Computer Solutions
Boom time for additive manufacturing
4 There are almost as many different additive manufacturing techniques as there are materials, so outsourcing is the watchword. Boris Sedacca reports on recent developments.
4 Il existe presque autant de techniques de transformation additive différentes qu’il existe de matériaux, l’externalisation est le mot d’ordre. Boris Sedacca retrace les développements récents.
4 Es gibt fast so viele verschiedene Techniken des Additive Manufacturings wie es Materialien gibt. Daher ist Outsourcing das Stichwort. Boris Sedacca berichtet über die neuesten Entwicklungen.
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n January 2014 the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced £60 million of new funding for the development of new high-tech aerospace technology at the
Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) in Coventry. The funding will also support the creation of a national centre for additive manufacturing or 3D printing technology to develop new products for aero-engines and aircraft landing gears, as well as automotive and medical devices. Additive manufacturing goes back a couple
of decades. Pera Technology pioneered one additive manufacturing method that involved a bath full of thermosetting resin where a laser adds layer by layer in two dimensions on a surface. “We have been involved with 3D printing
for over 25 years now, mainly in the areas of rapid prototyping using laser cured thermosetting. In the early days, you had large baths of thermosetting resins cured by laser with your solid structure growing out of this bath,” recalls Paul Tranter, chief executive of Pera Technology. “Since that time, we have been involved with a number additive manufacturing processes, latterly with the development of a process that creates 3D circuit boards using an additive copper process which has been commercialised over in the US.”
Traditionally, a substrate with a copper film bonded to the top was etched or machined to reveal a track. By using additive methods, Pera claims it can reduce copper waste by about 70 per cent by pre-treating the polymer film in those areas where the tracks need to appear. This gives about 90 per cent of the conductivity of bulk copper, so thicker tracks are needed. Track width is a barrier so part of the reason for doing surface treatment of polymer film is to encourage liquid surface tension in a similar way that waxing a car causes a beading effect for water. “We were effectively entering the surface of
the polymer film in order to get surface tension so that the ink droplets would flow to the desired areas, so we are no longer restricted by droplet size in terms of copper track width,” Tranter explains. “We can deposit say a 0.5 micron diameter
copper droplet but with very small droplets the physics start falling to pieces, which means drops cannot be placed accurately or break up into smaller drops. What we were able to do was to put effectively a large drop over the area that we treated and then it would selectively flow according to its surface tension.” Pera has done a lot of 3D design and rapid
prototyping in the past to test new products including steering wheels for Formula 1 cars. Every day, there is a new material that can be used for additive manufacturing and there is a trend from mass production towards rapid customisation. This means the ability to rapidly reconfigure a base product according to customer specifications without making the product cost itself too prohibitive. Pera has observed this trend in the market from consumer goods to specially engineered products – customers are willing to pay a small premium for something that is bespoke or customised. The company still has some 3D printing
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www.engineerlive.com Fig. 1. The design of a nebuliser helped to develop a 3D droplet printing technology.
capability in house but this is not a core competence of the business any more, whereas 10 years ago, it was very much a key part of the business. Working with German and Dutch partners
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