ATLAS – the world's largest 3D laser printer

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General Electric announced plans to build the world’s largest laser powder 3D printer. The device will be designed and manufactured by GE Additive’s new additive manufacturing division. The new printer, codenamed ATLAS, will use powders of various metals, and its working chamber volume will be one cubic meter.

Let us remind our readers that additive manufacturing technologies, which include 3D printing technology, allow you to create almost any object, for example, toys, robot assemblies, parts of jet engines and even whole buildings. Most of the 3D printers work by squeezing molten plastic or mortar from a printhead nozzle. But printers that make metal products use the light of a powerful laser that melts the metal powder and shapes the part layer by layer.

3D laser powder printing technologies have been used for some time to make products with very complex shapes. For example, NASA specialists use 3D printers to make parts for jet engines, which are then successfully tested.

The design of the new 3D printer is based on the X LINE 2000R printer developed by Concept Laser, which was acquired by General Electric and became part of the GE Additive division. The ATLAS printer can use titanium, aluminum, iron powder and powders consisting of a mixture of different metals as a working material. The first prototypes of the new printers will be able to create three-dimensional objects in a one cubic meter chamber. They will do this in the traditional way – by successively building up layers. But the printer that goes into mass production will differ from prototypes, it will have one more degree of freedom, which will increase the speed of the printing process.

There is no data yet regarding the resolution of the new printer, but representatives of GE Additive mentioned in passing that “the resolution of the new printer will be comparable to or surpass that of the best of today’s similar printers.”

The first versions of ATLAS printers will appear by the end of this year and will be presented to the public at the Formnext Show, which will be held in November this year in Germany. A fully working final version of the printer will appear in 2018. Sou

rce: http://www.dailytechinfo.org