3D Printing METAL AT HOME!

[Applause] hey it's Joel LTX 2023 spring break capital of the world I'm at the rapidia booth with my buddy Alan what's up Alan not too much crazy great LTX yes the LTX is going awesome today so I'm here at your booth because I see what looks like a 3D printer with a canister on it can you talk about that yeah so this is our metal 3D printing system the conflux one so what the conflux one does is it uses a binder material mixed with metal powder to produce a paste which has toothpaste like consistency which is then extruded through a pump onto the build plate and then we take those parts and they go into the centering furnace and in about 12 hours you have fully dense metal Parts well okay let's let's back it up just a little bit green part that's correct yep and that green part then is how much bigger before it's centered so we scale the parts up about 16 and a half percent uh in the slicer so there is about an 18 shrinkage in the furnace 18 is that pretty common that is pretty common yep and the pace then is laid down into a shape so you have no heat but you know gravity to to worry about that's correct yeah there's no uh no thermal hot end uh the pace is extruded at room temperature we do heat the bed ever so slightly to 40c during printing to promote drying for each layer um the big catch here is you want to remove as much moisture from the previously deposited layer as you can to prevent sagging so we can talk about sagging but you have an idec system so can you actually put in a support interface that's correct yeah so we hit we do have an idex system the second tool head is a ceramic support material that burns off in the furnace at a certain temperature how do you support extruded metal paste what material is that the support material is a ceramic mixed with binder and water it's of our own special blend many years the research have gone into the pace formulation so a lot of trial and error have got us there but yeah it's just a it's a standard ceramic similar to the to the solids loading and the material content of the metal paste but without the metal powder okay and it being a green part you actually had one right over there and I accidentally popped off that that that raft that had that ceramic support layer on and it was surprising how easy it was to just pop off yeah the strength of it I liken to chalk like it's typical Schoolhouse chalk and people are often surprised on how easily it breaks apart so you know when you're when you're parting it's green State you you have to handle it carefully um they're not super robust you have to be careful but once it goes into the furnace and it comes out it's you can stand on it and it'll be fine you know it passes the stand on it oh we can stand on it yeah well there's a manifold there's a scooter back here you guys printed that yeah yeah we've got a scooter uh that we printed for form next uh last year yeah it was a total hit at the at the show there as well as one would think okay we've talked about the furnace now usually when we talk about green parts from a a paste printer metal paste into a furnace it starts to get a little bit of complex what have you done to reduce complexity there yeah so our our binder system or the binder that we're using uh in the water that we're using is so low in our Pace mixture that we don't have to do any sort of uh baths you know to turn the green parts to Brown parts to Center them um basically what we all we have to do is do a thermal d mine step in the centering process on the furnace and that's quite quick because of the high solids loading and the low binder and water loading or content so it's 12 hours right yep 12 hours and uh if you have some really crazy large shapes you can bump it up to 18 hours to prevent any sort of you know anything happening during that Saturn process you want to be you know a very homogeneous fusing of the material but for what most of the stuff that we print in the lab it's all uh 12 hour Cycles the machine just did something I don't know if you caught it there but there was just this light going back and forth back and forth what is that part of the process yeah so the very aggressive blinding light um the reason why all these panels around here is we have a drying lamp that that doesn't pass every layer um and so if if I open it to remove the moisture to remove the moisture exactly yeah if I show you what what's actually happening on the build plate during that lamp pass it really hurts your eyes but you can see the the moisture evaporating very quickly uh from the lamp so now we've got finished Parts out of the sintering oven they look great what is the reason someone would go with a 3D printed metal part from a metal paste rather than say something that's been milled or produced with a powder bed Fusion for the price point powder bed Fusion can get quite expensive as well as the facility requirements to run those kinds of machines uh you know all the PPE the high power requirements our system runs on the standard three-phase or it can run on standard three phase electrical or on your uh your dryer plug you could actually run it on a home electrical system absolutely really you can totally run this on a home electrical system we've done an install at a home before it's that easy to use so if you are familiar with any sort of uh FFF you know classic 3D printing with pla you can take this machine and pick it up in about a day and you're Off to the Races so there's a day a day it is that easy to pick up if you have experience in 3D printing okay so if you know generally how 3D printing goes the FFF style 3D printing in a day you could be up making green metal Parts in the next day having a nice centered final part that's exactly it that's amazing I love that okay look into that camera right there talk to the audience tell them where they can find out more about rapidia and the awesome stuff you do yeah so if you want to find out more about rapidia you can check out our website at rapidia.com um we're a Canadian based company and we love 3D printing okay I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you something real quick here just because people are going to want to know anything cool coming down the pipeline that you can talk about well uh we're looking into a green Machining uh technology uh uh by layer or by by layer yeah Green Machining by layer we're not going to go any further and do that because I want you to have to think about this all right well I like to close out things with a high five Alan are you up for it okay hold on we got it we gotta so let's we gotta say goodbye to the audience okay right we gotta we gotta thank them for making it this far because if they did they're pretty awesome yeah uh and I tell people to hug each other more okay and fight for a cause they believe in how does that sound that sounds perfect yeah and then I offer them a high five right on okay well offer the audience high five oh a high five yeah give it to them they deserve it they made it this far here we go nailed it good job Alan thanks

Channel: 3D Printing Nerd

Views: 215,579

Keywords: 3d printing nerd, joel telling, joeltelling, 3d printing, 3dpn, rapidia, ltx 2023, metal 3d printing, metal additive, metal 3d printing at home, metal additive manufacturing

Id: 4coIacNNl28

Length: 6min 37sec (397 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2023