When I met Melanie Lang at RAPID a lot of the buzz on the show floor was directed at her startup Formalloy .

Formalloy has developed a metal deposition head that uses Laser Metal Deposition (also called DED) to deposit metal for large parts relatively quickly for 3D printing. These kinds of heads and laser cladding systems converted to 3D printing as well as other Directed Energy Deposition technologies can be used to make large structural parts.

The aerospace industry is increasingly looking to make parts such as wing spars or aerostructures using these technologies. Indeed some electron beam welding technologies were first developed for the Shuttle program and other defense programs and later converted to 3D technologies. The reason that ORNL and Sandia are commercializing so many new 3D printing technologies is that behind closed doors the value of 3D printing larger than expected structures has already been […]

Click here to view original web page at 3dprint.com