Lucideon has released a new white paper titled ‘Additive Manufacturing – a Metallurgical Perspective’. The paper discusses the value and potential of metallurgical additive manufacturing alongside some of the challenges the technology needs to overcome.
Additive Manufacturing (AM), or 3D printing, has established itself as a serious technology with leading businesses across a wide range of industries investing in it. Julius Bonini, Manager, Metallurgy and Evaluations, Lucideon, author of the paper, has worked with many of these companies to optimize both AM products and processes.
Julius said:
“Additive manufacturing is a technology with great potential but also some teething problems. For me, metals are the main focus, but the challenges faced for AM technology are true for all materials used, though there will be variations on those issues from one material to the next. But we see problems in all manufacturing processes, even the long established ones, and overcoming them is what we’re about here at Lucideon.
“Developing the means for successful metallurgy additive manufacturing will allow some amazing achievements to be realized. Metals have high relative strengths, they can be conductive, hard wearing and some metals are highly biocompatible, so perfect for implantation into human bodies. However potential issues with diminishing strengths and porous structures harbouring loose particles that could escape into the body need to be considered, for all applications, but for healthcare applications in particular. This paper looks at some of these challenges and how we in the industry are tackling them to allow the AM revolution to keep up steam.”
Lucideon is a materials development and commercialization company that specializes in materials technology development, and testing and analysis services. Serving the healthcare, construction, nuclear, aerospace and power generation industries its experts identify and solve materials based problems. Lucideon’s range of in-house technologies are developed to tackle the latest challenges in industry and its scientists and engineers work closely with clients to produce the latest, market disrupting products based on these technologies.
The white paper can be downloaded for free at www.lucideon.com/am.
