Bright Laser Technologies (BLT) has introduced a new variant of laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) for metal 3D printing. The technology enables the production of micro parts with unrivalled surface quality and precision.
Conventional LPBF processes often reach their limits with small and complex components. Typically, the surface roughness is between 5 and 20 μm and the manufacturing accuracy is over 0.1 mm. BLT has significantly pushed these limits by optimising hardware, processes, software and materials.
The new technology achieves a surface roughness of just 2-3 μm Ra and a precision of less than 0.05 mm. To demonstrate this performance, BLT produced a complex F-RD topology model. The comparison with conventional layer thicknesses of 60, 40 and 20 μm showed a significant improvement in surface quality at 10 μm layer thickness.
The technology has already proven itself in practice in various applications: A medical component with a diameter of 3 mm and eight 0.3 mm fluid channels could be produced with a minimum wall thickness of 0.09 mm. The dimensional accuracy was within 0.05 mm.
For a project called MicroNeuro, BLT produced a component with a wall thickness of just 0.15 mm. This reduced development time and material costs while improving surface quality.
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