Looking for Powder Bed Printer for Research

[QBach]

Hello everyone,

I am looking for a powder bed printer for research purposes. The print head should be rather robust, as we would have to investigate the suitability of a variety of different binders. However, at our university we have some common characterization tools, such as tensiometers and oszilattion and roation viscosimeters.
I am writing and talking to some of the powder bed printing companies (ExOne, Voxeljet, 3DSystems, etc...) but none of them are willing to give me information about the binder solution specifications their printers require.
Or they just said that they don't think their printers are suitable. And that isn't really helpful :-/

Do any of you have some insights into robust R & D powder bed printers? The price should be < 120,000 $ oder 100,000 €.

I would be very happy, if you could give me some good ideas

Thanks,
QBach

[curious aardvark]

you're specifically looking for uv cured binder inkjet type systems ?

Don't think you'll get much joy on the formulation side of things.

If I were you, i'd start with standard uv cured resins and work forwards from there.

[QBach]

No, we must only use chemically defined binders such as povidone or cellulose solutions. I am working at a pharmaceutical institute and the use of crosslinking binders is prohibited by all authorities.
So we are basically looking for a printer capable of printing higher viscous solutions, possibly loaded with some nano sized materials.

I hope that leaves us more choices

[Davo]

See the video in my signature. PM me if you'd like more info. We have printed with material as viscous as Precious Metal Clay.

[awerby]

I've been using an older Z-corp powder-bed printer, and the last word I'd use to describe the print-heads is "robust" - they will clog on anything thicker than distilled water, and sometimes have trouble with that. I think you'll experience the same difficulties with any printer that depends on an ink-jet printhead. Also, as you seem to have discovered, the manufacturers of these machines don't think of their machines as an open platform which users are encouraged to experiment with. A big part of their business model (taken from the same playbook as 2D inkjet printers) involves selling the consumables at high prices.

I'd suggest you develop a machine of your own, perhaps building on an existing one so you don't have to reinvent the powder-spreading mechanism. Instead of using an inkjet printhead, substitute something with much larger orifices, like an airbrush, that won't have any problem handling thicker binder solutions. Since the patents on this type of machine seem to have expired, there are relatively inexpensive versions available, like the "3D Pandora" that you can experiment with.

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

[QBach]

Thank you for your replies.

Davo, Hyrel looks like a very interesting tool but can't perform the task we require (powder bed printing). When we need to update our FDM printer, I will write you as the possibilites with your mashine is intriguing.

awerby, I was afraid of an answer like that. We are having an inkjet printing set-up at our lab but don't have a lot of experience with it. Maybe, once we know more about what we can and cannot do with it, we might consider building our own printer based on this printhead. An airbrush just will not work, as the "dosing" of the binder is way to inaccurate for pharmaceutical applications.
I was just hoping that there is something robust out there :-/