A metal 3D printing technology costing just a fraction of the price of existing additive manufacturing machines could be launched next year.
London-based company IT IS 3D is working with researchers at Cranfield University to develop the low-cost metal 3D printing system, based on wire deposition technology.
Existing additive manufacturing machines cost between £200,000 and £1m. While still in licencing negotiations with the university, IT IS 3D hopes to launch the technology by the end of 2016, for prices starting at under £50,000.
That would make the technology accessible to far more companies around the world, according to Martin Stevens, CEO of IT IS 3D. “We hope to take this sophisticated technology and turn it into something that is affordable to a large range of companies, to provide them with a means of prototyping or creating low volume, special purpose parts, using metal 3D printing,” he said.
The wire deposition process, also known as wire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM), uses a robot to deposit layers of molten metal from a wire through a welding head onto a surface. The technique, developed at Cranfield University, is being explored by the aerospace and defence industries as it is capable of producing large components much more rapidly than processes such as powder and laser deposition.
However, the technique typically involves the use of expensive robots such as those used in the automotive industry, and costly welding generators, said Stevens.
“We and Cranfield University plan to look at much lower cost, probably cartesian [linear] robots,” he said. “When used alongside lower cost welding systems – and we’re investigating those at the moment to see which can produce the best results – we believe we can get the cost down to a level that no other technology can reach at the moment.”
The company won a place to showcase its 3D metal printing technology at the Innovate 2015 show in London earlier this month.
..so how is this different to Sciaky’s commercial “Electron Beam Additive Manufacturing” (EBAM – Google it)? That is a wire fed deposition process (no laser or powders) which uses a closed loop CNC control system (5-6 axis?) to freeform build large metal parts. I’m probably missing something – maybe it’s just not low cost?
I read this as being a MIG welder fitted to the support frame of a conventional 3D plastic printer. This would certainly be a fairly low cost option. I am not sure how they will deal with the start/stop points of the welds from a quality/accuracy viewpoint.
Best regards
Roger
I agree with Roger. Hardly anything new just a unique combination of methodologies. What about machining of the final product? Unless the wire is very fine it will not be accurate, and even then needing a lot of bespoke cleaning up.
The problem as I see it will be ensuring consistency and homogenuity of the material. There is going to be a consistent cooling interface between the metal deposited earlier and the new layer. This problem has also shown up in plastic 3d printing, and although not insurmountable you have to ask why this is being considered when we have existing ways of making these components. If the answer is “it is cheaper this way” what is being sacrificed to save money? Another example of a not very clever idea looking for an application.
I believe it has an old history; of people depositing weld material (buttering?) to repair or build up material.
It has good resource efficiency (with no recycling in the process). The use of a planar approach should simplify and make affordable (and accessible) the machinery/equipment. The downsides are related to the high thermal inputs and poor thermal management (which leads to residual stress build ups as dimensions increase – and possibly “hot tearing”). The surface finish issue, when it is an issue, is common to most rapid protoyping processes that are fusion based (miniature castings) — though there are cases when it is important – and better ways of surface machining are required (especially if there are internal surfaces); I would like to hope that Cranfield are, too, addressing this.
Limitations include, too, the need for supports if there are any unsupported spans of material.
I do think that this is a good approach by enabling people to make shapes without expensive waste of material and complex geometries without the need for special dies. This is a good trend in making rapid manufacturing affordable (rather than high value) for UK SMEs; though there are research challenges..