http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=A10XEZvkgbY
FDM printing with steel and titanium.
What’s to stop us producing an open source version of this? Can electron beam metal depositors be purchased and clamped onto an existing motion system and fed GCode?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A10XEZvkgbY
Electron beam in this case seems to be some type of wire feed welding. All welders work by electrons arcing from the feed tip to the grounded working surface carrying molten metal along with the electrons. So yes if you found a wire feed welder with computer controled feed rate and attached the feed tip to a 3D motion system you could do this. Part of learning to weld is learning to build up surfaces. There are probably commercial welding robots that do this already. It was not obvious from the video why this was considered a breakthough technology.
Yes …this should close the loop for low cost and home manufacturing. So basically a manufacuring lab should be equipped with an RPM like a Makerbot or a Reprap or a Rapman or an UP 3D printer, and a 5 axis table top CNC machine, a form lab’s Form-1 Protyper, a laser/plasma cutter and this metal FDM machine which is also desktop sized. And with all these one can build anything in this world. I am just waiting for a desktop sized VLSI fab lab and a PCB making machine (not much about PCB)…
Love this stuff!
Based on modified wire-feed welding equipment?
So many issues to gloss over. Better to come at it from the other end. Is there any metal part that could pass quality control when made using additive manufactureing? I wouldn’t trust a bolt in tension or in shear made with a printer. So that leaves compression. There are not too many uses of metal in compression only. That is a little harsh. Each layer could be considered as a wire lightly attached to neighboring wires so you could use it in some tension and shear applications and of course as art work with no mechanical forces involved.