The process map could help manufacturers get the necessary cost information to a decision to utilize AM. All this research will benefit Arcam, not only from Carnegie Mellon but all their other 40 something machines being utilized for research around the world, including ORNL, North Carolina State Univ, Univ Erlangen, Sheffield Univ, CIRA, CSIRO etc. etc.
The cost difference of the powder between Arcam and EOS - EBM vs Laser showed a big disparity, close to 41% in the Carnegie Video from Oct 2015
Is this because of the size of the powder? Laser has to use a much smaller grain of powder vs EBM?
The recent video posted by Charlie from April 2016 showed a price of 166 kg in EURO's which is about $187 (about 25% less). I guess adding those three reactors at APC helped lower the cost, and with three more coming on board in 2016, bringing it to 8 reactors, should lower the cost even more.
So it begs the question, EBM is about 10x faster and powder cost is 60-70% cheaper, so why is EOS, SLM and Concept Laser selling so many more machines than Arcam (50)? I suspect our time is coming....
In 2015 EOS sold about 300-350 metal printers, Concept Laser 161, SLM 102.
I know EOS sells a lot of machines for Dental, the 2014 Arcam annual report stated they thought of the 450 metal installed base, 50 were insalled in the Ortho and Aero markets. The 2015 said EOS had about 2000 machines installed, about 800 constituted metal printers.
