VELO3D has developed a 1 m tall industrial 3D printer which it says is the world’s tallest laser-powder additive manufacturing (AM) system.
The company’s Sapphire 3D printer, which can print up to 1 m in height, will ship in Q4 2020, to precision-tool and component manufacturer Knust-Godwin to produce parts for an oil and gas application.
'Our vision at VELO3D is to enable end users to build whatever they want without the constraints of yesterday’s standards,' said Benny Buller, founder and CEO of VELO3D. 'One of those constraints is the build envelope. A meter-tall system enables industrial applications that couldn’t be built before, especially for oilfield service tools and flight hardware.'
According to the company, Knust-Godwin will first investigate manufacturing a part for oilfield drilling that is currently manufactured by more than five subtractive processes.
'There tends to be a trade-off between large-format additive machines and part quality; VELO3D is attractive to us because of their semiconductor heritage and engineering disciplines around process control and metrology,' said Mike Corliss, VP of technology at Knust-Godwin. 'We have confidence that we’ll be able to build mission-critical industrial parts without compromises made to part quality.'
This story uses material from VELO3D, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
