Prodways used last week’s Formnext to show off a new plastic material, PA612-GB 3800, the first PA6-12T plastic powder on the 3D printing laser sintering market. It’s been designed for production of small and medium final parts rather than prototyping.
This follows the strategic partnership that Prodways signed last year with A. Schulman, which supplies high-performance plastic compounds and composite materials used in many industries. This PA612-GB 3800 powder is the first material from this partnership.
PA612T is a class of rigid plastics that offer good impact resistance and a capacity to withstand high temperatures, while having low sensitivity to moisture absorption, unlike some PA6 materials, meaning that it will retain most of its performance over time. Essentially, this new material is a ter-polymer with glass bead filler that combines elements of PA6 and PA12. It’s isotropic and shows good vibration resistance
The new PA612-GB 3800 powder is said to produce high performance mechanical properties, even with complex geometrical structures such as fuel circuits or pump bodies that are difficult to make with conventional injection techniques. Prodways believes that its properties make it an ideal candidate to replace machined metal parts in production for things like casings, the top parts of motors or ballast systems.
Prodways also showed off a new metal forging approach, Rapid Additive Forging, or RAF for 3D metal printing of large titanium parts. As part of this process, Prodways is developing a new metal printer though it’s selling RAF as an on-demand service for now while its continuing to develop the printing process. I understand that the plan is to start selling the machine itself in 2019, though it is said to be quite a big machine.
Prodways has produced metal parts up to 70cm long but is working to develop a version capable of producing parts up to 2 metres long.
Prodways, which is itself a part of Groupe Gorgé, has worked with Commercy Robotique, another subsidiary of Groupe Gorgé that has specialized in robotised welding for more than 40 years. The RAF process uses a robot equipped with a head depositing molten metal in an atmosphere of inert gas. The metal is deposited layer by layer taking a few hours for larger parts. But rather than making finishing parts the main benefit of the process is that it can quickly produce blanks with a similar geometry to the final part, which can then be machined to the final part. This is said to be up to 10x quicker not to mention less wasteful than a traditional machining process. Prodways’ Marketing and communication manager, Cindy Mannevy, points out: “It’s faster than other 3D printers if you count the whole process.”
The process is said to be suitable for half of all titanium parts used in aircraft manufacture and could cut those costs by half. Moreover, Prodways claims that its metal deposition technology produces a very high metallurgical quality with good repeatability and better mechanical resistance than some other 3D metal printing techniques.
This is clearly a work in progress though the parts that were on the Prodways stand at Formnext showed promise. No doubt we’ll hear more about this during the course of 2018.
Leave a Reply