Quote:
Originally Posted by forever4
Yes, it already can, for quite a few years in fact. In 2002 I worked with a company essentially doing the same thing (without the 'printer' itself) to produce some small specialized injection mold lifters with internal conformal water cooling lines. It would be physically impossible to machine these parts conventionally, but they were 'printed' by laser welding alloy steel powder in incremental layers. The powder was delivered to the laser weld puddle and the puddle moved in 3D space to build the part layer by layer. In this case, the part was expensive, though the equipment was not high tech. It was essentially a robot welder in a controlled atmosphere with a low tech powder blowing application and a part math geometry that had been baloney sliced in thin layers driving the system.
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Wow, cool!! Thanks for sharing.