Look！Hard Alloys Can Also be Printed with 3D

There is no doubt that 3D printing will be an indispensable component of the future industrial 4.0. As the 3D printing technology of plastic materials is relatively mature, the metal 3D printing technology is also showing great potential for development, which has become an important development direction and hot research hot spot.

Direct metal 3D printing has two major categories of mainstream technology, selective laser melting (SLM) and direct metal laser sintering (DMLS). In the case of SLM, particles are completely melted together, in DMLS, particles are only sintered. They are not perfect for printing hard alloy products.

Directed Energy Deposition is a newly developed 3D printing technology, which is abbreviated as DED. Compared with selective laser melting (SLM) and direct metal laser sintering (DMLS), the wire or powder is fed directly to the energy source at the time of deposition and then printing by layer by layer so that the DED technology can print a variety of materials, including printing. DED's multi axis printing system can print tungsten and molybdenum and other materials to the existing parts.

Cemented carbide is a composite made of tungsten carbide and cobalt as the main ingredient. It is a very hard material used in mechanical and automotive engineering and building materials industry. Hard alloy die is a steel die life more than ten times or even dozens of times, hard alloy die high hardness, high strength, corrosion resistance, high temperature resistance, the expansion coefficient is small. In the 3D printing process of hard alloy, the biggest difficulty is that the melting point of tungsten is high, but the cobalt is very low. When the temperature of the laser is enough to melt the WC, the cobalt can not bear the high temperature, and the alloy can not meet the requirement of the hard alloy after solidification.

The research shows that DED technology can print out uniform and compact hard alloy products, the traditional metal materials can be used in the market to make traditional alloys. 3D printing has been simplified. The DED process shows excellent performance and geometric shape, which makes people have to wonder that improving production efficiency is so simple.

The process of exploring 3D printing technology is just beginning. 3D metal printing can be as omnipotent as other materials. With the time of exploring the universe, human beings have used 3D printing for more specialized applications of tungsten and molybdenum metals, from the tungsten copper nozzles on spacecraft, the shielding of nuclear radiation to the conductive components on the printed circuit board (PCB), and soon it will be able to print hard alloy products, the progress of science and technology is always faster than we think.