In an interview with Design Information, XJet’s president and founder Hanan Gothait defined how his firm’s NanoParticle Jetting (NPJ) expertise is vastly totally different from conventional additive manufacturing techniques. Talking particularly to design engineers about NPJ, he mentioned, “For the primary time, you need not care concerning the system you wish to produce the half with. You don’t have to design for the manufacturing expertise, however focus the design on performance, half weight, and efficiency.”
NPJ expertise works by first loading sealed cartridges with strong nanoparticles suspended in liquid, which gives 99.9% density. “We now have the best density out there as a result of we use a stochastic number of particle sizes, which generates minimal gaps between particles and superior materials density,” Gothait mentioned.
Printheads with 1000’s of inkjet nozzles then jet thousands and thousands of ultrafine drops of each construct and help supplies onto the system construct tray in ultrathin layers. This permits elements to be produced with nearly limitless geometrical complexity.
After the half is constructed, the distinctive soluble help materials disintegrates simply from the completed half, utilizing water solely in an automatic course of. This reduces the necessity for time-consuming and delicate put up processing. Final, the elements endure an in a single day sintering course of.
“Should you evaluate it to powder-based or totally different additive manufacturing techniques, you discover that the quantity of preprocess and postprocess earlier than printing and after printing is large, and in our case it mainly doesn’t exist,” Gothait mentioned, noting that the method is all finished mechanically and handbook free.
“For engineers that is actually necessary as a result of they make a component after which somebody has to work for 2 days in making ready it,” Gothait mentioned. “You wish to use a system that actually is able to making all these totally different geometries easy. And that is what we spent a few years within the lab to develop.”
Understanding NanoParticle Jetting
As a result of NPJ expertise makes use of a closed system, printing is completed with little or no waste and nearly no air pollution and makes use of little or no power, XJet’s chief advertising and marketing officer Man Zimmerman mentioned in the identical interview. “So it’s a really clear course of,” he mentioned. “It is the greenest, most secure, and the cleanest additive manufacturing expertise for ceramics and steel.”
The help materials, when it dissolves, it’s thought-about to be water in most nations, Zimmerman mentioned, and so it could actually simply be drained. “After which the sintering is completed in decrease temperatures than the powder-based [additive manufacturing] as a result of we begin with smaller elements and extra dense materials.”
He added that the sintering is completed with higher yield and decrease shrinkage than powder-based applied sciences. “So your complete course of, end-to-end, is 90% controllable, digital, traceable and that is one thing that makes it appropriate for scale manufacturing,” Zimmerman mentioned. “Should you put 5 machines subsequent to one another, they’d print the identical issues on a regular basis, the identical high quality, as a result of they get the identical materials they usually management the identical course of,” he continued. “It is an actual digitization of the manufacturing course of and that is a inexperienced message.”
“There’s a time period, ‘design for manufacturing,’ however we’re designed for performance,” Gothait concluded. “Design for performance is when you’ll be able to neglect about how manufacturing is completed. Our system will manufacture it, regardless of how advanced the half.”
