Page 15 - 3D Metal Printing Spring 2018

Another Believer
Also a believer in the software and ready to sing its praises: AM contract man- ufacturer Proto Labs, which operates a 77,000-sq.-ft. AM facility in Raleigh, NC. That’s where we found production man- ager David Bentley, who manages a team of eight associates staffing the Proto Labs 3D metal-printing build-prep department; another 20 work in nonmetal. These teams take part-data files from customers and move through development and produc- tion processes.
“Metal printing continues to grow at a quick pace for us,” Bentley says, “by some 20 percent year over year. It now com- prises about 20 percent of the business out of our Raleigh facility.”
Proto Labs took over the Raleigh loca- tion from FineLine Prototyping in 2014, and quickly ramped up the facility’s metal-printing business by adding Con- cept Laser metal-printing machines to its stable. With a core competency in pro- ducing parts with small feature resolu- tion, Proto Labs, says Bentley, began its metal-AM journey by bringing in Concept Laser MLab machines—100-W laser pow- der-bed models with a build envelope of
90by90by80mm.
“We now have 17 metal machines,”
Bentley shares, “eight MLabs and another nine 400-W Concept Laser M2 machines (250 by 250 by 280-mm build envelope), which produce slightly larger parts. While a large portion of our business still falls under prototyping work to validate part designs, we’re seeing a lot more customers accepting 3D metal printing for part pro- duction, with aerospace companies lead- ing the charge. We tell customers that 3D metal printing is not a replacement tech- nology for machining. Rather, if they can rethink their part designs and model fea- tures to improve function or reduce weight, metal AM provides new rules for manufacturability that expand its use into production work.”
Automating to Keep Pace
This is one busy AM shop, with hun- dreds of new part orders coming in daily. Automating its production processes has been a priority, and that starts with e- Stage.
“We strive to print
correctly on the first
attempt,” says Bentley, “and for
the most part we succeed. We have very low rebuild rates, and much of that suc- cess comes from the ability of e-Stage to remove human error from the preparation process.
“The software analyzes the part in question,” he continues, “and identifies for us the areas that need support, then automatically generates the supports. We’ve found it to be very stable and reli- able...our team trusts the results, espe- cially when it comes to holding the parts in place on the build plate during pro- cessing. Then, if there’s extra concern regarding warpage that requires extra sup- port consideration, our team performs that design function manually.”
So, where does the return on invest- ment come from? Answering that ques- tion, Bentley echoes what Materialise and Airbus APWorks say.
“From our experience,” he says, “pow- der recovery represents a huge savings
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SPRING 2018 • 3D METAL PRINTING | 13
Automated support development with e- Stage for Metal produces strong yet easily crushable supports that help to minimize the tasks of support removal and part finishing, while also minimizing powder entrapment between the part, the build plate and the supports. Photos courtesy of Materialise.
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