Venture onto any additive manufacturing (AM) trade show floor today and there’s one thing made evidently clear by the flashes of copper and titanium that tower over stands – metal AM is getting bigger.
The trend for printed parts pushing towards the 2-metre mark has been fortified by growing adoption in industries such as aviation and space, where the ability to print huge monolithic components with built-in cooling chambers and complex internal structures has made the technology a clear fit. But with the printing step taken care of by machine manufacturers like AMCM and Nikon SLM Solutions, which have seen their large-format laser powder bed fusion systems adopted by some of the world’s biggest defence and aerospace suppliers, the next hurdle is how to finish them.
