Desktop Metal, a leader in mass production and turn-key additive manufacturing solutions, has qualified the use of nickel alloy IN625 for the ‘Production System’ platform, which leverages patent-pending ‘Single Pass Jetting’ (SPJ) technology ‘designed to achieve the fastest build speeds in the metal AM industry’.

A nickel-chromium ‘superalloy’, IN625 is characterised by its high-strength, resistance to corrosion and oxidation, excellent weldability, and ability to withstand extreme elevated temperatures under load. IN625 is used extensively in high-temperature aerospace applications, while its corrosion resistance under a range of temperatures and pressures also sees it used for marine, power generation, and chemical-processing applications.

Jonah Myerberg, Desktop Metal’s co-founder and CTO, said: “As Desktop Metal continues to drive our internal R&D efforts to qualify more materials for the Production System platform, we are excited to offer customers an all-inclusive binder jetting solution to print fully characterised IN625 with excellent properties.

“We anticipate continuing the rapid expansion of our materials portfolio in the coming months as we look to accelerate the deployment of our AM 2.0 solutions to produce end-use metal parts at scale across a growing array of industries and applications.”

Examples of key use cases include hydraulic spools that adjust the flow rates of control valves. IN625 is an essential material for these spools to ensure longevity and withstand highly corrosive environments in oil and gas.

When produced using traditional manufacturing methods, the spool must typically be assembled from several machined components. With Production System technology, each hydraulic spool can be consolidated and printed as a single part instead of multiple components, significantly reducing the assembly labor costs as thousands can be printed at once with no user input.

Meanwhile, turbine blades used in gas or steam turbines are some of the most challenging components to mass produce due to their complex geometries and complex cooling channels that ensure the blades maintain an optimal temperature.

The Production System enables the 3-D printing of such geometries, which would otherwise be challenging to produce using traditional manufacturing methods and require advanced casting and machining techniques.

IN625 is an ideal material for these blades because of its high tensile, creep, and rupture strength, fatigue and thermal-fatigue strength, and corrosion resistance.

Developed by the inventors of binder jetting and single-pass inkjet technology, the Production System is an industrial manufacturing platform powered by Desktop Metal’s SPJ technology.

It is ‘designed to achieve speeds up to 100-times those of legacy powder bed fusion additive manufacturing technologies and enable production quantities of up to millions of parts per year at costs competitive with conventional mass production techniques’ (www.desktopmetal.com/products/production).