Grandad's photos

Yesterday a man from Hamilton gave a presentation on how he can make car parts using laser sintering. This interesting process makes layers 20 microns thick from a CAD model. Very complex items can be manufactured, such as a hinge assembly with no hinge pin visible from outside. He had one of these rooks as an example, also a hollow golf ball.

The process is a bit like a photocopier, which lays a layer of print on the paper surface and cooks it on. This process takes a 20 micron layer of plastic, brass, steel, aluminium or whatever can be finely powdered, and each layer is sintered (welded) to the previous layer with a laser. Manufacturing in quantities hardly slows the machine down, whatever fits in the bin of about 0.5 m cube, so 200 of these rooks could be made simultaneously at little increase in cost over a one-off. Try making the steel spider below without investing huge man-hours or casting development costs. All you need now is a CAD drawing, and the centres can be hollow, to save weight.



There is more at http://www.warwick.ac.uk/atc/rpt/Techniques/sintering.htm

Just think, if the bin size could be expanded to 2m x 3m, a whole car chassis could be made of steel in one hit with no welding!