Additive Industries has been flying under the radar doing top-secret R&D for the last few years, and ever since they made a tantalizing declaration about a fantastic new metal 3D printer at last year’s Euromold I’ve been waiting to see what they’ve been up to. So, where’s the machine?
On the first day of RAPID 2015, Additive Industries finally revealed the name and confirmed the launch date of its new industrial AM system. It’s called the MetalFAB1 and it is launching in Q4 of 2015.
The Netherlands-based Additive Industries is on a mission to transport 3D metal printing away from labs and prototyping, focusing instead on fabricating ready-made objects and components on the factory floor. They reveal a few more aspects of their “fully integrated” plan in the following video:“Our system will bring a substantial improvement in reproducibility, productivity and flexibility as a result of our quest to design an industrial grade metal printing process,” says Daan Kersten, CEO of Additive Industries.
According to a press release from the company, “the high reproducibility of MetalFAB1 takes its inspiration from the semiconductor industry. Stability is achieved by robust machine design in combination with a continuous calibration strategy. Additive Industries believes in an integrated process flow for industrial additive manufacturing, therefore multiple process steps are incorporated in one machine for the first time. Fully automated handling connects all process steps, reduces manual labor, and improves product consistency and quality, while also increasing operator safety. The modular architecture offers maximum flexibility, allowing the user to start with a basic machine configuration with the possibility to enlarge the scope of the process, enabling substantially increased productivity. Moreover, modules can be added to allow the use of multiple materials in one machine without having to clean the powder system and running the risk of cross-contamination.”
Metal AM users are keen to reduce the amount of manual labor required to fabricate objects from metal, and a system like the MetalFAB1 has the potential to do just that. As with all things in AM, however, we will have to wait and see for ourselves.
Source: Additive Industries