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optimised. First a vacuum is created to remove all the air from the build chamber and material hopper. Then the chamber is refilled with high purity Argon. During the build process the atmosphere is always maintained at below 1000ppm oxygen but normally runs much lower at around 50ppm or below. Gas consumption by MTT’s equipment is very low compared to other AM systems, at around 30-50 litres per hour for the SLM250 and SLM125.
Processing parameters
Development work being carried out at various universities on the design and production of heat exchangers demonstrates the elaborate geometries the SLM process is capable of building. The Welding Institute in Sheffield (TWI) was approached by Rolls Royce to develop a heat exchanger using SLM for an aerospace application. TWI experimented using different geometries and created highly efficient heat exchangers that have the potential to take up significantly less space whilst still maintaining performance. The parts were built in Titanium Al6 V4 using MTT’s SLM250 system with TWI developing new processing parameters specifically for the application
There are limitations to metal AM processes. Clearly
they are not suited to building large areas of dense material. Processes such as SLM work best for producing small, complex geometries and structures such as heat exchangers and medical implants; hidden internal features such as conformal cooling channels and for the production of parts in noble materials and alloys which are difficult to machine and hazardous to cast. Today metal AM processes are still very applications
based. But I predict the future of the technology will be driven by designers themselves as they come to understand its advantages as well as its limitations, and start to design parts with AM in mind as the manufacturing methodology. These systems are the machine tools of the future and in terms of potential market place it’s very much a global one. Wherever a machine tool is deployed today represents a potential opportunity for AM to deliver enhanced performance through increased design freedom. l
Enter 58 or ✔ at
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Robin Weston is Group Marketing Manager, MTT Technologies Group, Stone, Staffordshire, UK.
www.mtt-group.com
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