What do you think about Desktop Metal's 3D Metal Printers?

[curious aardvark]

Ah - now that's a different kettle of fish entirely.

Binder jetting is still very much a viable process and one that offers many of the advantages of sls.
You still have the hassle of sintering and you still have the powder removal process - but as far as production goes, it's a lot better than the fdm process they currently have.

If you read between the lines - there is still an awful lot of post processing going on, and it's defintiely not as straightforward and hands free as it seems to claim.
But yeah I can see large corporations going for it. Compared to traditional manufacturing methods it's faster and offers complex parts that can be made as a single piece that would previously need to be several seperate parts stuck together.

As a system sls will still produce better parts with a lot less post processing.
But a large binder jet printer will produce a lot more objects a lot quicker.

So with that in mind and your own points about space and cost not being an issue - yeah, that makes a lot of difference.

And to be fair desktop metal are also a company that is good at monetarising the 3d printing process.

I'm still not sure what happened to the law suit with markforge - but I guess in trumps america - law suits are probably seen as a positive thing. :-(

So yeah, with that in mind - and with ford already an existing client - yep, it should be a decent investment.
But throw some money Carbons way as well, as they cover the industrial non-metal side of things.

Cheers for that info - you learn something every day :-)

[Robert Larson]

Thank you, sir! I couldn't help but smile while reading your replies. I'm happy that there are people who are kind enough to spare a few minutes and share their expertise with complete strangers on the internet.