We’re used to dealing with warpage when printing with thermoplastics like ABS, but metal printers have this problem too.The University of Michigan has a new technology, SmartScan, that promises to reduce this problem.You can see a video about the technology below.
The idea is to develop a thermal model of the printed part before laser sintering, and then move the laser in a way that doesn’t build up heat.This video shows how engraving metal in the traditional way can cause the metal to warp when the laser heats the area.Using the SmartScan thermal model, they were able to reduce the deformation by nearly half.
It sounds like they haven’t applied it to sintering in a 3D printer, so you can only assume the results will be similar.Of course, the heat distribution through the powder may not be the same as through the solid metal, so further testing is definitely needed.
We also couldn’t help wondering if the results would be nearly as good if you just picked random pieces of the pattern to run instead of running them in full order.Of course, a model-based approach should be better, but we wondered if it would be much better than a simple dice-rolling approach.
In the meantime, we’re still waiting for our metal 3D printer.Copper seems to be within reach.If so, if you don’t mind some post-processing.
They just have to slow down your print and apply the hairspray and elmers glue sticks with paint tape on a bed wiped with acetone and properly covered, right?
With so many wasted prints keeping my machine within tolerance, after achieving this I still ruin 1 in 10 prints.
Thought that for most models it would be very similar to just do one line from each side of the model at a time.
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Post time: Apr-14-2022
