Among many metal additive manufacturing machines you can find today, a PBF-technology-based machine might be the most interesting one. For that reason, we created this article to let you know more about this unique technology and how its implementation in the 3D machine printing industry. Let’s start!
What is PBF?
PBF or Powder Bed Fusion is a 3D printing process that uses adding concepts. It adds the powdered material to the printing area and then heats it to fuse it and form a solid object. The process requires repeated addition in several layers until it forms an object as used in the 3D base model.
Types of PBF Additive Manufacturing
You can find several PBF types on the market, such as:
- Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) – uses a laser beam and typical sinters powdered polymer materials,
- Selective Laser Melting (SLM) – uses a laser beam as the heat source. However, its laser fully melts the material. Therefore, the material it uses is considered the hard-type one, such as titanium, aluminum alloys, or stainless steel,
- Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) – you can find this PBS technology used by EOS GmbH, a manufacturing company from Germany. Even though it uses the sintering type method, the result is a fully-melted material,
- Electron Beam Melting (EBM) – instead of a laser, this type uses an electron gun/beam. It uses a vacuum chamber to print. This design has a much better process control than other PBF types.
Post-Processing Stage in PBF Additive Manufacturing
Even though the 3D printer with PBF technology can produce a perfectly-shaped object, it still requires a post-processing stage to perfect its result. This stage is necessary, especially for metals and alloys material. Here are the reasons why the post-processing stage is essential in PBF additive manufacturing:
- Increase mechanical properties,
- Lowering the residual stress,
- Improve the quality of the surface finish.
Benefits of PBF Additive Manufacturing
PBF additive manufacturing brings different benefits than other types of additive manufacturing, such as:
- Reduce the waste and lower the cost,
- Better production development speed,
- Suitable for prototyping or low-volume production,
- No need for machining fixtures,
- You can use it for recycling unused powder material,
- Suitable for various materials joining processes, such as metals, alloys, plastics, glass, and ceramic.
In short, pbf additive manufacturing provides a more efficient and optimized 3D printing process. Therefore, it is not surprising if you see this technology in various manufacturing industries. That’s all and we hope you know more about PBF now.