Multi-Laser Series - A Technical Economic Perspective on Multi-Laser Powder Bed Fusion 3D Printers
John Barnes, The Barnes Global Advisors
Editor’s note: As metal additive manufacturing (AM) is increasingly adopted for production, the two technologies coming to the forefront are powder bed fusion (PBF) and binder jetting. But how do they stack up? Can binder jetting exceed the productivity of multi-laser PBF? Are the design advantages the same? Does one process make greater economic sense than the other? This article is the first in a contributed series authored by John Barnes of The Barnes Global Advisors exploring these issues. Read Parts Two and Three. —Stephanie Hendrixson
As any fan of Austin Powers could tell you “laser beams” are awesome, with the implication that more is always better (in terms of both sharks and laser beams). In this series, we will not be addressing lasers on sharks, but we will dip our toe into the international mystery of when and why multiple lasers make sense for powder bed fusion (PBF) 3D printing.
Laser proliferation began around 2015 when the first twin laser systems came onto the market. The SLM 280HL was the first machine fitted with a twin laser arrangement which immediately impacted the productivity of the SLM280 output. While there were obvious commercial benefits, e.g. productivity, new technical questions arose which required attention prior to production use.
We will be using “productivity” a lot in this discussion, and unlike the comical reference to Austin Powers, we take this quite seriously. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines productivity as “a ratio between the output volume and volume of inputs.” It is the measure of how efficient inputs, lasers in our scenario, are being used to produce a level of output, i.e. parts. If adding a second laser increases the cost of the system without increasing its output, it would decrease productivity. Naturally, our desire as users is to increase parts produced per unit time and reduce cost per part. Therefore, let us take a little dive into the scenarios where a multi-laser 3D printer makes good business sense.