Cooksongold and 3D LAB bring compact precious metal powder atomizer to market

After an exhibition season that has seen Cooksongold increase its presence in the 3D printing industry, the UK’s largest jewelry maker and precious metals processor has announced a new collaboration. Headquartered in Warsaw, Poland, 3D LAB is an official 3D Systems reseller, service bureau and manufacturer of atomization technology. Cooksongold is partnering with 3D LAB […]

3D Printing News Briefs: October 18, 2019

The stories we’re sharing in today’s 3D Printing News Briefs run the gamut from materials to new printers. Altair has launched its new industrial design solution, and Remet opened a metal 3D printing lab in Poland. Innofil3D is sharing lots of material news, and Equispheres has released the test results for a unique 3D printing powder. Finally, Hackaday published a micro 3D printer project.

Altair Launches New Industrial Design and Rendering Solution

The “Geko Ring Collection,” jewelry by Luca Palmini, designed and rendered with Inspire Studio. Image courtesy of Luca Palmini.

Global technology company Altair has launched Inspire Studio, its new 3D design and rendering solution, to help architects, designers, and digital artists create, evaluate, and visualize designs. The solution builds on the functions of Altair Evolve, and includes 3D rendering and animation software Inspire Render, which helps users rapidly generate photorealistic product renderings and animations. Both Inspire Studio and Inspire Render run on MacOS and Windows, and help designers open up their creativity to go beyond traditional CAID tools. The solutions will be introduced next month during a one-day launch event in Italy, and you can also get a free ticket to formnext 2019, where you can learn more about Inspire Studio and Inspire Render at Altair’s booth E11, hall 11.1.

“We are very pleased with these two new solutions for the global industrial design community. Inspire Studio builds on our previous industrial design tool, Evolve, while going beyond Evolve’s capabilities. Inspire Studio will enhance designers’ creativity by letting them drive their designs. It offers an intuitive user interface and a powerful construction history, allowing them to quickly create and explore multiple iterations of their design. Relying on the same modern user experience with powerful interactive, full progressive and raytracing rendering engine, Inspire Render will help designers quickly run photorealistic renderings and walkthrough animations on GPUs and CPUs,” said James Dagg, CTO at Altair.

3D Design and Rendering Software | Altair Inspire Studio

Remet Opens Modern Metal 3D Printing Laboratory

Polish steel structures manufacturer for the oil and gs mining industry, Remet, has launched a metal 3D printing laboratory equipped with a range of high quality machines and devices. The first of these is the DMP Flex 350 by 3D Systems, followed by 3D Systems’ Figure 4, the office-friendly metallic powder atomizer ATO Lab, and plenty of other specialized research equipment. Remet completed the project together with 3D Lab, a top Polish industrial 3D printer distributor and manufacturer of the ATO Lab.

The ATO Lab metal atomizer, which enables testing and fabrication of many powdered metal alloys, was the starting point for this unique laboratory. A new branch of the enterprise, called Remet Metal Labs, is where the company will work on comprehensive additive manufacturing and industrial applications projects. Its goal is to create highly flexible conditions for creating prototypes in the powder production field, and automotive, aviation, and space industry customers are invited to work with Remet to take advantage of the lab. 3D Lab and Remet will present their solutions together at formnext in Frankfurt next month.

Innofil3D Materials and Design Rules Video

This week, Innofil3D, and its parent company BASF, have a lot of news to share. First up, Ultrafuse BVOH, its water-soluble support filament, is now available for purchase, along with its new Ultrafuse 316L metal filament. Designed for easy FFF 3D printing, this is the company’s first metal material – 80% stainless steel with a 20% polymer content.

For users interested in 3D printing their Innofil3D PRO1 filament on a Raise3D printer, you can now join the Raise3D Open Filament Program to take advantage of optimized settings and print profiles. This new program is a collaboration between Raise3D and filament manufacturers, like Innofil3D, to find the top-performing materials for its 3D printers. Finally, Innofil3D has released its second video tutorial for design rules and principles of FFF 3D printing. Check out the video below, and be sure to visit BASF at its large K-Fair exhibit in Hall 5, C21/D21.

Equispheres Releases Test Results for Unique AM Powder

Materials science technology company Equispheres has released the results from its first powder testing phase, completed by a facility that certifies AM materials for applications in aerospace and defense. The results have confirmed that the powder has exceeded expectations, allowing for a 20-30% increase in mechanical performance and a 50% increase in production speeds. In light of this news, Equispheres is launching new equity financing in order to, as the company wrote in a press release, “grow and unlock the vast potential of Additive Manufacturing.”

“The unique properties of our powder, including the high sphericity, narrow particle size distribution and low surface area results in significantly increased packing density.  This allows an increase of powder layer thickness by a factor of 2 which significantly increases build speed. Most importantly, this boost to build speed does not come with a mechanical performance penalty.  Instead, the uniform nature of our powder ensures that parts are produced with reliable and consistent mechanical properties.  The minimal variance in our performance results provides design engineers the statistical confidence to produce stronger, lighter parts,” said Equispheres’ CTO, Dr Martin Conlon.

Hackaday Project: Micro Deltesian 3D Printer

A new Hackaday project by architect Ekaggrat Singh Kalsi was just published – a micro Deltesian 3D printer, which he says offers a quality that’s on par with any Cartesian 3D printer. The printer has a solid aluminum frame, with a standard slider Y axis and a Delta mechanism for the XZ axis. A 3.5″ LCD touchscreen, with a built-in SD card, is fast and easy enough for his young daughter to use, which was his ultimate goal. With an 80 x 100 x 85 mm build volume and a print bed held in place with magnets, the biggest challenge in making the minuscule 3D printer easy to use was the filament loading; Singh Kalsi used a lever-based latch mechanism for this.

“the micro deltesian was born out of the curiosity of building the convoluted deltesian mechanism,” he explained. “Later on it evolved into the idea of building a 3d printer simple enough to be used by my daughter. The deltesian mechanism seem very wierd when i first saw it but eventually i thought maybe i should give it a try and hence this printer was born.”

Watch the video below to see just how easily his daughter uses the micro Deltesian 3D printer:

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The post 3D Printing News Briefs: October 18, 2019 appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

3D Lab Reveals Affordable Metal Powder Atomizer, the ATO Lab

Formnext, which is coming up next week, is always a setting for big announcements and product reveals. Last year, Polish company 3D Lab presented its first original machine – the ATO One, the first metal powder atomizer working in a laboratory standard. 3D Lab had been around for a decade but had until then been a service bureau and retailer of 3D Systems 3D printers, so the introduction of its first machine was a big deal. Since introducing the ATO One, 3D Lab has received several pre-orders and has spent the past year perfecting the machine, and now as this year’s formnext rolls around the company is preparing to unveil the final version of the product: the ATO Lab.

According to 3D Lab, the ATO Lab is the first compact machine of its kind capable of atomizing small amounts of metal powders. It was designed for research on new materials, but has a number of other applications as well. Other metal atomizers on the market cost well over $1 million, but ATO Lab costs a fraction of this amount and can be easily installed in any office or laboratory.

ATO Lab utilizes an ultrasonic atomization technology that allows for spherical particles with a diameter of 20 to 100 μm. The process is carried out in a shielding gas atmosphere. ATO Lab is capable of atomizing several materials, including aluminum, titanium, stainless steel and precious metals. The machine is also easy to use, the company states, with a user-friendly software system and a touch screen. The user has control over several process parameters.

ATO Lab’s advantages include its ability to atomize a wide range of materials at a relatively low production cost, with no restrictions on the minimum amount of powder being prepared. It’s a scalable system that imparts flexibility to the manufacturing process and allows easy access to material processing for small and medium-sized enterprises.

3D Lab began researching atomization three years ago. The company wanted to rapidly produce small quantities of feedstock for metal additive manufacturing research and process parameters selection. The team found the range of commercially available powders very limited and limiting, and the long realization time of smaller orders and high raw material costs made it impossible to implement a cost-effective solution using currently available atomisation methods.

In addition to the finalization of the ATO Lab, 3D Lab also announced that the Polish venture capital company Altamira invested 6.6 million PLN ($1.8 million) to develop the atomizer manufacturing plant and to build a global distribution channel. 3D Lab also recently moved to a brand new facility in Warsaw. The first ATO Lab devices are expected to be shipped in the first quarter of 2019.

Formnext will be taking place in Frankfurt, Germany from November 13th to November 16th. 3D Lab will be demonstrating the ATO Lab live for the first time; if you will be attending the show you can visit the company and see the atomizer in action in Hall 3.0 at Booth G-20.

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below. 

[Images: 3D Lab]