Multi-Laser Series - Speed Is Relative in AM: A Data-Driven Comparison of Multi-Laser Powder Bed Fusion and Binder Jet Processing
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 One and Three.
In this second article of three, we tackle the “buzzy” technology of additive manufacturing (AM) for 2020: binder jet processing (BJP). BJP is an additive manufacturing technology you have likely heard more about in 2020 than in previous years. The key is in the title, processing, and we will discuss the impact of this key step on speed.
BJP has been around since the beginning; Dr. Ely Sachs coined the term “3D printing” about BJP. Binder jetting’s early success was in 3D printing sand molds for foundries and it was later adapted to infiltrated or metal matrix composites. Of late, BJP of single metals is the current rage. You would be justifiably confused about the motivation for our article, because we have all heard about the speed of BJP. It is logical to assume with expensive CAPEX, like 3D printers, that faster would be better, but this often obfuscates several important factors. There is a difference between the print speed, the effective print speed, and then the actual cost to produce the component. For this article, we will investigate and compare:
Actual print speed, or the speed at which the printer makes a shape.
Effective print speed, or the resolved speed of the printing when considering the print time and required steps to make the print useful
Finally, we will have a look at the final part cost to see if that speed advantage translates to cost savings.