In the Press

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a rapidly growing industry that has the capability of being used for an infinite number of applications. Whether it be for automotive, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, or any other industry, the preparation of the powder for this market is extremely important.

There are a number of different types of 3D printers and various powders that can be used to make parts in these printers. For Electronic Beam Melting (EBM) the required powder specification is from 107 microns down to 44 microns. For the Selective Laser Melting (SLM) process, a fine powder is required as the powder must be sized to the range of 44 microns down to 15 microns.

The main reason that powders used for AM have to be in these specified size ranges is the effect they have within the bed of the 3D printer. The way that the material layers in the 3D printer bed is critical, and removing the sub 44 micron and sub 15 micron particles from the metal powder going into the 3D printer is as critical. Without removing these fines, the powder will not layer properly in the bed and can significantly affect the way the laser melts the powder. There are a couple ways to ensure that the material that is going into your powder is going to meet these tight specifications.

When preparing metal powders for the AM industry, the name of the game is maximizing yield without sacrificing efficiency. There are two main processes currently being used to effectively prepare powder for AM. The first way to size this powder is using an air classifier and the other is to use a screening or sieving system. Each method has benefits and drawbacks that dictate where each is best applied. As technologies have advanced, the ability to create more precise particle size distributions has been enhanced.

Air classifiers use air velocity and a classification wheel to separate a powder based on size. The feed rate, air flow, classifier wheel size opening, and wheel speed are all adjusted to determine where the separation occurs. The classifier allows for separations at small sizes, and at high-volume processing this is clearly a separation technology. There are drawbacks to this type of system for AM powders.

The selective laser melting method requires almost all -10 and most of the -15 micron particles be removed from the powder. To attain these targets with an air classifier, there will also be 15-25 micron particles that are removed in the fines in order to make sure all of the fines are classified out. This affects yield as well as the distribution of the powder that makes the bed material for processing.  Air classification also comes with a large capitalized installation and ongoing operational costs.

The other option to meet tight specifications is to use an advanced screening system. Until a few years ago, making a cut at 15 microns on a screening system would have been extremely difficult and time consuming. Recent advances in technology have made it possible to remove this fine product using a screener. The key is energy. Energy on the screen surface allows the fines to easily fall through the hole openings that now do not blind. The higher energy is just what the heavy and finer powder needs to screen at high volumes and excellent efficiencies. The ability to successfully and continuously separate this material at low micron sizes means that companies making powder for the AM industry can maximize yields by not losing as much good product as they would with an air classifier. This creates huge benefits for the AM manufacturers, as well as other industries.

However, as with classifiers, there are limiting factors to using a screening system. Currently, very few companies are able to produce screen cloth at less than 20 microns in stainless steel. The AM industry requires stainless steel contact surfaces and expensive 20 micron cloth is currently being used to remove the sub 10 micron particle fines. The performance benefits of these new systems outweigh the added costs, and as the market continues to grow, many screen cloth companies are using new techniques to develop stainless steel cloth in these lower micron ranges.

Bob Grotto is owner and president of Elcan Industries Inc., Tuckahoe, NY. He has over 25 years of screening experience and has been running screening equipment at Elcan’s toll manufacturing facility since 2000. Grotto is a former board member of PEMA.

Recently, a chemical company opening a new $60 million manufacturing plant discovered a major problem. The company built the plant to manufacture a spherical bulk solid product, but the manufacturing process also generated particulate fines that were forming agglomerates.

As the 1/8-inch product spheres dried, the fine powder would clump together and stuck to the product. These agglomerates needed to be removed before the product could be delivered to the client. Traditional screening methods weren’t working because the agglomerates were similar in size to the product and the screeners weren’t capable of breaking up the agglomerated material.

“We attempted to remove these particulates in the plant by both a gyrator screener and a standard circular vibrating screener,” says the plant’s senior manager. “However, these processes were not vigorous enough to either break up the large agglomerates or break the agglomerates off the product.”

Searching for a solution

With a production deadline approaching, the company needed a fast solution to remove the agglomerates. The company turned to Elcan Industries, a screening equipment supplier basic in Tuckahoe, NY.

“Elcan Routinely does a particle separation work for us,” says the plant’s senior manager. “We knew they had several types of equipment that we could explore to solve this problem.”

The supplier has a 20,000-square-foot testing facility with 10 tolling bays, where equipment can be set up to either perform a test or for full-scale processing. Elcan tested several different models of screeners with the product to try of screeners with the product to try to remove the agglomerates. Once option was a tumbler screener that used air wands underneath the screen to push the material up and break off the agglomerates. However, the agglomerates were too aged to be broken up by the action of forcing the particle up and into the roof of the screener.\

Next, the supplier tried a high-energy screener that imparted energy directly into the 1,500-micron screen cloth. The hope was that the energy in the screen would break up the agglomerates to a small enough size to pass through the screen cloth but this didn’t work either.

Breaking down the agglomerates

While talking about the problem in a conference room, the supplier’s engineers noticed that if they dropped a marker pen with enough force, the agglomerates would break, but the final product was strong enough to withstand the impact. The supplier went back to a curricular, high-energy screener but added several hundred 35-millimeter polyurethane balls on top of the mesh to impact the mixture of agglomerates and products.

The high-energy screen vibration shot the balls into the air, and when the balls came down, they broke the unwanted material off the product and crushed the agglomerates. This allowed the fine material to pass through the screen while leaving the finished product behind. However, the screeners circular shape encouraged everything to discharge from the top of the screen, including the balls.

To combat this, the supplier decided to use a rectangular, high-energy screener and placed partitions inside the divide the screen into three sections and prevent the balls from being discharged. A small gas below the partitions allows the product and agglomerate to pass through freely. The balls break around 70 percent of the agglomerates in the first section, finish up most of the remaining agglomerates in the second section, and polish off whatever remains in the third section.

A vacuum then sucks down the crushed material through the screen and collects it in a bathhouse. The product exits the screener and can then be shipped tp the client. The supplier set ip four large machine in two of the tolling bays to process the truckloads of product, allowing the the chemical company to meet its deadline. PBE

This year’s RAPID + TCT was jam packed with new 3D printing technology and was by far the largest 3D printing expo that I’ve personally seen. There was an awful lot to take in. So where to begin? If only there was a rundown highlighting some of the most significant new technologies that attendees were to witness in the exhibit hall. Well, on the first day of RAPID, Todd Grimm packed his rapid-fire What’s New talk with loads of 3D printing news, highlighting fantastic new technologies to see on the show floor. And unlike some snooze-fests (I’m not the biggest fan of lengthy lectures), Grimm’s talk was energetic, and his frenetic energy was infectious. It revitalized the audience.

Todd Grimm has been working in the additive manufacturing field for 25 years, is the president of T. A. Grimm & Associates and was named as one of TCT Magazine’s 20 most influential in the additive manufacturing community. As the author of User’s Guide to Rapid Prototyping, he’s literally written the book on 3D printing, so when he talks about what’s new in the industry, you’d be wise to listen closely. And boy, there were loads of new products, materials and processes to keep track of, as Grimm explained:

“A lot of the pieces are falling into place on what’s going to build our future and allow us to do more and more applications, be more powerful, more efficient, and I’m really pleased to be up before you to help paint the picture of what this puzzle is looking like and what pieces are now dropping into place. But be forewarned, this is a fast-paced presentation,” said Grimm. “I’ve done (this) several years, I usually use a metaphor: it’s like drinking from a firehose, there’s information flying at you from the stage. Last year, I used the metaphors of let’s get rid of the regulator of the hose, you’re drinking right from the fire hydrant. THIS YEAR, you’re going to be trying to drink from a wall of water, FLOOD WATERS raging towards you!”

Grimm went on to explain that much of the new innovations seen at RAPID weren’t even possible just 12 months ago. In fact, there were so many developments in additive manufacturing in the last 12 months that it would be too much to cover during his presentation. His goal was to provide an overview of a plethora of new developments, that the audience could delve further into on their own, with some caveats, as he explained:

“(This is a) carefully selected, tip of the iceberg, not everything that is out there,” warned Grimm. “Now keep in mind these aren’t all products that you can purchase today; some is early research, some is late stage research, some is alpha, some is beta, some in launch. All different phases, but everything related to the mechanical engineer, design engineer, manufacturing personality. No construction, no dentistry, no bio in here, that’s the list I came up with, that’s the list that I had to choose from.”

He started by laying news in additive manufacturing from August 2016 through January 1, 2017, and continued listing developments through May 2017. Grimm utilized the ASTM classification system, to break down the updates by manufacturing technology; Binder jetting (consisting of a bed of powered material with a binder material jetted onto it like an ink jet printer), directed energy deposition (a process using a focused energy source with material deposited into that focal point of energy), material extrusion (extruding material in a continuous bead or thread), material jetting (jetting material as opposed to jetting a binder agent), power bed fusion (a bed of powder with the material melted or sintered by a laser or other energy source), sheet lamination (sheets of material bonded together), vat photopolymerization (uses photopolymers and light to cure it), and hybrid (uses one or more of the other ASTM processes or other manufacturing technology in the same machine).

Under the category of auxiliary, which Grimm also referred to as the mundane, he highlighted Freeman Tech for their FT4 Powder Rheometer for testing the flowability (otherwise known as rheology) and process-ability of powder. He classified it as “early-stage for R&D material development or process optimization.” Elcan has developed a Hi-sifter, which uses high energy to screen metal powders for contaminants, sieving down to 10 microns or less to help with particle distribution for metal 3D printing, to get high-quality prints. Ruwac USA’s NS35 is a dust collection system with an emergency separator and built-in vacuum to safely collect conductive metals, explosive or impact-sensitive materials or glowing media. PostProcess Technologies specializes in post processing of additive manufactured parts. Their SF DECI Rectangular is their largest machine for surface finishing and was on display at RAPID. Grimm was also excited to announce that Formlabs would be introducing their new Form Wash + Form Cure.

Manufacturers in need of fine screening of metal and other powders have long looked to Elcan Industries for its technology and expertise. “We can find solutions for problems that are seemingly impossible,” says Bob Grotto, president and owner of the Tuckahoe, N.Y, company. “We can help companies find a screening or grinding solution that can help them make a product in a much better way, whether it’s a turbine blade for a jet engine or a 3-D printed body part.”

The company specializes in selling screening, grinding, and classifying machine from European and Japanese manufactures into the American market. Machines offered by the company are used in a variety of industries including chemical, fertilizer, building aggregate, food, plastics and pharmaceutical manufacturing. “We don’t have commodity technology,” he adds. “We bring high-end technology from overseas to America.”

Elcan’s specialty technology attracted Grotto to the company in 1993, when he began researching it prior to his purchase. The company at the time was using a tumbler machine manufactured in Germany that had features unseen in the United States. “American companies were all offering the same basic technology,” Grotto says. “We want to be at the forefront with companies who are advancing technology.”

Although the marker of the tumbler machine would eventually take the technology elsewhere, the company quickly rebounded by finding a similar machine. That product line, from the German manufacturer Minox, quickly caught on, doubling Elcan’s sales and leading to multiple installations. Elcan later supplemented the tumbler line with a screening machine developed by a company in Israel and manufactured in Italy. Elcan offered those machines through 2013. Today, the company offers the Minox line of tumbler screeners as well as a line of grinding machines from manufacturer STM Micron. The grinding line includes fluidized jet mill, cryogenic pin milling, since milling and air classification machines.

Elcan also carries RHEWUM type WA high-performance vibration screening machines used to classify bulk material in the finest to medium-grain size range.

The company recently added the Hi-sifter, a Japanese machines that can screen titanium powder to as fine as 10 microns, to its offerings. The company will display the machine in May dire the RAPID conference and expo in Pittsburgh.

The Hi-Sifter’s body and product contact areas are all stainless steel, making it ideal for the processing of powder used to produce parts for the aerospace and other industries. “The Hi-Sifter is the only machine in the world that can screen metal powders this fine and not have any come into contact with any contaminants,”  Grotto says.

Problem-Solvers

Elcan Industries in the year 2000 expanded its offering in response to customer requests. “We had many customer buying these machines, but they were taking three to four months to be made, so we started processing materials in our lab for them,” Grotto says. The company uses the same high-quality machines it offers to clients to perform this work. These machines are less prone to being clogged than conventional machines.

This quickly led to the company offering toll processing services for materials including aluminum, graphite and glass powders; plastics; and cosmetics. “Our best customers are those who have a large return on investment from our abilities,” he adds.

Elcan’s screening work includes processing 5 million pounds of aluminum powder for a major metal powder manufacturer, as well as screening glass flakes used in electronics manufacturing. The company’s Tuckahoe facility includes ten bays dedicated to toll processing. Toll Processing services offered by the company include screening, grinding and classifying, mixing and blending, packaging and repackaging, and magnetic separation.

“This facility gives us the ability to take on products that are causing customers problems,” Grotto says. “We have enough technique and expertise working with our suppliers’ machines to know how to get them to go things above and beyond even what the manufacturer thought it could do.”

“People come to us when they can’t do something with conventional equipment,” he adds. “We can solve their problems and give them a permanent solution they can use in their factory and profit from.” Mt

Elcan Industries, based in Tuckahoe, New York, USA, has reported that its new Hi-Sifter screening machines, originally developed for the pharmaceutical and food industries, are proving to be well suited to the metal Additive Manufacturing industry.

Elcan has stated that numerous companies have successfully tested products at Elcan’s facility and have begun purchasing the screeners. Several positive trials on titanium powders and other metal alloys that are used in the Additive Manufacturing process have proven capable of removing 15 micron and below particles, enabling better printing performance.

The entire body and all product contact areas of the machine are polished stainless steel and allow for zero contamination. The high volume of energy being transferred to the screen allows for hard to screen metal alloys to flow seamlessly through the screen. The machine has a strong vertical vibration that allows for high rates of efficiencies and throughputs without any blinding.

Elcan claims that the removal of any potential for contamination within the machine, its explosion proof design and high energy make the machine the precise fit for companies looking to add screening machinery to their Additive Manufacturing plants.