Greyscale adjustments optimise 3D printed parts

Dubbed high speed sintering (HSS), the process has the potential to produce parts at a rate that could challenge a substantial portion of the injection moulding market.

HSS uses an inkjet and infrared lamps instead of a laser and an advanced optics system to help form 3D printed parts.

‘Its like other 3D printing approaches whereby where we design a part and slice it into lots of discrete layers,’ explained HSS pioneer Neil Hopkinson, a Professor of Manufacturing Engineering at Sheffield University.

Each layer of the 3D CAD design is then uploaded onto an HSS machine, which deposits a layer of engineering grade powder approximately 100 microns thick onto the machine’s part bed.

Hopkinson said: ‘We then print ink onto that powder and that ink is specially designed so that it absorbs infrared energy.

‘We then irradiate the bed surface with IR energy, [which] is particularly suited to be absorbed by the ink that we print but not by the powder that the ink is printed on.