This is not your Prusa Mendel. This is the Godzilla of advanced industrial 3d printers, a hybrid metal laser sintering and high precision milling machine.
It can produce highly precise medical and dental implants and high end custom aerospace industry parts. The structures can have intricate internal structure that can decrease weight, improve cooling or add advanced structural properties.
Lumex Avance can also print complex molds and casts with integrated cooling for high cycle injection molding.
Typically, milling produces debris, or chips, of removed material that vary in size. However, the LUMEX machine utilizes dry cutting, meaning no coolant is used. For this reason, the cutters are very small and the machining metal removal is a fine powder. Thus, the porosity is theoretically equal to the particle size of the powder and gets incorporated into the powder mix. Usually, no removal of milling chips is needed.
Machines like this are the future of manufacturing which is already here, just not evenly distributed.
Technical specifications:
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Matsuura will go to north American market with their hybrid 3d printer. They plan to sell ten machines in 2014 which cost 800,000 - 1,000,000 USD per piece. This reminds me of the time in early history of computing when IBM executives claimed that the world needs only 8 computers.
Matsuura press release in PDF:
http://www.matsuura.co.jp/english/pdf/2013/Matsuura_PR_LUMEX_Avance-25_Release_in_North_America.pdf
Matsura Lumex page:
http://www.matsuura.co.jp/english/contents/products/lumex.html
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It can produce highly precise medical and dental implants and high end custom aerospace industry parts. The structures can have intricate internal structure that can decrease weight, improve cooling or add advanced structural properties.
Lumex Avance can also print complex molds and casts with integrated cooling for high cycle injection molding.
Typically, milling produces debris, or chips, of removed material that vary in size. However, the LUMEX machine utilizes dry cutting, meaning no coolant is used. For this reason, the cutters are very small and the machining metal removal is a fine powder. Thus, the porosity is theoretically equal to the particle size of the powder and gets incorporated into the powder mix. Usually, no removal of milling chips is needed.
Machines like this are the future of manufacturing which is already here, just not evenly distributed.
Technical specifications:
Matsuura will go to north American market with their hybrid 3d printer. They plan to sell ten machines in 2014 which cost 800,000 - 1,000,000 USD per piece. This reminds me of the time in early history of computing when IBM executives claimed that the world needs only 8 computers.
Matsuura press release in PDF:
http://www.matsuura.co.jp/english/pdf/2013/Matsuura_PR_LUMEX_Avance-25_Release_in_North_America.pdf
Matsura Lumex page:
http://www.matsuura.co.jp/english/contents/products/lumex.html
