(Much) faster metal 3D Printing and prototyping soon a reality

[Eskil]

SOURCE: 100x faster, 10x cheaper: 3D metal printing is about to go mainstream

For those of you into product development and rapid prototyping, you might find this very interesting. From the article;

"Desktop Metal – remember the name. This Massachussetts company is preparing to turn manufacturing on its head, with a 3D metal printing system that's so much faster, safer and cheaper than existing systems that it's going to compete with traditional mass manufacturing processes.
...
The hype is real. And if Desktop Metal delivers on its promises – that it can make reliable metal printing up to 100 times faster, with 10 times cheaper initial costs and 20 times cheaper materials costs than existing laser technologies, using a much wider range of alloys – these machines might be the tipping point for large scale 3D manufacturing.

The company is putting forward two systems: a studio system aimed at rapid, cheap metal prototyping for engineering groups, and a production system for mass manufacture."

Up until now, metal 3D printing has been expensive and more complicated than plastic printing - but if this is as good as it sounds, I can definitely see a lot of potential

 

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[AllenCrawley]

Wow. Hadn't heard of 3D metal printing. After reading the article and watching a few of the Destop Metal videos, I thought of several products we could add to our line providing it was profitably feasible. Lots of potential and opportunities here.

 

[garyjsmith]

Awesome! I would love to have an SLS (and SLA, because resolution).

 

[workinprogress]

This looks amazing, thanks for sharing! An idea: manufacturing copies of car parts and selling them for cheaper then the manufacturer?

Just a random idea off the top of my head. Looks the like the manufacturing aspect will go live in 2018.

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[Eskil]

This looks amazing, thanks for sharing! An idea: manufacturing copies of car parts and selling them for cheaper then the manufacturer?
Just a random idea off the top of my head. Looks the like the manufacturing aspect will go live in 2018.

I believe that even with this new advancement in metal printing, parts produced will still not be suitable for hard physical stress, tension, pressure, and so forth. Traditionally molded, shaped, or forged metal will still have a way higher endurance and breaking point than the more brittle particle-based 3d printed counterparts. But with that being said - there are still endless applications where metal parts are needed and where you don't need to worry about high endurance. And as metal printing (and material) technology gets gradually better, some day I think we will see 3d printed parts that can hold up to their traditionally made counterparts.

 

[Iammelissamoore]

This is phenomenal, specifically for producing prototypes and the like. While indeed it may not initially be of hardened, structured materials, it's nice headway for the possibilities of creation. I can well imagine with the 3D Printer in general, a lot of productocracies are being birthed, along the lines of expanding the possibilities of such printer; specifically at a time where we are taking into our hands, the opportunities to create our items from beginning to end.