Binder jetting process
Lower costs
At PRINTY we are capable to offer 10.000 cm3/hour output for printing your parts. This enables us to offer the lowest costs of metal 3D printing on the market.
Great potential optimization
With optimization of your design for additive manufacturing 30%+ reduction of parts weight is possible. Get in touch for our topology optimization services.
High Density
We achieve post-sintered densities from 97% to better than 99% for most metals.
Metal Binder Jet 3D printing is a process where a liquid binder is jetted on layers of powdered metal materials, selectively joined and then followed by densification process. Among AM technologies, binder jetting offers possibility of rapid production of complex structures in large volumes and low cost.
By taking advantage of traditional powder metallurgy, binder jetting machines can produce parts with material properties and surface finishes similar to those attained with traditional powder metallurgy.
Fast speeds
Binder jetting offers production speeds 50x faster compared to laser based metal printing.
High Accuracy
Dimensional tolerances can be controlled within 1-2.5% on a first print run.
24/7 production
Printing process
A 3D model is required using a designed, modeled, or scanned 3D model attained from an actual specimen. In binder jetting, a thin layer of powder is spread on the build box (the area where the powder bed is ready for printing) and a traversing counter-rotating roller spreads and loosely compacts the new layer of powder. A liquid binder is jetted from the print head onto the powder layer where the object is to be formed. After the binder is deposited, an electrical heater passes over the powder bed to partially dry/cure the layer and prepare it for spreading the subsequent layer. After the binder is deposited and dried, a piston that supports the powder bed lowers the build by the height of one layer, which typically ranges from 50 to 200 μm.
Once the printing step is complete binder jet technologies require a post-cure to dry the binder and give the printed powder its “green” strength. To do this curing, the jobbox is removed from the printer and heated until the binder is adequately dried.
After curing a resulting “green” shapes are manually removed from the powder bed and cleaned from residual powder.
After curing and de-powdering, the relative density of the green part is typically around 60-64%. To achieve desired density and target mechanical properties, further densification is achieved with sintering where parts are heated to a temperature below its respective melting point for a certain period of time.
The average roughness of binder jetted parts has traditionally been around 6 μm (Ra) after sintering. Post- processing to improve surface finish is a common practice. The most common techniques for improving surface finish are bead blasting and tumble polishing. Additional to these basic treatments we offer also polishing to a highly polished mirror finish surface.
