Production Parts

PLASTICS 3D PRINTING – EMBRACE RAPID MANUFACTURING

One of the rewards of the 3D printing revolution is the ability to begin production without the delay and expense of tooling, and to produce customized, geometrically complex products free from traditional manufacturing constraints.

Now you can realize revenue without time-consuming inventory management. With in-house, on-demand production, inventory becomes a digital file at your fingertips.

3D printing end-product components

Stratasys Production Series 3D Printers build the most durable, stable, repeatable parts in the industry. With accuracy that rivals injection molding and an array of real thermoplastic materials, Stratasys helps manufacturers say yes to more opportunities in low-volume, customized production parts and factory automation.

Designers and manufacturing engineers are free to optimize parts with organic shapes and complex geometries, including hollow interiors and negative draft. Traditional tooling constraints don’t apply in the world of 3D printing. Now you make the rules.

METALS 3D PRINTING – SLM – NEW SO­LU­TIONS FOR THE PROCESS IN­DUS­TRY

Ad­di­tive Man­u­fac­tur­ing and es­pe­cially 3D print­ing are re­garded as “game changer“ for many in­dus­tries. How big is the po­ten­tial re­ally for the ap­pa­ra­tus and plant in the process in­dus­try and what chal­lenges lie ahead will be shown by the ex­am­ple of a newly de­vel­oped high-pres­sure re­ac­tor of THALETEC.

High pres­sure re­ac­tors are used in process en­gi­neer­ing for car­ry­ing out chem­i­cal re­ac­tions under pres­sures up to 200 bar. So far, these re­ac­tors are ma­chined man­u­fac­tured from ma­te­ri­als such as stain­less steel or Hastel­loy. For use in chem­i­cally highly ag­gres­sive prod­ucts high pres­sure re­ac­tors are also equipped with a liner made of PTFE.

THALETEC has de­vel­oped for this ap­pli­ca­tion, the pro­to­type of a glass-lined high-pres­sure re­ac­tor (Fig­ure 1). This new so­lu­tion was pre­pared using the ad­di­tive, metal-based man­u­fac­tur­ing process, the „Se­lec­tive Laser Melt­ing“ (SLM). The use of this man­u­fac­tur­ing process opens the way to carry out the high-pres­sure re­ac­tor with an in­te­grated tem­per­a­ture con­trol chan­nel for the heat­ing or cool­ing of the re­ac­tor in­te­rior.

The com­bi­na­tion of enamel and in­te­grated tem­per­a­ture con­trol chan­nel pro­vides over pre­vi­ously avail­able so­lu­tions sig­nif­i­cantly im­proved heat trans­fer be­tween the prod­uct and tem­per­a­ture con­trol and thus the op­por­tu­nity to in­flu­ence the heat ef­fect of the process bet­ter. More­over, a higher pres­sure hold­ing abil­ity is pos­si­ble de­spite lower wall thick­nesses and achieved a guar­an­teed non-dif­fu­sive and chem­i­cally highly re­sis­tant coat­ing in the wet­ted in­te­rior. Fur­ther, the weight of the high-pres­sure re­ac­tor is re­duced, which is in the han­dling of the re­ac­tors in the lab­o­ra­tory of im­por­tance.

By the SLM method it is pos­si­ble to pro­duce inner struc­tures such as ducts and voids in com­plex com­po­nents which can­not be pro­duced by con­ven­tional ma­chin­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing processes such as turn­ing, milling and drilling. When using the SLM process the com­po­nent is de­vel­oped in the 3D CAD sys­tem and geo­met­ri­cally op­ti­mized, first the com­po­nent will be processed dig­i­tally and then sup­plied to the SLM ma­chine  There in the com­po­nent is built up in lay­ers. The metal pow­der used by THALETEC for Se­lec­tive Laser Melt­ing can be glass-lined.

In order to use high-pres­sure re­ac­tors, they must ac­cord­ing to Pres­sure Equip­ment Di­rec­tive 97/23 (PED) and must be de­signed and ex­e­cuted for a valid set of rules, for ex­am­ple AD 2000. In close co­op­er­a­tion with a no­ti­fied body ad­di­tively man­u­fac­tured high-pres­sure re­ac­tors of THALETEC can be pro­duced ac­cord­ing to the ap­proved pres­sure equip­ment. THALETEC has a tested and proven ap­proach that makes it pos­si­ble to cer­tify pres­sure equip­ment ad­di­tively manu­fac­tured ac­cord­ing to PED.