LMD: A New, Less Wasteful Metal 3D Printing Technique
Metal 3D printing is currently dominated by powder-based techniques like SLM (Selective Laser Melting). These processes yield incredibly precise parts, but the build times are slow. Furthermore, dealing with the powder increases manufacturing complexity: Whenever the powder is transported, loaded in...
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Super cool but $150,000k USD...
Holy fuck, 150 million?
I doubt it'll ever be more efficient to buy than specialized machines at that price.
$150,000 thousand. Still expensive none the less
You just called it 150 million again because what you typed reads as “150 thousand thousand”
You're right. Not sure why I wrote it that way
Most cheap-o grade filament metal 3d printers are 10k and up, there really is no real hobbyist pricepoint for metal 3d printing. The industrial level metal 3d printers were already at 100k to million per machine. This is obviously targetting things like automotive and aerospace industry, that can easily pay those prices, not consumers. Maybe if we get more Wire DED metal 3d printers the cost might go down, or it won't.
On top of the purchase price, I'm guessing that having something like this running in your home fab will require more safety equipment than a uv shroud and an air mover to keep things safe/non-deadly.
Yeah, like the printers using metal powder need pretty much a hazmat gear to operate.
This was also one of my concerns with the hype surrounding low cost SLS printers like Micronics, especially if they weren't super well designed. The powder is incredibly dangerous to inhale so I wouldn't want a home hobbyist buying that type of machine without realizing how harmful it could be. My understanding is even commercial SLS machines like HP's MJF and FormLab's Fuse need substantial ventilation (HEPA filters, full room ventilation, etc.) in order to be operated safely.
Metal is of course even worse. It has all the same respiratory hazards (the fine particles will likely cause all sorts of long-term lung damage) but it also presents a massive fire and explosion risk.
I can't see these technologies making it into the home hobbyist sphere anytime soon as a result, unfortunately.
I was hoping this one might have been around 15-20k but was totally wrong. Hopefully someday they'll be cheap enough for the everyday household
I use a 15 year old, quarter million dollar 3d scanner at work. It's on par with what you can get for about 5 to 8k these days.
Haha that's wild. Hopefully that means this printer will be obtainable by the normal person in about 10years
About 15 years ago I looked at 3d printers for an engineering team. Between $20,000 and $50,000 range. The best option was a powder based system. Parts were fragile, print time was slow, clean up was a pain.
One of our customers was using an SLA system...parts were fragile, print time was slow...clean up was a pain.
Now I have a 3d filament printer in my shop that cost me less than $1,000, and doesn't have any of those issues. Of course it's not mounted on a robotic arm.
Hopefully the normal consumer will have cheap access like that to metal printers in 10years or less