"By leveraging a portion of 3D printing for metal parts, we will be able to enhance best-in-class service with lower inventory investment," Jones said. "Desktop Metal's technology offers a new way for the manufacturing industry to be smarter, faster and more cost effective with metal 3D printing," Higgen said in a press release from Desktop Metal.ĭon Jones, the global parts strategy manager for construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc., stated in the same news release that the company's parts network has 21 distribution centers around the world, with hundreds of thousands of parts used in over 2,000 dealer locations. Uwe Higgen, a managing partner of BMW i Ventures, the carmaker's venture capital arm, said there's "a huge potential for the highly competitive automotive industry to accelerate product development and production" with additive manufacturing. Desktop Metalĭesktop Metal's Production System 3D printer set up as on a factory floor. Since its inception in October 2015, Desktop Metal claims it has raised $97 million in venture capital and attracted major investors, including GV (formerly Google Ventures), BMW Group, GE, Lowe's, NEA, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lux Capital, Saudi Aramco, and 3D printing leader Stratasys. The company is positioning it for the prototyping of metal parts." Companies doing small volumes of production parts may consider the Studio System. "The automotive industry is likely the 'sweet spot' for the Production System. "It's difficult to know the size of the potential market, but if the company can have success in the automobile market, it could be quite large," Wohlers said. Metal powder bed fusion 3D printing (also known as additive manufacturing) processes use either a laser or an electron beam to fuse together successive layers of powdered alloys to build an object.īoth the Studio and Production systems require a post-process furnace cycle, Wohlers explained, which is where the actual sintering and melting of the alloys occurs. "Most metal systems do not support nearly this many," Wohlers said in an email to Computerworld. Pricing for the Production system has not yet been announced, but the printer is expected to cost around $360,000 (with additional equipment pricing to be determined). For its part, the DM Production System is available on reserve in May, for shipping beginning in 2018. The printer sells for $49,900 and the complete system - including printer, debinder, and furnace - is $120,000. Ĭustomers can reserve the Studio System in May, with shipping beginning in September 2017. The company claims its DM Studio System is 10 times less expensive than existing metal prototyping technology. The DM Studio System includes both a printer and microwave-enhanced sintering furnace that can produce metal 3D printed parts in an engineer's office or on a shop floor. A two-year-old startup today unveiled two new 3D metal printing machines, one of which can create prototypes and the other production parts faster and cheaper than existing technology, the vendor says.ĭesktop Metal, based in Burlington, Mass., demonstrated the Desktop Metal (DM) Studio System, which it calls an "office-friendly" metal 3D-printing system for rapid prototyping, and the DM Production, a manufacturing-class printer it claims is 100 times faster than today's laser sintering machines.
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