Takeaway: in June 2020, recently reported bears at the South Pole has supported metal 3 d printing vendors VELO3D accumulative total was $150 million (1 billion yuan) financing, equipment sold to several aerospace companies (such as capsules, Honeywell), as well as oil and gas customers, there are quite a few readers asked on WeChat bears at the South Pole, "the no-supporting metal what on earth is the 3 d printing technology, depend on unreliable?"

In order to answer users' questions, South Pole Bear specially collected this article "1 Billion Yuan Funded! Unsupported Metal 3D Printing Velo Neck Patent Found" (you can download the patent file at the end of the article).

Velo3D, a developer of direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) additive manufacturing systems and print-preparation software, has developed SupportFree Geometries unsupported metal 3D printing technology.Founded in 2014, the company spent the first 4 years of silent research and development. In 2015, the company obtained A round of financing of 22.1 million dollars.It first revealed its sapphire DMLS system at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in 2018.Key to the Sapphire system is Velo3D's intelligent fusion technology, which simulates and predicts part deformation and eliminates support structures.The intelligent fusion process adjusts the part design to balance the deformation, with feedforward closed-loop pool control and in-situ metering data, resulting in parts with little support structure.

Additive metal manufacturing, or 3D printing, is mainly a welding process with rapid solidification of molten pool.During solidification and cooling, thermal and residual stresses are generated.Support has two functions: one is as a fixed part, fixed parts, to prevent thermal deformation and movement;The second is heat conduction.Temporary support structures are required for direct energy deposition (DED) and conventional powder bed fusion (PBF) techniques and are usually removed by a post-printing processing operation.Post-processing increases the cost and makes the cycle longer.More importantly, it limits the design freedom of metal 3D printing.

For decades, metal 3D printing companies have relied on support structures to hold parts to construction plates and manage them thermally.In general, we have come to rely on these supports to assist in printing low-angle structures less than 45°.However, these low-angle geometries are also prone to create support in internal passages that are inaccessible to the assembly during part integration.The 3D printing is partly fixed to the prototype design by using supports to fasten the parts to the construction plate.

Unlike existing powder bed welding solutions, Velo3D has the unique ability to print drape at low angles and as low as 0° (horizontal), as well as large diameters and up to 100mm of inner tubes without support.This not only eliminates the hassle of post-processing, but also overcomes the 45° rule -- any Angle less than 45° requires support.Velo3D gives designers the freedom to build, unleashing a wealth of designs that can be 3D-printed for production.

According to Velo3D, the core technology is the patented re-coater process, known as the contactless scraper.Instead of using a traditional contact scraper to lay the powder, it uses a non-contact technology, which has a lot of benefits.Very good at producing aspect ratio, thin-walled parts, large parts, etc.In short, the blade does not come into contact with the metal powder bed when laying powder.After the powder is spread out, a scraper non-contact process is carried out on the powder to ensure that the powder is absolutely flat.Again, these are not in contact with the actual bed or parts, enabling a high degree of freedom that enables unsupported metal 3D printing.

What's the secret of unsupported metal 3D printing?

As of June 2020, Velo3D has approximately 35 patents licensed.Antarctic bears found that they not only applied for patents in the United States and Europe, but also some of the patents were applied for in China early, which shows their importance to patent protection.The bears have collected 35 patent applications with detailed technical descriptions, many of which are more than 100 pages long!I hope it was enlightening for you.For example,

Patent 1. "Excellent 3D printing CN108698126A".Submitted December 9, 2016 • Published October 23, 2018This disclosure provides a variety of instruments and systems for 3D printing.The disclosure provides 3D (3D) printing methods, instruments, software and systems for stepping and repeating energy irradiation processes;Control the material characteristics and/or deformation of 3D objects;Reduce distortion in printed 3D objects;And make the material bed flat.

Patent 2. "Accurate 3D printing CN108883575A".• Application date: 2017-02-16• Published 2018-11-23.The disclosure provides methods, instruments and systems for 3D (3D) printing, in particular a controller that regulates the formation of at least one 3D object (e.g. in real time during 3D printing);And the non-temporary computer-readable media that facilitate it.For example, a controller that adjusts at least part of the deformation of a 3D object.Control can be in situ control.The control can be real-time control during the 3D printing process.For example, the control may be during a phenomenal pulse.This disclosure provides a variety of methods, instruments, systems, and software for evaluating the basic length scales of molten pools, as well as tools for increasing the accuracy of 3D printing.

Patent 3. "Equipment, system and method for unsupported 3D printing CN108436082A".Priority June 20, 2014 Submitted June 19, 2015 Published August 24, 2018The invention provides a three-dimensional (3D) object, a 3D printing process, and a method, apparatus and system for the manufacture of a 3D object.The method, equipment and system of the invention can reduce or eliminate the need for auxiliary support parts.The invention provides a three-dimensional (3D) object printed using a printing process, method, equipment and system described herein.

Among them, the core is patent 3. "Equipment, System and Method of Unsupported 3D Printing CN108436082A", the application is 129 pages long.Hereby share with the reader research understanding, welcome to download.To download the patent PDF document, please reply to the key word "Velo3D Unsupported" at the background of South Pole Bear.

https://v.qq.com/x/page/l3047bp1lus.html (video links: VELO3D no-supporting metal 3 d printer)

Transferred from the Antarctic bear 3D printing