1000x faster Metal Printing

The challenge with all these claims is that there’s no standard measure for printing speed, making these hard to compare. The best seems to be kg / h.

The SPEE3D printer has the potential to turn 3D metal printing, which currently is just making prototypes of parts, into a tool for manufacturing actual parts for use. It is up to 1000x quicker than conventional 3D metal printers.

Copper Rocket Nozzle
Print Time: 199 minutes
Weight: 17.9KG
Cost: $716
Speed: 5.4 kg / h

This 265mm x 300mm high, aerospace rocket nozzle liner was printed in pure copper on the WarpSPEE3D. Parts like these are typically machined out of solid wrought copper, a process that takes weeks and costs 10s of 1000s of $. The lead time for producing these parts is also typically around 6 months.

2022-03-20: Seurat uses a pixelization type approach to speed things up.

With the equivalent of 2.4m pixels projected in each square, the machine can print parts with layers just 25 microns thick at a rate of 3kg an hour. This is 10X faster than a typical L-BPF machine at such a fine resolution. Production versions of the Seurat Large-Area Pulsed Laser Powder Bed Fusion printer are now being built, and future generations of the machine should end up being 100x faster.

Area printing will be competitive with mass-production factory processes, such as machining, stamping and casting. By 2030 it will be possible to produce silverware for $25 a kilo. “That means we could actually print silverware cheaper than you could stamp them out”.

2023-05-13: Seurat lands a big customer

The part Seurat will produce for Siemens Energy is a turbine sealing segment made from a nickel-based alloy — it’s a component the company hadn’t previously considered as a candidate for 3D printing.

Over the 6-year length of the contract, Seurat will produce 59 tons of the sealing segments and related components. The big benefit is the potential cost savings, but the approach also reduces the emissions associated with producing the part, because Seurat’s technology is powered with solar and wind electricity that the company sources locally. The equation Seurat uses to talk about this is 1 metric ton of emissions reductions for every ton of components made. The approach also dramatically reduces the feedstock needed for production, which cuts down on scrap.

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