Analysis of advantages of METAL 3D printing (titanium alloy)
March 24, 2022
An emerging technology that challenges traditional manufacturing methods. However, if additive technology is to be widely used, corrosion behavior of additive manufactured parts must be considered.
Over the past few decades, there has been a huge impact on optimizing printing devices, including highly reliable lasers, and inexpensive high-performance computing hardware and software. Currently, metal 3D printing has attracted attention due to its unique advantages in producing metal materials compared to other manufacturing technologies.
Let's take a titanium alloy as an example. Titanium and titanium alloys have attracted great attention in additive manufacturing technology because titanium combines the wide range of industrial applications of high-performance parts with high machining costs, hard molding and long lead times for conventional machining. In titanium alloys, Ti6Al4V is the most widely used material for many engineering parts and biomedical implants.
The material is highly resistant to corrosion and has high ductility. These features make it ideal for implementation in multiple industries. 3D printing titanium has many benefits.
For aerospace applications, the use of titanium and 3D-printed components often helps reduce purchase rates. A term derived from the aerospace industry refers to the correlation between the weight of the originally purchased material and the weight of the finished product.
In conventional manufacturing, for example, the buy/sell ratio for titanium aircraft parts can range from 12:1 to 25:1. This means you need 12-25 kilograms of raw materials to produce 1 kilogram of parts. In this case, up to 90% of the material can be processed.
Metal 3D printing can reduce the ratio of titanium from 3:1 to 12:1. That's because metal 3D printers typically use only the amount of material needed to make parts, and the supporting structure produces little waste. For expensive materials such as titanium, reducing procurement costs is more important than saving costs.
Additive manufacturing can also enhance the lightweight properties of titanium due to topology optimization. Engineers use topology optimization software to set certain requirements, such as load and stiffness constraints, and then have software tools optimize the initial design to meet those requirements.
With this optimization, all unnecessary materials can be removed from the design to create a lightweight and robust component. Topological optimization designs can usually only be manufactured with the help of additive manufacturing techniques.
The aerospace industry, in particular, appreciates this advantage because lightweight, 3D-printed titanium parts can reduce weight and improve aircraft performance. While titanium 3D printing has many advantages, there are still some challenges to consider.
1. The first is the need to develop standards for using titanium with additive technology. Some companies are already taking steps in this direction.
2. The second challenge is the high cost of titanium powder. Titanium powder optimized for 3D printing, for example, costs between $300 and $600. Titanium 3D printing has become a valuable technology in aerospace, medicine and automotive fields.
The main reason is the superior properties of titanium combined with the ability to reduce waste in 3D printing and create complex and lightweight designs.
In the future, as the cost of titanium declines and more applications are discovered, titanium 3D printing will become an ideal manufacturing alternative for a wide range of industries.
