Digital Metal, a leader in high-precision metal binder jetting systems for industrial use, has developed the world’s first commercial automated depowdering station for metal binder jetting, the company announced. The station, known as DPS 1000, also comes with a complete printing system.
“A key benefit of the DPS 1000 for Digital Metal customers is that it will free up time, and also bring consistency by removing the human factor from the equation,” says Alexander Sakratidis, Sales and Marketing Manager at Digital Metal.
One of the first customers for the DPS 1000 is a renowned German Research Institute, Digital Metal said. One of the institute’s missions is to industrialize additive manufacturing technologies to create resource-efficient products for the future.
“Metal Binder Jetting will enhance productivity and precision while at the same time reducing costs of metal additive manufacturing, which opens the door for series production,” said the Head of Process Department at the institute. “However, one major technical challenge is depowdering of the green parts and there is a huge potential in working on automation solutions in this context.”
The customer believes that automated depowdering will be key to industrialization of additive manufacturing (AM). “To date manual depowdering and cleaning have taken up most of the work hours in the binder jetting process. Automating this step makes the whole AM process cost efficient while ensuring more consistent part quality.”
The institute has been impressed with the DPS 1000’s ability to precisely remove metal powder from most geometries of any parts. The added manual cleaning option makes it possible to clean even tricky geometries after the initial program has removed most of the powder. They are also pleased with the whole Digital Metal printing system, and how well it fits with their mission to industrialize the additive manufacturing of metals.
“With this system we can easily test multiply different powders to enhance the print quality and make more precise predictions on the shrinking of the sintering process,” says the customer. “It convinces with its precision, and even very delicate structures can be printed.”
