Metal jetting technology makes European debut

Developed by Israeli firm Xjet, the system is based on the company’s so-called NanoParticle Jetting technology, which uses ink jetting to produce complex metal parts from a suspension of nanoscale particles.

The firm claims that the system represents a fundamental breakthrough in additive manufacturing and produced higher quality, more detailed parts than is possible with existing metal additive techniques - most of which build parts from powdered metal.

The technology - which was demonstrated to the US market at the Rapid show earlier this year - uses solid metal nanoparticles suspended in liquid “ink” in sealed cartridges.

During the printing process, ultra-fine layers of droplets of this ink – which also contains support structure nanoparticles - are deposited onto the build-tray, where extremely high temperatures cause the liquid ‘jacket’ around the metal nanoparticles to evaporate. After this a sintering process is carried out to fuse the metal particles together.