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Stat stacks show the growth in additive manufacturing
In the thirty plus years since the founding of the 3D printing industry, countless printing technologies have been invented, patented, and commercialized - om fused filament fabrication to digital light processing, selective laser melting to binder jetting, material jetting to sheet lamination, and every unique printing technology in between. With every new technology, the additive manufacturing market has grown its ability to expand into new applications, end-users, and industries. This industry continues to innovate. A recent innovation highlighted by IDTechEx in a recent report1 is bound metal extrusion (BME, also known as DESIGN WORLD
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metal-polymer filament extrusion). The report claims it is one of the fastestgrowing innovations today. BME is a take on classic thermoplastic filament extrusion. It involves loading metal powder into a thermoplastic filament, which acts as a temporary binder for the metal powder. This metalpolymer filament is extruded into a part, a er which the green part undergoes debinding in a furnace to remove residual polymer and sintered in a furnace to fully densi the part. A version of BME is that introduced about four years ago by Desktop Metal. Since then, other companies have launched their own iterations on BME, www.designworldonline.com
including Markforged, BASF, BCN3D, 3DGence, and FuseLab. BME has brought interest to the overall printing method of using polymer filament or resins as binders to print metals or ceramics; this growing category includes BME as well as ceramic and metal vat photopolymerization companies like 3D Ceram, Incus, Admatec, and Lithoz. Another innovation is set to come om Xerox. The company is preparing to debut its ElemX 3D printer, which uses the company’s proprietary magnetohydrodynamic deposition to print molten metals like aluminum. And American start-up Evolve Additive Solutions recently delivered its first printer April 2022
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