#Industry News
Obtain the perfect finish on additively manufactured workpieces, with disc finishing!
Homogenised surfaces for 3D printed parts
According to DIN 8580, 3D printing is one of the primary forming manufacturing processes, in which a solid body with a geometrically defined shape is produced from a formless material. The process employs a wide range of materials such as metals, plastics and ceramics. Discovered over 30 years ago, additive manufacturing processes are now sufficiently mature as to be gaining a gradual foot-hold in industrial production. Whether for prototypes or series production, additive manufacturing is used across all industries for visible and functional components as well as customised design prod-ucts. Jewellery parts, dental implants, earmoulds and engine blades are just a few examples. And the greater the possibilities of this generative process, the higher the workpiece specifications be-come. Series quality is the name of the game, which means that surface quality, repeatability and process reliability are under the post-processing spotlight.
Additively manufactured parts present a specific post-processing challenge
All 3D printing processes selectively apply the layers of a component, i.e., it’s composed of succes-sive layers. This principle makes component forming both flexible and customised. Being layered, 3D printed parts have a distinctive surface structure characterised by striations, pores, fissures and cavities.
The classic solutions for improving surface quality and reducing the staircase effect
The conventional solutions are manual post-processing, solvent vaporising or mass finishing, for ex-ample vibratory tumbling.
The downside of the first option is that the human factor in manual smoothing and polishing is not cost-effective in terms of repeatability and process times.
Chemical smoothing processes require time-consuming and therefore costly work to prepare, re-place and dispose of solvents. The acquisition costs are also higher than for other post-processing techniques, which essentially defeats the object of efficient volume production.
Vibratory finishing, on the other hand, involves no chemicals. But process times can be very long and hence often uneconomical.
So is there an alternative? Can you obtain series quality on 3D printed parts made from a range of materials? You certainly can!
OTEC disc finishing machines produce homogenous surfaces very quickly, without chemicals
OTEC disc finishing machines homogenise spongy, porous surfaces much faster by smoothing and polishing them.
This comes down to our machines’ mechanical operating principle: workpieces up to fist size (de-pending on machine configuration) are placed in the blue process container as bulk or piece goods along with grinding and polishing media suitable for the workpiece geometry. The container floor is a disc with a rotary bearing. When the disc turns at the bottom of the fixed container, the contents are set in motion in a toroidal flow. Centrifuging the workpieces and abrasive makes this a highly inten-sive and purely mechanical process.
Often imitated, never matched: the OTEC CF Series is renowned for application flexibil-ity, repeatability and process reliability
Flexible workflow: workpieces and abrasive can easily be changed in each contain-er. The machine is modular, so you can run different post-processing steps in dif-ferent containers in parallel, regardless of whether the workpieces are the same. Consistent parameters guaranteed time after time: the machine’s central control unit lets you store and monitor workpiece-specific process parameters that you can run at the press of a button.
