RE: Using reused powder in SLS -reg

From: Scott Tilton (stilton@protoprod.com)
Date: Wed Dec 18 2002 - 18:45:20 EET


Yeah, it definitely needed to be explained a little better.
 
I thought about it for a little while and the best I could figure was that
perhaps you could say it is more easy to get good accuracy with slightly
used powder.
 
Doesn't the powder degrade quickly in the first build or two? (depending on
conditions of course)
Which of course requires more attention to customize the scale / offsets for
the state of the powder.
 
Then if you keep on building with the same powder . .the next several builds
don't require as much tinkering with the scale and offset values to keep the
accuracy up.
 
 
Still, Tim's idea sounds theoretically the best:
Maintain the powder at a constant state by blending in new powder with the
old.
Then you remove one variable from the equation.
 
I'd be curious to know how well things can be kept constant using Tim's Melt
Flow Index.
 
For instance . . . taking several different batches of powder and then
blending in new powder until the test equipment indicates that the batches
are now equivalent.
 
Run identical builds for each of those batches of powder: how much
variation is there going to be among the parts produced?
 
 
Scott Tilton
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: David K. Leigh [mailto:dkleigh@harvest-tech.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 10:04 AM
To: ramanathan baranitharan; rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi
Subject: RE: Using reused powder in SLS -reg
 
Hmm
 
Virgin Powder: Less Accurate
Used Powder: More Accurate
 
How do you define "less" accurate?
How many builds did you run with virgin powder?
Did you change any parameters from build to build?
How do you define virgin powder?
What was the makeup of your used powder?
Did you run this on more than one machine to verify results?
Were the powder lots the same?
 
Many questions to be answered before anyone can conjecture on the nature of
your results.
If you use the shrinkage values from used powder and run virgin powder - you
will not get accurate results.
 
********************************************************************
David K. Leigh (254) 933-1000
Harvest Technologies, Inc. fax (254) 298-0125
Rapid Prototyping Services www.harvest-tech.com
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi [mailto:owner-rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi]On Behalf Of
ramanathan baranitharan
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 10:25 PM
To: rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi
Subject: Using reused powder in SLS -reg
dear friends
I am a post graduate student doing research in Selective Laser sintering
Polymer powders at PSG College of Technology
Machine : Sinterstation 2500 plus
material : Duraform PA (polyamide)
In my experiments I infer that accuracy of exposed powder is better that
that of fresh powder with 11W laser power
what may be the reason behind it?
Before this experimentation we assumed that fresh powder may give better
dimensional accuracy and using only fresh powder for industrial projects.
-barani
 
  _____

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