HP’s Metal Jet has undergone significant refinement in the years since it was first unveiled in 2018. Now, by incorporating nearly the whole Binder Jetting workflow in one solution, HP hopes that the Metal Jet S100 – commercially launched at IMTS 2022 and showcased at Formnext 2022 – will tempt the wider manufacturing community into the world of AM. As Binder Jetting’s evolution moves from the intricacies of process optimisation to real application development and growth, Emily-Jo Hopson-VandenBos reports on a recent visit to HP’s Barcelona 3D Printing campus and the company’s progress and growing momentum since 2018.
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Founded as a press and sinter PM parts maker, Denmark’s Sintex has proactivity in its DNA. Having establishing itself in this field, the company initially expanded into Metal Injection Molding in order to meet customer demand for more complex geometries. In recent years, to be able to meet the need for mass customisation, it has explored metal Binder Jetting. In addition, custom alloys have been optimised for applications that require excellent corrosion resistance. Peter Kjeldsteen, Peter Valler and Poul Søgaard offer insight into the history and future of innovation within the company.
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Tritone’s MoldJet is unique as an Additive Manufacturing process – not Binder Jetting, Material Extrusion, nor Material Jetting, the MoldJet process involves a number of steps that share features with common sinter-based AM technologies, but don’t quite fall under their definitions. But this isn’t simply a novel fringe technology: Tritone’s founders have drawn on extensive experience within Israel’s 2D and 3D printing ecosystem to build a robust AM platform that is very simple, yet highly sophisticated. Joseph Kowen visited Tritone and here reports on the MoldJet process and its potential applications.
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Since the very first PM Titanium conference in Brisbane, Australia, in 2011, the PMTi series has been the essential meeting point where technical and commercial advances in the powder-based production of titanium parts are discussed. Encompassing production technologies from Metal Injection Molding to Additive Manufacturing, this year’s event was no different. As Dr Thomas Ebel reports, the technologies involved have moved significantly towards production readiness, but with the ever-present playoff of non-negotiable performance goals against the drive to reduce cost.
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Metal Injection Moulding is one of the most capable manufacturing processes for small precision components, yet it is also one of the least known. MIM parts are everywhere, from smartphones to watches, cars to aircraft – but these examples are rarely noticed by those outside of the industry. Here, we present the fourteen award-winning MIM parts from the Metal Powder Industries Federation’s 2022 Powder Metallurgy Design Excellence Awards. These examples offer an insight into the technology, as well as the opportunity for product designers and engineers to consider how they might use MIM in their own projects.
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Binder Jetting (BJT) is never far from the headlines in the worlds of Powder Metallurgy and Additive Manufacturing, but, whilst there has been a lot of emphasis on Binder Jetting’s build process, the crucial sintering stage has received less attention. Can we really go along with the assumption that it’s ‘just like sintering for Metal Injection Moulding’? Here, Markus Schneider and colleagues from GKN Sinter Metals Engineering GmbH, GKN Additive and Hoeganaes Corporation bring together their deep expertise in sintering to reveal just how differently metal BJT parts perform, and what implications there are for part design and future process optimisation.
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The hardmetals industry is well used to making high-performance components from metallic powders. Today it is an industry with global sales in excess of $15 billion and applications that range from cutting tool inserts to components for oil & gas, construction and beyond. The processing of hardmetals, otherwise known as cemented carbides, by Additive Manufacturing has inevitably become an area of intense activity, building, in part, on expertise from the industry’s use of MIM to deliver greater design complexity. Bernard North reports on innovations in the sinter-based AM of hardmetals presented at this year’s Plansee Seminar.
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After a four-year interruption due to COVID-19, Ceramitec, the leading trade
fair for the ceramics industry, reopened its doors at Messe München, Germany,
from June 21–24, 2022. Whilst noticeably smaller than in previous years, and
with significant gaps in the floor plan from the industrial ceramics sector, the
event appears to have been positive for the technical ceramics community.
Dr Georg Schlieper visited the exhibition for PIM International and reports
on activities of interest to users of Ceramic Injection Moulding and ceramic
Additive Manufacturing technologies.
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There can be few people in Europe’s MIM industry, if not further afield, who are unaware of Prof Dr Frank Petzoldt’s contribution to the development and promotion of the technology over more than three decades. Following his recent retirement from the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials IFAM, Bremen, Germany, Dr Petzoldt spoke with Dr Georg Schlieper about the past, present and future of MIM technology and shares his insight into the industry in both Europe and worldwide.
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As metal Binder Jetting (BJT) transitions from a technology for the future to a technology for now – and one that is increasingly being installed at Metal Injection Moulding producers around the world – one of the basics of the process that we can no longer avoid getting to grips with is saturation. In this article, longtime metal Binder Jetting expert Dan Brunermer, from technology consultancy B-jetting LLC, explains saturation and how to measure it, considers voxels and DPI, and finally presents control options and how choices in controls affect saturation.
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