been redesigned in order to achieve the required stress levels while minimizing weight and inertia, thus increasing efficiency, will also be discussed.”
Read More: Powder Metal Gear Technology: A Review of the State of the Art by Anders Flodin
Powder Metal Gear Technology: A Review of the State of the Art Read More »
Source: Total Materia
Pulsed electric current sintering (PECS) also known as spark plasma sintering (SPS) or field assisted sintering (FAST) is a relatively new innovative technique for the consolidation of fine or nanocrystalline powders and has received much attention in the recent years because of its many advantages compared with other sintering/bonding methods such as the hot pressing and hot isostatic pressing (HIP) processes.
Read More: Pulsed Electric Current Sintering
Pulsed Electric Current Sintering Read More »