Colibrium Additive discusses its commercially available Binder Jet Series 3
September 26, 2024
Colibrium Additive – a GE Aerospace company, recently promoted its Binder Jet Series 3 metal Additive Manufacturing machine at IMTS, following the announcement of its commercial availability at Rapid+TCT earlier this year. In a Q&A with product manager Brian Birkmeyer, the company shared more information about the new Binder Jetting machine.
After explaining why the Binder Jet Series 3 was initially launched with little fanfare, Birkmeyer was asked what the business case for Binder Jetting actually is. “There is a sweet spot for Binder Jet where users can achieve the geometry freedoms additive enables but with lower overall part cost compared to other metal additive technologies, largely because the raw material is less expensive, and the throughput is much higher,” he said.
TRUSTED CONTENT. TARGETED AUDIENCE
Advertise with Metal AM and access a global base of 50,000+ AM professionals
| Contact us |
“A key for the Series 3 system is that if customers start their development on this machine, they can then truly scale it into production,” continued Birkmeyer. “There is no need to worry about developing a process on one machine that may not then transfer to a larger machine. That said, we’ve intentionally built off our years of development on our previous system—the Series 2—and have demonstrated that there is a high transferability to the Series 3 given it uses largely the same core process and physics, just improved upon to reduce variability, and better enable consistent, scaled production.”
Explaining the material options for the launch machine, Birkmeyer said, “In terms of materials, though we’re launching with 316L widely available, we have experience in, and our system has been designed to handle, a range of different materials. Though we don’t offer more reactive materials today, we’ve been mindful of our product design to incorporate them in the future, taking measured steps along our technology roadmap before we get there.”
The Series 3 has a build volume of 500 x 500 x 495 mm, and has a standard layer thickness of between 75 μm and 100 μm. In certain formats, the machine is capable of between 20 μm and 200 μm layers. At 100 μm, the print speed is around 5,000 – 7,000 cm3/h.
When asked what Colibrium Additive does differently to its competitors, Birkmeyer shared, “Our binder system has been in development for many years now, and only needs to have a small percent of binder by volume in the printed part yet still achieves a high green strength. A critical element we’ve focused on is to ensure that binder also burns out cleanly, key for many target applications out there.”
Birkmeyer also discussed the need for robustness, repeatability and reliability, commenting, “Binder Jet has a lot more process variables than many other metal additive technologies. Therefore, there is also a lot of variation between the process and end results for different OEMs. For example, there is a wider particle size distribution and varied atomisation methodologies for powder and the binder and cleaner affect the process greatly. The temperature and humidity in the build chamber can affect build results, cure, debind and sinter cycles all have their own impacts on part yields and the user typically must also think about x, y, and z variations throughout the build box.”
“These variables all affect the material and dimensional properties of a final sintered part, plus if a part is not strong enough in the as-printed state, then there will be part size and wall thickness limitations. If the binder cannot burn out cleanly, then residual carbide, oxide or porosity issues will arise that are going to plague users downstream in more demanding applications,” he added. “We are focused on delivering sintered, final parts that meet material properties and dimensional requirements, not just on the printing operation. We’ve spent years learning and developing the equipment, materials, and process, and have focused on providing tight control on certain variables while also achieving low dimensional and density variation in the final parts regardless of where they were located in the build box.”
Read the full Q&A here.
