Industrial AM machinery
INTRODUCING HAUTE FABRICATION WORDS: Sam Davies
S
omewhere between Iowa and Texas, there is a suite of metal additive manufacturing machines in transit, a host of automation technology pieces as well, and a team of people who make up the latest contract additive manufacturing outfit on the market. Haute Fabrication is in the process of bringing online four variants of its Hybrid Direct Laser Sintering (HDLS) machines, with build volumes ranging from 600 x 600 x 600 mm to 5200 x 5200 x 5200 mm, the number of lasers spanning between 1-4 and 64-144, and each with the capacity to learn from previous builds through artificial intelligence (AI) and heat treat components up to 2,400F, as they are manufactured, through built-in autoclaves. It has taken to the road to situate itself within a region steeped in additive manufacturing expertise. In Austin, Haute will join Structured Polymers, the additive manufacturing powder company set up by Vikram Devarajan, James Mikulak and the late Carl Deckard, as well as put itself in close proximity to Deckard’s former supervisor, Dr. Joe Beaman at the University of Texas, all of whom have been the source of much guidance as appointed advisors in Haute’s early years. “We can help you spend millions of dollars and build a printer just like what’s out there,” Haute’s Chief Science Officer and co-founder Kevin Friesth remembers the Structured Polymers cohort saying, “but what you need to do is develop the next generation. If [3D printing] is going to be accepted as a mass manufacturing [technology], it has to be automated because one, you don’t want people around powder and two, the quality of life damages, such as carpal tunnel because
of repeated motions. You need to go automated and robotic to eliminate those two and then reduce the cost down to where it’s acceptable.”
AUTOMATION
Back when Deckard developed Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) technology in the 1980s, to automate the technology so humans never came into contact with powder wasn’t possible. It was barely possible in 2013. For Friesth, who had this vision of taking the foundations of laser sintering technology and supplementing it with AI-powered control systems and robotic devices, and scaling it up to sizes not seen before, it was more than a little frustrating that this was to be a steady development process, with much time waiting on other pieces of technology to get up to speed.
HAUTE FABRICATION’S HDLS PLATFORMS:
HDLS 250 Minotaur: 1-4 1100W lasers; 600 x 600 x 600 mm build volume HDLS 500 Tiamut: 4-9 1100W lasers; 1250 x 1250 x 1250 mm build volume HDLS 1000 Kraken: 9-25 1100W lasers; 2500 x 2500 x 2500 mm build volume HDLS 5000 Karathen: 64-144 1100W lasers; 5200 x 5200 x 5200 mm build volume
“Unfortunately, we lost Carl early - I really wanted him to see the next-generation machine.”
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