What's new
What's new

New metal manufacturing process for addive manufacturing?

KPMGVoice: The Great Rewrite - Forbes

New technonogy for 3d printing? How long till it hits the shops?
Joe

I checked out their website, and it seems the process is basically electroplating with a variety of anode materials, switching anodes to allow extremely thin layering of individual metals that takes advantage of material interactions at the nano-scale level. The need a cathode to act as the pattern, building up on it.

Looks like they're mostly marketing themselves as a high strength and corrosion resistant coating for fasteners and materials used in the petrochemical markets, or for making sheet products like armor.

Interesting, but want to see more of their process before I get all excited. Independent testing results would be nice too.
 
Check out ConforMIS

KPMGVoice: The Great Rewrite - Forbes

New technonogy for 3d printing? How long till it hits the shops?
Joe

So currently where I work, they use 3D printing for some seriously advanced manufacture techniques and it is a big cornerstone of the company. ConforMIS Inc. uses these giant 3D printers that cost who-knows-what, to make molds of jigs they use for knee replacements. What they do is custom make a knee to be totally patient specific, and that means each jig set used for each knee is also a one-of-a-kind. They print out the jigs from plastic, one layer at a time, and a total set is completed in one machine in about 18hrs. They're essentially cutting guides for the surgeon to make consistent, precise cuts when implanting the knee system. They also are now attempting to use 3d metal printing printers to make the totally patient specific femoral caps, and that's just cool to watch. It uses a .01mm laser that travels back and forth at 40in/sec to melt the metal powder into a precise part, one layer at a time. It's a long process but the company's innovation is pretty unique. You should look them up sometime, but I'd say this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what companies with enough money will try to do with the new tech.
 
many times material cost is like $20/lb or more
.
total cost to manufacture a part additively can be vastly more expensive that subtractive or machining away material
.
beware the salesman selling you expensive items. like buying a Invar tape measure for $20,000 guaranteed to not expand and contract with temperature changes. trouble is everything else expands and contracts with temperature changes so experience shows the expensive invar tape measure is actually the worst tape measure to use as it changes the most compared to what items you measure as temperature changes. salesman selling $20,000 tape measure never said how it was the most expensive worst tape measure to use in the world. customer had to spend $20,000 and years to figure it out that he wasted his companies money and boss better not find out how he wasted his companies money
 
Very interesting. The layering makes it more effective against corrosion than traditional plating, which I understand to be just a single, homogeneous coating. It can also add toughness by prevent cracks from propagating between layers (Samurai sword analogy).

Cost and uniformity of plating thickness will probably dictate its application. The part still needs to start with some sort of form/substrate, e.g. machined or 3D printed part, I believe.

The parts shown in the video were round, which have traditionally been easier to electroplate due to uniform distance between the part surface and the anode (hard chrome). I'd be curious to know how well their technology works on prismatic parts with internal features.
 








 
Back
Top