Called the Metal Pack, it is aimed at the company’s Epsilon Series 3D printers (right).
“This upgrade opens up a new range of applications, especially for spare parts, functional prototyping and tooling, and is mainly aimed at the pharmaceutical, food, automotive, aerospace and manufacturing sectors,” according to BCN3D. “The parts produced by this process have practically identical behaviour to those produced by metal injection moulding or CNC and offer an office-friendly solution with more design freedom.”
Modified printers do not deposit solid metal, but polymers infused with a high proportion of stainless steel powder.
In this case the materials are Ultrafuse 316L and Ultrafuse 17-4 PH from Forward AM, along with replacement hot-ends that can handle them. The Ultrafuse range was developed by Forward AM owner BASF, based on its knowledge of metal injection moulding. They result in 316L and 17-4 grade stainless steel objects respectively.
After printing, the object needs to be ‘de-bindered’ – a catalytic (in this case) process that removes the polymer – and then sintered into a single metal object by heating close to the metal’s melting point.
De-bindering and sintering have to be done by third-parties in Forward AM’s authorised supplier network. The procedures result in shrinkage and some distortion, some of which can be accommodated by re-sizing and pre-distorting the 3d model before printing.
Metal Pack will include a 3kg spool of 316L, a 3kg spool of 17-4PH two hot-ends and bed adhesive – the latter is Magigoo Pro Metal, designed specifically for Ultrafuse 316L but also working with 17-4 PH.
It is scheduled to be available in January 2022, and a matching add-on for the company’s Stratos slicing software is in the pipeline.
It will be on-show at Formnext in Frankfurt next week, on stand 12.1 B41.