Hitachi Metals ups efficiency with new metal 3D printing system

Apr. 20, 2018 – Sciaky, a subsidiary of Phillips Service Industries (PSI) and provider of metal additive manufacturing solutions, has delivered an Electron Beam Additive Manufacturing (EBAM) system to the Global Research & Innovative Technology (GRIT) facility of Hitachi Metals in Kumagaya, Japan.

The EBAM 110 system purchased by Hitachi Metals includes a dual wirefeed configuration. With this configuration, customers can combine two different metal alloys into a single melt pool, managed with independent program control, to create custom alloy parts or ingots, explains the company. Customers also have the option to alternate between different wire gauges for finer deposition features (thin wire) and gross deposition features (thick wire) to meet unique part specifications, it notes.

According to Sciaky, this is the first EBAM installation in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Hitachi Metals is pleased to launch its new metal wire additive manufacturing technology with the procurement of Sciaky’s EBAM 110 metal 3D printing system at our GRIT facility,” said Yasuhiko Ohtsubo, 3DAM development manager of GRIT at Hitachi Metals. “We look forward to developing new materials and applications with this highly innovative process.”

A scalable metal additive manufacturing solution, Sciaky says its EBAM systems can produce parts ranging from 8 inches (203 mm) to 19 feet (5.79 meters) in length. It describes EBAM as the fastest deposition process in the metal additive manufacturing market, with gross deposition rates ranging from seven to 20 lbs. (3.18 to 9.07 kg) of metal per hour. EBAM is integrated with IRISS – the Interlayer Real-time Imaging and Sensing System – which Sciaky says is the only real-time adaptive control system in the metal 3D printing market that can sense and digitally self-adjust metal deposition with precision and repeatability.

“This is an important milestone for the industrial metal 3D printing market in Japan, and the forward-thinking leaders at Hitachi Metals are blazing a new trail for the Asia-Pacific region,” added Scott Phillips, president and CEO of Sciaky.