Replies to post #40411 on Liquidmetal Technologies Inc (LQMT)

[notshir]

"Shorting" always comes before the run. (TAO)

[Anax]

Thank you Watts. Apple may not be so interested in these patents, but I think its huge for aerospace applications. Referring the speed:

"According to an embodiment as shown in FIG. 3, a BMG powder can be deposited to selected positions on a cooled platen and immediately (e.g., within 0.1 second, 0.5 second, 1 second or 5 seconds from the time the powder contacts a layer below) heated by a suitable heater so as to fuse the powder to a layer below, preferably the powder being heated to a temperature above a melting temperature of the powder."

"The heater can be any suitable heater such as a laser, electron beam, ultrasonic sound wave, infrared light, etc."

Though the patent gives details about the speed of the heating process step, the whole process will likely need a lot of time (hours, day). Here is an article about the Electron Beam Melting Technology of Arcam Ab:

http://www.engineering.com/3DPrinting/3DPrintingArticles/ArticleID/6154/3D-Printing-The-Future-For-Aerospace-And-Defense-May-Be-EBM-Electron-Beam-Melting-Predicts-PwC.aspx

"Electron Beam Melting (EBM) has emerged as a higher quality alternative to laser melting. The very high-energy density of the electron beam technology enables it to produce fully dense, void-free parts."

"The biggest hurdle to mass adoption is processing speed. Because of its intricate, layer-by-layer nature, current 3D printing technology takes hours to days to complete jobs. This cycle time is sufficient for prototypes and very small production quantities, but it quickly becomes untenable at higher production volumes.

However, advances in electron beam and powder feedstock technologies may enable higher speeds, making EBM a viable production technology suitable for many more applications, including those for most aerospace and defense programs."

This is just my speculation: but maybe Arcam Ab or EOS of Munich may become a Certified Liquidmetal partner in the future. It could be a business model like the one LM is now going to pursue with Engel. Liquidmetal could help EOS or Arcam developing modules for controlling vacuum and temperature-time-transformation for amorphous alloys, which can be integrated into the DLMS or EBM Machines. From a scientific point of view, its just an intrinsically assumption, but I think that the viscous-amorphous phase of BMG is a perfect complementary technology for laser and/or electron beam melting of metals, not yet much recognized. Because of the low Melting Temperature and the viscosity of BMG, the heater needs less energy and time to weld the layers. One can see the excitement by LM scientists in this blog comment by Glenton Jelbert, half year ago:

"We certainly believe that Liquidmetal will be ubiquitous eventually. There is a lot of potential in technologies such as sheet rolling and 3D printing.

It is certainly possible to weld samples. We have just got a set of tensile specimens molded, which we are going to use for welding tests with itself, titanium, stainless steel etc. So look out for a blog on welding trials in the next month or two!

But the experience that we have had indicates that Liquidmetal welds to itself like nothing else. There are cross-sections of the welds, where it is hard to tell where the weld is! The purpose of the testing with the tensile specimens will be to understand whether the welded Liquidmetal really behaves like virgin material."