3D Print Metal?

[mattpeneguy]

I was looking at hardened nozzles for no particular reason and stumbled across this:
https://www.thevirtualfoundry.com/
Apparently they sell metal mixed with plastic and you can have the part sintered (or do it yourself if you have a kiln...I do, but I'm not sure if it still works). The point is that the filament appears to be less than $100/lb and depending on part size they can sinter it for ~100 for you.
Anyone know anything about this? Sure seems to good to be true...yeah, yeah, I know it'll tear up the extruder, bowden tube, print head, etc. But to be able to print metal?...may be worth it?

[mike miller]

Oh it's out there, that's for sure. https://www.e-ci.com/additive-manufacturing

Make sure you sit down before reading the quote.

[Ömür Tokman]

I've never seen anything like this before. I don't know how useful it is but it looks nice.

[Frederick_Law]

There are a few 3D printer company doing that:
https://markforged.com/
For a few years.

It is like sintering. The result part will be smaller. Usually the software (Markforged) scale the part before print.
Kiln or sintering oven need right temp and time to burn off plastic binder and sinter the metal together.

I was looking for sinter oven for this but it's expensive. You need one to set and hold temp for set time.

Right now, I bake HTPLA at 110C on the heat bed.

[mattpeneguy]

There are a few 3D printer company doing that:
https://markforged.com/
For a few years.

It is like sintering. The result part will be smaller. Usually the software (Markforged) scale the part before print.
Kiln or sintering oven need right temp and time to burn off plastic binder and sinter the metal together.

I was looking for sinter oven for this but it's expensive. You need one to set and hold temp for set time.

Right now, I bake HTPLA at 110C on the heat bed.

That may be one of the problems is determining how much the part will shrink. If they can figure a way to have the metal melt but not shrink, I think we'd be onto something, even if the part was significantly weaker. Even good plastics are much less abrasion resistant and less strong than bronze or steel.
Here's an article I found:
https://all3dp.com/2/basf-ultrafuse-316l-review-specs/

[Frederick_Law]

That may be one of the problems is determining how much the part will shrink.

That's where Markforged fit in. Their printer, their material, their sintering, their slicer.
You need a one $top $olution or $pend time on R&D yourself.

[mattpeneguy]

That's where Markforged fit in. Their printer, their material, their sintering, their slicer.
You need a one $top $olution or $pend time on R&D yourself.

Who do they think they are?...Dassault?...

[JSculley]

That's where Markforged fit in. Their printer, their material, their sintering, their slicer.
You need a one $top $olution or $pend time on R&D yourself.

We looked at the MarkForged MetalX two or three years ago. 100k for everything if I remember corectly. The sintering oven requires bottled gas and it seemed quite awkward to use since it is a long tube that you have to reach into to retrieve your parts. Opening/closing the door required bolting/unbolting a bunch of screws as well. Sinter times are 26-31 hours and The wash was a 12-72 hour timeframe. The software is cloud based, presumably so that they can gather as much data from customers as possible to help fine tune the shrinkage data. You can have the software local but it costs extra.

We were really interested in printing copper, and at the time they said it was 30 days away. It was a couple of years, but I see they have it now.

The biggest benefit I saw from their system was that it was safer. If you read about the powdered metal printing there are a lot of environmental, toxicity and most importantly, explosion risks. Having the powder embedded in filament just seemed better.

[SPerman]

BASF makes a stainless steel filament. I've bought everything needed to work with it, but so far we haven't had a project to justify the expense.

If you are doing a production run, I can see investing the time in a few prototypes to get the shrinkage right. For a one off part, it seems hard to justify the time and cost investment.

[FMAAID]

I am surprised that there is not one commercial 3d printer that uses a GTAW Tig welding head with a wire feed system.
The current filament extruders can be adapted to feed tig wire from a spool. The video shows a cnc with a mig gun

Major problem is the build plate and how bad it warps due to all of the weld passes going over and over.

[Frederick_Law]

Commercial, yes.
Consumer, no.
We already have weld robots, just need to change the program.