Designfax weekly eMagazine

Subscribe Today!

Archives

View Archives

Partners

Manufacturing Center
Product Spotlight

Modern Applications News
Metalworking Ideas For
Today's Job Shops

Tooling and Production
Strategies for large
metalworking plants

Sciaky's large-scale industrial metal 3D-printing tech deposited over 12,000 lb of titanium in 2020

Sciaky's one-of-a-kind Electron Beam Additive Manufacturing (EBAM^®) technology deposited more than 12,000 lb of titanium in 2020. Despite the global COVID-19 pandemic, Sciaky's high deposition rate (HDR) metal 3D-printing solution surpassed previous titanium deposition calendar year marks. The EBAM technology is capable of producing parts ranging from 8 in. to a whopping 19 ft in length.

EBAM is also the fastest solution in the metal additive manufacturing market, with gross deposition rates up to 25 lb of metal per hour.

"Sciaky's EBAM is the most mature industrial additive manufacturing process in the industry for depositing titanium," said Scott Phillips, president and CEO of Sciaky. "We recognize that there are many options in the market today for large-format metal 3D-printing solutions, but we are proud of being a trusted provider since 2009."

Really big parts! A Lockheed Martin engineer inspects one of the 3D-printed dome prototypes at the company's space facility in Denver back in 2018. The final dome measured 46 in. in diameter -- large enough to fit 74.4 gal of liquid. This example was chosen to show the scale of the output and what the machine looks like.

 

 

 

 

The vast majority of the 3D-printed titanium parts that were produced using EBAM last year were made for field-certified aerospace and defense applications, as well as a wide range of 3D-printed titanium prototypes for research and development (R&D) applications.

Sciaky's EBAM metal 3D-printing solution is a wire-based directed energy deposition (DED) process. Wire feedstock is available in titanium, tantalum, tungsten, Inconel, niobium, nickel-copper/copper-nickel, aluminum, molybdenum, zircalloy, and stainless steel. In many cases, wire feedstock is 50% cheaper (or more) than powder feedstock. In addition, wire feedstock is safer and easier to store than powder feedstock (the powder used in titanium is known to be highly flammable).

EBAM brings quality and control together with IRISS^®, its Interlayer Real-time Imaging and Sensing System, which is the only real-time adaptive control system in the metal 3D-printing market that can sense and digitally self-adjust metal deposition with precision and repeatability. This innovative closed-loop control is the primary reason that Sciaky's EBAM 3D-printing process delivers consistent part geometry, mechanical properties, microstructure, and metal chemistry from the first part to the last.

Learn more about EBAM here.

Source: Sciaky

Published February 2021

Rate this article