Applications for 3D Printed Tungsten

Wolfmet 3D is the commercialization of 3D Printing methods developed at M & I Metals to 3D print tungsten. The company is a service bureau that makes tungsten 3D printed components for industry. Tungsten is not completely new to 3D printing.

Wolfmet 3D is the revolutionary additive manufacturing process and they produce 3D printed parts via SLM. It allows them to make parts which would either be impossible or not economical using traditional subtractive techniques.

The applications for 3D printed tungsten are extensive. Medical and industrial imagings in many ways are at the forefront of recent developments, but Wolfmet 3D is making new advances all the time in other areas too. To give just one example, they are in discussions with clients interested in tungsten’s heat resistant properties, which open up another field of possible applications.

Tungsten is a very heavy metal and considered lightweighting things using 3D printing. Tungsten has a very high density (approx. 60% denser than lead). It is valued for its radiation attenuation properties, derived from the density, and also its heat resistance. Tungsten’s high density enables it to act as a vibration weight in various dynamic applications.

Why does one want to 3D print a collimator? The collimator’s function in an imaging system is to focus beams of radiation (gamma or x-ray) onto a detector and to filter out stray beams which might distort the signal. The detector’s software converts the signals into a 3D image of the subject. Until the arrival of Wolfmet 3D, most collimators were made from lead. Lead has several disadvantages – it is toxic and has to be handled with care and it is relatively soft. 

Most importantly, from the point of view of imaging systems, its density is much lower than that of tungsten. As a result, lead collimators are much less effective in screening out stray beams and, therefore, give inferior image quality. 

At present, the company offer 100% tungsten components but as this is such a rapidly developing market, they are looking at other options.