Dear Simon,
EOSINT M systems from EOS GmbH produce metal parts directly using the
Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) process. These systems have been
commercially available since 1995 (although the first commercial beta
system was sold and installed in 1994) and are now in use at many
customer sites around Europe. Service bureaus offering this technology
our listed in the EOS homepage at http://www.eos-gmbh.de.
DMLS builds metal parts using a proprietry metal powder material
containing no non-metallic binders or additives. This material was
originally developed and patented by Electrolux Rapid Development and
has been optimized for the DMLS process jointly by EOS and Electrolux.
It is a multiple-component powder with the special characteristic that
shrinkage during liquid-phase sintering is simultaneously compensated by
an expansion phase-change, resulting in negligible shrinkage in the
layers and thus enabling metal parts to be built in a single process
with high accuracy.
The most common application is building tools and inserts for injection
moulding. The accuracy is so good that usually no machining of the tool
faces is needed, which is especially important for free-form parting
surfaces. The laser-sintered parts have approximately 30% porosity. For
applications such as foaming or low-pressure injection moulding this can
be acceptable or even advantageous. However for most applications the
tools are infiltrated, typically using a high-temperature epoxy resin or
other organic infiltrant. The infiltration process usually requires only
one or two hours and has negligible effect on part accuracy as it is
performed at low temperatures, e.g. below 200 deg. C. Many case studies
have been documented where up to several thousand plastic parts have
been injection moulded in DMLS tooling with short turnaround times, e.g.
1) 400 complex air conditioning motor mounts sized 250 x 250 x 120
mm moulded in glass-reinforced polyamide with standard injection
parameters (900 bar inj. pressure), no wear visible afterwards, project
duration 4 weeks.
2) 4500 housing covers sized 215 x 120 x 28 mm moulded in ABS with
standard injection parameters, project duration 2 weeks, total building
time for tool inserts 52 hours.
I hope this information helps. Please contact our sales department
directly if you have further questions.
Regards,
Mike Shellabear
********************************************
Dr. Michael Shellabear
Assistant to the Management Board
EOS GmbH Electro Optical Systems
Pasinger Strasse 2
D-82152 Planegg/Munich, Germany
Tel.: +49 (0) 89 85685-122
Fax: +49 (0) 89 8598402
Email: shellabear@eos-gmbh.de
********************************************
----------
Von: Simon Park[SMTP:parks@ecf.toronto.edu]
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 2. Oktober 1997 14:55
An: RP
Betreff: RP for METAL
Would anyone know metallic RP processes other than RapidTool by
DTM and
Keltool by 3D?
I am sure a lot of people are working on other processes.
Would you please let me know?
Best Regards,
Simon
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| Mechanical Engineering _|\||||/|_ |
| University of Toronto \||UofT||/ |
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