I was reading an article on Shapeways and noticed they use a large tumbler (commonly used for polishing metal parts). Here's the article's link:
http://fabbaloo.com/blog/2013/1/8/deep-deep-inside-shapeways.html#.UP2znSc0V8F look at the 4th picture down. Depending on your part/cake density and your parts geometry I could see a whole cake thrown in a tumbler and left to self-clean. This may affect recycle rate if you're throwing cake back in the mix.
As an experiment we rigged a rigid grate/sifter over a collection bin that was mounted to one of our smaller tumblers and turned that on. After a couple hours the majority of powder was broken free and parts were ready for bead blasting. You just want to make sure that dust containment is available if you try this or things can get messy.
Gregory M. Paulsen
Prototype Productions, Inc.
Office 703.858.0011 x314
Cell 540.974.1348
gpaulsen_at_protoprod.com<mailto:gpaulsen_at_protoprod.com>
www.protoprod.com<
http://www.protoprod.com/>
From: owner-rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi [mailto:owner-rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi] On Behalf Of Amend, Matthew J
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2013 4:07 PM
To: rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi
Subject: [rp-ml] de-powdering mass quantities of sintered parts?
Hi folks,
I'm with an RP lab at Boeing and we're looking for a way to save time and/or labor de-powdering parts from our nylon sintering machines. The quantities we build are increasing and it's getting cumbersome to do all the cleanup by hand.
Does anybody know of automated or mechanized methods for de-powdering?
Matthew Amend
Boeing Rapid Prototyping & Modeling
Laser Sintering Lab 9-120 12E3
206 662 7495
Received on Mon Jan 21 2013 - 23:32:05 EET