Good point Doug !
From: Doug Mitchell [mailto:dmitchel_at_ymail.com]
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2013 2:48 PM
To: Ed Tackett
Cc: 'Amend, Matthew J'; 'Greg Paulsen';
Subject: RE: [rp-ml] RE: de-powdering mass quantities of sintered parts?
If you are planning on painting your parts, soda blasting can create problems. Many of the newer paints are acidic and will react with the soda and not adhere correctly.
Regards,
Doug Mitchell
dmitchel_at_ymail.com
Ed Tackett <etackett_at_rapidtech.org> wrote:
Yea Fine de-powdering is a real time killer.
You can use small tumbler media to “cut” the nooks and crannies. In that case you could lubricate the parts in the tumbler but that would have to be tested.
Sure the idea is sound kind of like a gold mining trammel think washing machine drum on a spinner with HP air and then hit it with blast media Ill send you a diagram in a few minutes.
Maybe running baking soda would work
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodablasting and media is cheap
http://www.eastwood.com/soda-blasting.html
Cheers,
e-
Ed Tackett
Director
RapidTech
National Center for Rapid Technologies
University of California Irvine
Saddleback College
(949) 824-4938
Skype me _at_ ed.tackett
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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 2:03 PM
To: Greg Paulsen; rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi
Subject: [rp-ml] RE: de-powdering mass quantities of sintered parts?
Hmmm. Removing parts from the cake is quick, it's removing powder from the parts that takes time. Especially getting it out of nooks & crannies. Also, we are careful to put the loose powder back into the recycle mix but want to discard the baked powder that's adhered to the parts.
We're thinking along the concept of a drive-through carwash. Put them into some sort of cage that gets blasted by HP air and then by beads. Preferably all within an enclosure.
_____
From: Greg Paulsen [mailto:GPaulsen_at_protoprod.com]
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2013 1:42 PM
To: Amend, Matthew J; rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi
Subject: RE: de-powdering mass quantities of sintered parts?
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
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 Tue Jan 22 2013 - 00:37:09 EET