Researchers at the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands (ECN) have developed a new technique for 3D printing that can create metal parts without melting its mineral material.
Using the research centerās Digital Light Processing-based technology (DLP), which was originally created to build ceramic parts, researchers recently discovered that the same method can be used to manufacture high quality metal components.
While there are a number of metal printing technologies currently on the market, ECNās DLP method is unique in its ability to fashion parts without the need of melting the machineās base material. According to Dutch researchers, eliminating the metallic melt pool created by laser sintering machines enables the production of well-compacted, homogenous and high-grade materials that can be rendered into any geometry a designer can imagine.
Whatās more, because DLP metal manufacturing skips the melting process, parts can be built faster with a guarantee that each layer of a component will be made of the same constituent material, be equally as dense and have the same conductive properties.
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