Rapidia
Rapidia has announced a ‘considerable reduction' to the price of its metal 3D printing machines. The company says this is part of its mission to make advanced manufacturing more accessible.
Rapidia CEO Artem Bylinskii said: “Our metal printing technology is accessible because of its ease of use and low operating cost. We’re now in a position where we feel we can be more proactive and more disruptive by making our technology more accessible in price too.”
In 2020, Rapidia entered a partnership with ExOne, which saw the metal paste 3D printer and compact sintering furnace white labelled. The company says this partnership gave it access to ExOne’s brand and distribution network, while providing ExOne with a product that expanded its portfolio.
Rapidia says since the partnership ended when ExOne was acquired by major 3D printing company Desktop Metal in late 2021, it has spent time building out a sales team and network of its own. The company says it is now able to deliver the Conflux 1 metal additive manufacturing platform at a more ‘accessible price’.
The Conflux 1 is a metal 3D printing system powered by metal paste deposition (MPD), which works by printing a flowable bound metal paste. The paste is dried layer by layer, creating green parts with 90% less binder than found in metal filaments or MIM feedstocks according to Rapidia.
As a room temperature process, MPD is not limited by the speed of melting and then cooling polymer carriers. Rapidia says the low binder content allows green parts to be put directly into short sintering cycles, skipping the debinding step and output finished parts in under 24 hours.
Conflux 1 hardware packages, consisting of one printer and one vacuum sintering furnace, are now available starting from 99,000 USD.
Bylinski added: “We see a gap in metal additive manufacturing because the cost of entry for production solutions is so high. It’s a major risk for companies to borrow upwards of half a million to get that capability. With our new pricing, we hope to provide a more scalable production solution where businesses can start with a couple of machines, and the continue adding printers to their fleet at an easily digestible cost.”
