30 Years of Innovation: Bringing 3D Printing’s Benefits to Metal 

We’ve passed the halfway point of our 30th-anniversary blog series, and for October, we’re looking into Metal 3D Printing. Read on to discover how Materialise utilizes Metal 3D Printing to combine AM’s advantages with tried-and-tested materials and how our team in Bremen, Germany is working to further develop the technology.

3D printing for plastics was the blueprint for AM innovators to create Metal 3D Printing processes. Once the laser sintering technology was patented, users began to experiment with applying the process to various metals as well. After a significant industry-wide research phase to improve the technology over the years, it became a reliable, high-quality option by the mid-2010s. At this point, Materialise brought Metal AM into our manufacturing portfolio to not only provide the printing service to our customers but to also use our AM expertise to further improve the technology.  

The appeal of Metal AM was clear. Just like for plastics, companies now had to opportunity to receive parts faster than ever before, but now with such robust materials. 3D printing doesn’t require the time-consuming creation of molds or production lines like traditional technologies — with a digital file in hand, almost any design can be printed within approximately ten working days. However, we recognized that more often than not, the orders we received didn’t benefit from all of the technology’s advantages. With our know-how and design expertise, there was untapped potential that we could help our customers achieve —design freedom, cost reductions, and risk mitigation, for example.