Sigma Labs Inc (SASI)

[GetRich1day]

Kanya, Thanks much for continuing to share your DD on this board. Would be awesome to team this software to understand the oodles of parameter settings required to ensure consistency and identify that recipe that IPQA will utilize to ensure rapid qualification of parts.

Additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3D printing, is exploding right now. GE estimates that by 2025, more than 20 percent of new products will involve additive processes of some kind. But there’s no cookbook that standardizes the recipes, which have oodles of parameters that determine the properties of the final part. “It’s like baking a cake. You need to start with the right recipe, then you need to have the right ingredients and the right oven,” Vinciquerra says. “A cup of materials science, a tablespoon of design and a whole lot of machine-control strategies must come together and yield perfection.” Technologies like direct metal laser melting (DMLM), for example, can involve several lasers as powerful as 1 kilowatt—enough to burn a hole in a wall—fusing as many as 1,250 layers of fine superalloy powder into the desired shape. Some large builds can take days to finish.

Last week, GE opened a new industrial-scale 3D-printing center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It will work closely with Vinciquerra’s team, test their findings and get GE factories quickly cooking with additive.

His team has already started testing and tabling the powdered materials used in additive manufacturing and their properties. “We want to know how they come together, how they affect each other and what machines and processes are best suited for them,” Vinciquerra says. “It’s just like a gourmet recipe. We need to know how our ingredients are going to react in a mixer or an oven. And what changes can we make to those ingredients, the mixer or the oven to produce a more palatable dish?”

http://www.france-metallurgie.com/index.php/2016/05/07/these-scientists-are-writing-the-3d-printing-cookbook-for-ge-us/