Material producer Epson Atmix Co (Atmix), subsidiary of the multinational Japanese electronics agency Seiko Epson Corporation (Epson), has unveiled plans to determine a brand new steel powder manufacturing facility.
Set to open by 2025, the advanced is predicted to function steel recycling amenities, that allow scrap supplies to be changed into usable alloy powders with 3D printing potential. Atmix’s announcement carefully follows Epson’s personal revelation that it plans to lastly enter the additive manufacturing sector with a brand new industrial extrusion 3D printer, some eight years after first signaling its intention to take action.
Epson lastly segues into 3D printing
Although Epson is primarily identified for its 2D printing exploits, it has made no secret of its aspiration to broaden into the 3D printing trade. As way back as 2014, the agency’s President Minoru Usui talked brazenly of wanting to maneuver into 3D printing, not simply with a client know-how, however a full-on 3D printer able to addressing industrial purposes.
However, Epson registered its dissatisfaction with the state of 3D printing on the time, and indicated that its segue into the market would take at the very least 5 years. That being stated, Usui additionally dedicated to growing an providing that, as soon as prepared for launch, would “change everything” by offering customers with “machines to make anything” from “almost any material” they might lay their palms on.
Epson’s pivot into the sector took a step nearer to actuality in 2017, with the launch of its Vision 2025 Strategy, but it surely wasn’t till March 2022 that it lastly launched its inaugural 3D printer. As you’d count on, the machine’s long-awaited unveiling attracted a major quantity of hype within the trade, however little was revealed about how it could really be commercialized.
Powered by what Epson calls a ‘unique extrusion method,’ by which a flat screw, like that present in its injection molding machines, is used instead of a nozzle, the system is alleged to allow manufacturing through ‘commonly available’ third-party pellets. Given that pellets are usually cheaper, and lend themselves higher to quicker processing than filament, the 3D printer might provide adopters price and lead time advantages.
The firm’s upcoming machine can be understood to function a mechanism that permits the temperature of supplies to be exactly managed throughout manufacturing, to make sure that ensuing components have glorious power. This performance is believed to be central to the system’s utility in end-use half manufacturing, and Epson says it could possibly be preferrred for practical prototyping and small-batch manufacturing.
Yet, whereas the corporate has lastly unveiled its inaugural 3D printer, it admits that it has to “make needed refinements” to the system earlier than it may be dropped at market. In the meantime, Epson is about to deploy the machine internally as a method of manufacturing components for business and industrial tools in ‘large volumes.’
Atmix’s eco-focused growth
Founded as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Epson in 1999, Atmix produces each magnetic powders with energy provide circuit purposes, and alloys for Metal Injection Molding and 3D printing. Having set itself the aim of weaning itself off non-renewable assets as a part of Epson’s Environmental Vision 2050 initiative, the agency says it now plans to “invest billions of yen” in its recycling capabilities.
Chief amongst these amenities will likely be a brand new manufacturing facility, geared up with an induction furnace, refining tools and a pig casting machine for turning recovered metals into ingots. In apply, this setup is predicted to permit Atmix to create a closed-loop manufacturing ecosystem, by which its defunct powders, in addition to the waste and used molds and dies of Epson and its companions, will be recycled.
According to the corporate, the manufacturing facility could possibly be so efficient as soon as open, that it allows a 25% discount in its uncooked steel consumption, inside simply three years. In addition to serving to attain its objectives for a extra “sustainable and enriched society,” Atmix additionally describes its growth as needed to satisfy buyer demand, which it “expects to increase in future.”
Moving from 2D into 3D printing
Epson’s eventual arrival within the 3D printing house has rightly captured a number of consideration, but it surely’s not the primary 2D printer producer to make the transition. One of the highest-profile earlier examples of that is HP, which continues to make inroads with its MultiJetFusion providing, and the agency reported attaining “significant” 3D printing progress in Q1 2022.
Much like Epson, Xerox has entered the 3D printing trade lately as properly, through the launch of its inaugural system, the ElemX. However, versus its conventional 2D printing rival, the corporate has chosen to enter the sector through the acquisition of Vader Systems quite than develop its personal know-how. Xerox’s machine can be already within the palms of shoppers like Vertex Manufacturing, thus it’s additional forward.
Other corporations with 2D in addition to 3D printing portfolios embrace the likes of Ricoh and Mimaki. The latter has made a notable splash within the trade with its full-color inkjet techniques, which have been used up to now to 3D print lifelike anatomical fashions.
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