Additive metal manufacturing can be done in many different ways, but the idea is much the same. A large format printer is used to deposit molten metal in layers onto a substrate and fuse it into a solid form. By printing from scratch, you can create shapes that are not possible with traditional subtractive manufacturing. Mass production is time consuming and labor intensive, but it is an incredibly fast and effective technique for low volume parts and rapid prototyping.
Many of today’s metal printing systems use lasers to heat and melt powdered metal raw materials. Christian LaRosa, founder and CEO of Rosotics, says laser systems have many inherent challenges. First, these powdered metal raw materials are expensive and often dangerous. For example, powdered titanium is explosive. Second, lasers are an inefficient means of converting electrical power into heat. Large laser-based systems may require special energy delivery systems.
Third, they can be dangerous. Even a reflected beam of such power could be enough to blind someone if it hits the eye directly. is needed. This means that you can only print parts that are as big as the oven you can bake them in later.
Rossotics
LaRosa says he’s come up with an alternative that addresses all of these problems, making it cheaper, easier, and faster to print giant metal parts big enough to be used in aircraft and rocket structures. . Rosotics has designed, built and tested a new type of metal 3D print head called Mantis. This head delivers heat to the metal very efficiently by induction.
“In my opinion, this is a very natural way to 3D print metal,” LaRosa said in a video call. “We generate an electromagnetic field from a coil, and ferromagnetic metal that passes through the field is inductively heated by eddy currents that induce in the metal. We remove the laser from the process. We just feed the wire through the nozzle, in transit.” We call it Rapid Induction Printing (RIP) and it achieves the same goal with much less energy loss.”
How efficient is your process? “The efficiency of laser-based processes is pretty terrible in many ways,” he says. “It’s an optical means of transferring heat. Moving to an inductive process yields significant efficiency gains, 30-50% more when compared to directed energy deposition, which is a laser-based wire-fed approach. .It is efficient for the total energy consumed, which can be almost in the single digits when compared to others.”
The raw material does not have to be ferromagnetic either. “Aluminum has been a big target for us to attack because it forms the basis of many structural parts in aerospace and is not at all magnetic,” he says. “So we found a unique way to inductively heat that raw material, taking advantage of a breakthrough approach in metallurgical science. You can move the target material through the channel.”
Rossotics
This allows processing to a wide range of metals. The company has tested it extensively on steel and aluminum so far, but LaRosa says it should be able to handle most metals. Pretty comprehensive,” he says. “I think there are a lot of materials that push the boundaries, but there is still room to change the process and perhaps work on them as well. Titanium is a fairly practical material, but there are many other One of the most direct is cupronickel, which has very good mechanical performance in certain applications, but overall, the process is commercially available in wire form. It works pretty well with whatever material you have.”
Printers currently handle wires from 1 to 10 mm in diameter, but LaRosa says they can easily scale to larger sizes by simply widening the nozzle as needed.
Rosotics has prototyped quite a few styles. “There’s a full-scale printer prototype behind my side wall,” he says. , each pushes just over 15 kg (33 lbs) of metal per hour. As a system, it pushes down about 50 kg (110 lbs) of metal per hour. warehouse environment – If you are running a large wire-based laser printer, you may want to consider contacting your power company to get a larger link to the grid. I think that says a lot if you make the process more efficient, it simplifies the big picture.
“Our process works outdoors,” he continues. It reduces process-induced residual stress.There is no need to do such operations after printing.This further simplifies the operation.And when it comes to large scale, if you have several furnaces for heat treatment There’s that size across the United States. “
Rossotics
The RIP process is claimed to make the entire process much faster and cheaper, expanding metal printing to a virtually limitless scale. Because it’s revolutionized the way we do things, but there’s a size limit.Heavy industry is being shut out of using 3D printing in areas where it’s really needed.I’m a 20-21 year old kid designing rocket structures and I used to work in manufacturing using 3D printing at that scale. I’m sure others in aerospace feel the same way.
“I am an engineer by education, training and practice,” he says. I couldn’t sleep at night until it existed. I found that it worked, and that was the point where I had to realize this thing full time. We are very excited to bring it to market for our customers.
“Our system is very well suited for structural applications such as rocket construction and tank construction,” he continues. “All kinds of structural parts that aerospace needs can be done with our system. increase.”
For anything bigger than a refrigerator, this approach blows all alternatives out of the water.
Founded in 2019, Rosotics closed a US$750,000 funding round last November.
LaRosa says: “We are funding pre-seed levels to prove and validate the process. We have built platforms and prototypes and are confident of what the process can produce. prepares for the challenge: establishing assembly lines and production, has its own set of challenges when it comes to making machines work as well as efficiently and repeatedly building them in high volume. It is a modular platform that has been evaluated and can be modified over time to accommodate different applications.
“Many customers have signed,” he continues.
Rosotics today launched manufacturing services for qualified customers beginning in October of this year. With a minimum US$95,000 deposit, we can print on steel or aluminum up to 30 feet (9.1 m) in diameter and up to several metric tons in weight. The company also announced that it will build an “advanced production campus” at Falcon Field Airport in Mesa, Arizona.
It’s worth noting that there are no sample prints at this stage, but potential customers will soon see for themselves how well this technology can handle the quality and accuracy required in aerospace. I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes.
Source: Rosotics
