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Mar 18, 2019 | By Thomas

University of Huddersfield scientists have teamed with the Huddersfield company Reliance Precision for two successive 3D printing projects that have earned £2.25 million funding from Innovate UK.

This is the University's Medium Energy Ion Scattering accelerator (MEIS). CREDIT: University of Huddersfield

The first Innovate project undertaken by Reliance and Professor Jaap Van Den Berg, whose specialities include ion beam technology, was named RAMP-UP, which stands for Reliable Additive Manufacturing technology offering higher Productivity and Performance. The RAMP-UP project was awarded £1.4 million and has now successfully concluded. It has also led to the development of technology - currently being patented - that greatly reduces the need for the powder used during AM to undergo a time-consuming and costly process of preparation known as pre-sintering.

Following the success of RAMP-UP project, researchers launched the INSPIRE programme which has received funding of £850,000. The goal for the new two-year programme is to make pre-sintering completely unnecessary and enable metal powder to be recycled and reused by an EBAM system. This will mean the technology becomes more economic and productive and therefore more widely adopted.

These projects have been key elements of Reliance's overall programme to develop a new generation of electron beam additive manufacturing (EBAM) machines that will enable much wider adoption of this form of 3D printing, in which metal powder is placed under a vacuum and fused together by heat from a high-energy electron beam. Professor Van Den Berg envisages that when the technology is more widely available it will find new uses in a wide variety of sectors.

 

 

Posted in 3D Printing Technology

 

 

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