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Metal finishing: With rising carbide prices, when cermet makes sense

As critical raw material access tightens, manufacturers are rethinking cutting tool usage. While essential, carbide is often unnecessary for finishing processes. Cermet -- a ceramic-metal composite -- offers an excellent alternative, delivering exceptional fracture and wear resistance for these specific machining stages.
Read the full article.

Full-color 3D-printing Design Guide from Xometry

With Xometry's PolyJet 3D-printing service, you can order full-color 3D prints easily. Their no-cost design guide will help you learn about different aspects of 3D printing colorful parts, how to create and add color to your models, and best practices to keep in mind when printing in full color. Learn how to take full advantage of the 600,000 unique colors available in this flexible additive process.
Get the Xometry guide.

Next-gen SLA materials rival traditional thermoplastics

Formlabs has announced two new SLA materials that bring 3D printing significantly closer to being a manufacturing method for end-use part production. Tough 1000 Resin and a significantly improved Tough 2000 Resin join Tough 1500 Resin, forming the new Tough Resin family. These resilient engineering materials stand up to harsh environments, impact, and repeated wear, all while delivering a dark, matte surface finish with crisp details when printed on Form 4 Series 3D printers.
Learn more.

Surface inspection: From Army depot to factory floor

Born from U.S. Army requirements for rotorcraft inspection, the GelSight Modulus 3D surface measurement system has surpassed 100 units sold to commercial and Department of Defense customers. The handheld, micron-scale tool with interchangeable probe tips delivers fast, high-res measurements in places traditional tools can't reach.
Read the full article.

What is Cold Metal Fusion?

Cold Metal Fusion is an open industry standard for sinter-based metal additive manufacturing. It combines polymer SLS design freedom with reliable debinding and sintering workflows, enabling complex geometries, lightweighting, lattice structures, conformal cooling channels, and high-precision metal parts with predictable shrink behavior. Now available from TriMech Group, this process offers a faster, cost-effective way to produce strong, high-performance metal parts.
Learn more from TriMech Group.

Metal 3D printing: EOS adds four new materials

Industrial 3D-printing supplier EOS has added four new metal additive manufacturing materials to its portfolio: an iron-nickel alloy that boasts stability under fluctuating temps, a nickel alloy with high strength and extreme corrosion resistance, a low-alloyed steel prized for its high toughness and strength, and an industrial-grade stainless steel. Each has been optimized for EOS Laser Powder Bed Fusion systems.
Get all the details.

New materials and finishes from Quickparts

Quickparts has introduced DuraKor, ThermaKor, and vapor smoothing to expand its production-capable materials and finishing portfolio. The new plastics provide polypropylene-like toughness, chemical resistance, and high-temperature stability, while vapor smoothing improves sealing and surface quality. Together, these capabilities help engineers validate designs, refine performance, and transition efficiently from prototypes to scalable manufacturing.
Learn more.

What's the latest in SLA 3D printing?

Learn about the latest offerings in SLA printing from 3D Systems, including the introduction of SLA 825 Dual, the company's most advanced large-frame Stereolithography printer. Other new products include ArrayCast investment casting software that allows users to effortlessly create customized casting trees (complete with configurable runners, sprues, and end effectors), Accura SbF (the latest SLA casting resin), and Accura Xtreme Black (which delivers low shrinkage, large, functional SLA prototype parts with sharp detail).
Learn about all the new 3D Systems products.

meviy cuts CNC milling lead times to just 4 days

meviy, the on-demand custom parts manufacturing service developed by MISUMI Group, has upgraded its Expedite+ service with improved lead times for CNC Milled parts. Customers can now have their parts shipped in as few as four days through meviy's fastest delivery option. The enhanced service helps manufacturers and engineers stay on schedule when projects are behind or production is interrupted. Supported materials include steels and aluminums. Check out their instant quoting too.
Learn more.

Top Tech Tip: How do you 3D print STL files?

Learn the basics of 3D printing STL files -- the files that serve as the digital foundation for 3D printing -- and a whole lot more from the experts at Xometry. These files have advantages, of course, but did you know they have disadvantages too? Also learn about STL tools and programs, and how to reduce file size or even repair a file you are having trouble with.
Read the Xometry article.

When metals can't survive: Machined ceramics as an alternative

Technical Ceramics are so hard and wear resistant that they cannot be machined with conventional tools -- but they can outlast and outperform other materials in demanding or harsh applications. INSACO's proprietary diamond grinding process and specialized techniques developed over many decades allow the company to produce and document parts to exacting specifications consistently. Learn all about the alternatives you have when metals just can't take it.
Read the INSACO article.

Metal 3D printing: Right at your desktop

From prototyping to tooling or batch production of end-use parts, the Studio System 2 from Desktop Metal brings metal 3D printing to any office, studio, or lab setting. This powder- and laser-free system consists of an easy-to-adopt two-step process: print using pre-bound metal rod feedstock and then sinter. It requires minimal training and operator intervention. Combined with next-gen Separable Supports and a software-controlled workflow, the Studio System makes metal 3D printing simpler than ever. This platform offers more materials than any other metal extrusion 3D-printing system on the market. They include Inconel 625, titanium (Ti64), copper, tool steels, and stainless steels.
View the video and learn more.

New lightweight compound for structural car parts

Following four years of collaboration with the University of Toronto, Axiom is proud to announce the creation of AX Gratek PP40 -- a groundbreaking lightweight, high-strength alternative to heavy glass-filled 40-60% PP components. This hybrid composite features graphene nanoplatelets with glass fibers. Patent pending, this material has achieved up to 20% improvement in tensile strength while achieving an impressive 18% weight reduction compared to commercial PPGF60% parts.
Learn more.

Print parts in M300 tool steel: Starter kit

Take your 3D printing to the next level with M300 Tool Steel Filamet™ -- a high-strength and wear-resistant material. Virtual Foundry has released a brand-new M300 Tool Steel Kit packed with everything you need to get started, including: 0.5-kg starter filament spool, Filawarmer, 1 kg of steel blend, 0.5 kg of sintering carbon, and an alumina crucible. From the company that brought us 3D-printable lunar regolith simulant.
Learn more, including print instructions.

New laser-weldable PPS plastic

Polyplastics has launched a laser weldable DURAFIDE^® PPS grade with high transmittance. DURAFIDE PPS 1120LW1 (tentative name) utilizes a unique transmittance improvement technology. Although PPS has traditionally been considered difficult to use for laser welding, this new material expands the possibilities for applying laser welding to parts that previously had limitations in terms of heat and chemical resistance. This material is so new you may want to talk to someone at the company.
Learn more.

MIT researchers make surfaces that are easier to cool under extreme heat

By Nancy W. Stauffer, MITEI

When an earthquake and tsunami struck Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011, knocking out emergency power supplies, crews sprayed seawater on the reactors to cool them -- to no avail.

One possible reason: Droplets can't land on surfaces that hot. Instead, they instantly begin to evaporate, forming a thin layer of vapor and then bouncing along it -- just as they would in a hot cooking pan.

Now, MIT researchers have come up with a way to cool hot surfaces more effectively by keeping droplets from bouncing. Their solution: Decorate the surface with tiny structures and then coat it with particles about 100 times smaller. Using that approach, they produced textured surfaces that could be heated to temperatures at least 100 deg C higher than smooth ones before droplets bounced. The findings are reported this week in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

"Our new understanding of the physics involved can help people design textured surfaces for enhanced cooling in many types of systems, improving both safety and performance," says Kripa Varanasi, the Doherty Associate Professor of Ocean Utilization in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering and the lead author of the study.

The goal for Varanasi and his co-authors, recent MIT PhD recipient Hyuk-Min Kwon and former MIT postdoc J.C. Bird, was to find a way to increase the temperature at which water droplets start bouncing. Past research indicated that rough materials would add more surface area to hold onto the droplets, making it harder for them to bounce. But the research team discovered that not just any rough surface will do.

Through systematic studies using well-defined surfaces, they found that installing microscale silicon posts on a silicon surface raised the temperature at which droplets transitioned from landing to bouncing. But it worked best when the posts were relatively diffuse. As the posts got closer together, the transition temperature gradually dropped until it was no higher than that of a smooth surface.

"That result was surprising," says Bird, who is now an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Boston University. "Common knowledge suggests that the closely spaced posts would provide greater surface area, so would hold onto the droplets to a higher temperature."

By analyzing the physics involved, the researchers concluded that closely spaced posts do provide more surface area to anchor the droplets, but they also keep the vapor that forms from flowing. Trapped by adjacent posts, the accumulating vapor layer under a droplet builds up pressure, pushing the droplet off. When the force of the vapor exceeds the attractive force of the surface, the droplet starts to float.

"Bringing the posts closer together increases surface interactions, but it also increases resistance to the vapor leaving," Varanasi says.

To decouple those two effects, the researchers coated the surface featuring spaced-out microscale posts with nanoscale particles. This "micro-nano" surface texture provides both the extensive surface area of the tiny particles and the wide spacing of the posts to let the vapor flow.

Experiments confirmed their approach. When they sprayed water on their micro-nano surfaces at 400 deg C -- the highest temperature their experimental setup could provide -- the droplets quickly wet the surfaces and boiled. Interestingly, under the same conditions, the droplets did not wet the surfaces of samples with either the microscale posts or the nanoscale texture, but did wet the surfaces of samples with both.

In addition to nuclear safety systems, this work has important implications for systems such as steam generators, industrial boilers, fire suppression, and fuel-injected engines, as well as for processes such as spray cooling of hot metal. One application now being considered by Varanasi and his colleagues is electronics cooling. "The heat fluxes in electronics cooling are skyrocketing," Varanasi says. It might be a job for efficient spray cooling -- "if we can figure out how to fit a system into the small space inside electronic devices."

The research was supported by a Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the MIT Energy Initiative, and the MIT-Deshpande Center.

Published November 2013

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