Detroit-based TriTech Titanium Parts LLC is now producing customer-qualified Ti64 titanium parts using Desktop Metal’s Production System P-1 binder-jet additive manufacturing process. “With this latest addition to our material portfolio, we now offer the ability to binder-jet 23 metals,” stated Desktop Metal’s CEO Ric Fulop. “We’re excited to help engineers and manufacturers produce complex, once-impossible designs in a wide range of metals, including challenging materials such as copper, aluminum, and now, titanium.”
Binder-jet printing involves an industrial printhead selectively depositing a liquid binding agent onto a bed of powder (e.g., a powdered metal alloy, foundry sand, ceramic or composite material) according to a CAD-defined pattern, to form three-dimensional parts and tooling. Desktop Metal’s Production System is a series of binder-jet printers sized for high-volume manufacturing of AM parts.
Ti64 is a titanium alloy that is popular with product and system designers thanks to its strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility. Desktop Metal emphasized that binder-jet additive manufacturing simplifies Ti64 parts production, which can be difficult using more standard forming processes.
TriTech Titanium is an investment caster and metal-injection molding operation that manufactures net-shape titanium components in small and large volumes, as well as prototypes, for commercial and industrial markets, including aerospace, automotive, and marine customers.
“With binder-jet 3D printing, titanium production of even the most complex geometries can be greatly simplified and achieved at a lower cost,” stated Robert Swenson, the owner of TriTech. “Our team is incredibly proud to be the first Desktop Metal Production System P-1 customer worldwide to binder-jet 3D-print titanium, and we’re excited to offer this new manufacturing technology to our customers.”
Desktop Metal’s Production System series of binder-jet additive manufacturing systems offer high-speed Single Pass Jetting (SPJ) technology on two models: the P-1, for research and development of binder jetting projects for serial production; and the P-50, which the developer calls “the world’s fastest metal binder jet system, offering the lowest cost per part, with SPJ technology.
Desktop Metal also recently announced that a chromium-zirconium copper alloy (C18150) has been qualified for production on its Production System series printers, and that 304L stainless steel has been qualified on its Shop System mid-sized binder-jet printers.