I'ts neat, but it's not that new and it has pretty limited use cases due to the poor surface quality, which albeit has improved from earlier wire-feed systems.<p>Norsk Titanium has been doing wire-feed 3D printing for many years, and is even delivering FAA certified parts made using a similar wire-feed deposition system and plasma arc as the power source. Looks like the laser gives you a higher resolution surface finish, but all those parts are going to still need machining on most of their critical surfaces for real world use anyway. You cannot tolerate a surface finish like that on a fatigue critical part. You also can't do dye penetrant or mag particle inspection on a surface like that without getting all kinds of spurious indications. Once you have the part clamped and indexed in the CNC to machine the bores and mounting features you might as well skim the whole thing.<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/norsk-titanium-components-as_norsk-titaniums-revolutionary-rapid-plasma-activity-6854457854934548480-wYWA" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/posts/norsk-titanium-components-as_...</a><p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/11/15256008/3d-printed-titanium-parts-boeing-dreamliner-787" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/11/15256008/3d-printed-titan...</a><p>The carrot is that you get near-forging strength levels without having to buy a very expensive, very very long-lead closed-die titanium forging, or having buy an pretty expensive rectangular forged rectangular block of titanium and machining 90% of it away.<p>BTW that 3D printed lobed exhaust noise supressor is cute and all but that thing would fall to bits in hours if installed on a real jet aircraft.
It's neat, but there aren't answers to many important questions:<p>- How fast is this process? All videos are sped up.<p>- Is the resulting material close to isotropic, or is the layer to layer bond weaker than the longitudinal bond. That's the usual weak point of 3D printing. Heating up the previously laid down area with lasers is a good idea, because it gets you away from trying to weld a hot thing to a cold thing. That never gets a really good bond.<p>- How much laser power does this take? They say "small" lasers, but don't give the power level. Probably over 100 watts each on stainless steel.<p>The interviewer doesn't seem to know enough about metalworking to answer the right questions.<p>A modest sized machine for this would be useful. Would have liked to have had one in the TechShop days.
It makes zero sense to do this for metal but then have to remachine the result for precision or finish.
Their "reckoning that it's cheaper" seems highly inconsistent with the cost of most billets and the speed of most VMC/HMC/etc<p>They do offer an integration kit.
<a href="https://meltio3d.com/metal-3d-printers/meltio-engine-integration-kit-vertical-machining-centers/" rel="nofollow">https://meltio3d.com/metal-3d-printers/meltio-engine-integra...</a><p>But the print times listed here are totally unimpressive. Take the turbine blade.<p>6 hours 16 minutes for that is nutso.<p>Here's one being machined:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6OFvkDfIvUw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6OFvkDfIvUw</a><p>This is common speed.
See
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oCqTEWknC40" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oCqTEWknC40</a> for another example.<p>The end result of the printed turbine blade is worse than a roughing bit.
Which, as you can see here:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4qjHWeznTKc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4qjHWeznTKc</a><p>Can do it much faster.<p>If you want mirror finish, it's a bit slower. Still not 6 hours.<p>See <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5yCRXcIGSs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5yCRXcIGSs</a><p>That's the <i>best</i> case - the other models timings are even worse.<p>No commercial machine shop should could afford these timings - they'd go out of business instantly.<p>Someone making their own stuff (IE in-house machine shop) maybe.<p>Also, the automation is hugely lacking.<p>The integration kit/etc looks like it would block any useful automatic loading/unloading.<p>This might be a useful technology someday, but as long as billets are cheap and machines are fast, this would have to be very cheap and very fast to be useful.<p>But it's not - it's 230k for the m600, and 150k for the m450.<p>You can get a fine 5 axis VMC for that pricing.
If this process can be used on aerospace grade aluminum lithium alloys, they can print isogrids onto any surface without throwing away 50% of the material.
This is neat, but the technology itself isn't "new": the basic idea has been around for decades, and I've seen videos from companies demonstrating this at trade shows for a while as well. This is also how Firefly Aerospace 3d-prints their rockets.
RepRappers originally put their early filament onto empty welding wire spools.<p>Now we are loading welding wire spools onto 3D printers.<p>Everything has come full circle.
There are plenty of use cases for this type of manufacturing.While the surface quality is rough, it will print directly onto high finished sections
and then create impossible to machine or cast geometries. Unfortunately parts are likely to be heavy as well as rough, so its not going to be much use in airospace.....at least for flying parts, but for wild wierd and wonderfull jigs, to then build production parts on, it could be the cats meow.
Printing with Metal Paste Deposition:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42908858">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42908858</a>
Why does the metal move from the wire to the work? Surface tension? Gravity? Ionic attraction?<p>And speaking of ionic attraction, how feasible would an ionic deposition version of this be?<p>Like electroplating but selective.
(downvote this comment, unrelated to article)<p>What a horrible website. Menu-banner floating near the top, bisecting the text, and the undismissable cookie banner taking up almost 100 pixels. It was a genuine chore to read and scroll.
Seems like a more costly and complicated version of Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM). What's the benefit of using lasers vs. simple electrical current?