Some of you reading this may have heard of Stereo Lithography Process (SLA) machines or 3-D printers. These machines have been used for quite some time for making tangible prototype parts across all engineering fields in less than a day. They have proven to be invaluable for verifying design before it is sent out to be manufactured or made in-house because of the costly process of making molds for plastic injection molding machines, etc.

With 3-D printers/SLA Machines designers are able to buildup prototypes using CAD files sent directly to the printers. The CAD files tell a focused light beam to strike a pool of liquid epoxy. When the liquid epoxy is exposed to this light it is hardened.

By hardening one layer at a time on the surface of a vat of liquid plastic, a part is built vertically layer by layer.

Stratasys is the North American distributor for Arcam who has created one hell of a 3-D printer. The ARCAM EBM S400 uses a similar process as the one above, but the difference is that it creates parts out of metal. This machine takes CAD input and focuses an electron beam onto Titanium powder.

When the Titanium powder is exposed to the beam it melts down and hardens building up the part layer by layer.

The electron beam (EBM) fully melts the metal particles to produce a void-free part. The process occurs in a high vacuum, which ensures the part is completely solid, without imperfections caused by oxidation. The EBM process is ideal for applications where high strength or high temperatures are required.

Medical product manufacturers can benefit from the parts’ high flexural strength for bone implants requiring cycle life exceeding 10 million cycles (or movements). Automobile makers can build strong parts for high temperature testing, including under-the-hood applications. Aerospace engineers will be interested in the combination of a high strength yet light weight titanium part. And because the EBM process produces a homogenous solid, parts can be flight-certified.

Machines like this will revolutionize the design industry.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 6th, 2006 at 8:31 am and is filed under Bucho, Hardware, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.