Renishaw’s build booster: Design & Engineering

Thanks to novel timesaving technology, a new addition to a metal additive manufacturing line can turn out parts twice as fast as other machines of its kind.

That’s the word from Renishaw Inc., West Dundee, Illinois, about the RenAM 500 Ultra, the latest in the company’s RenAM 500 series of laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) systems. Renishaw also touts the system’s ability to slash metal AM times without adversely impacting part quality.

Speeding up the LPBF process is Renishaw’s patented Tempus technology, which features new scanning algorithms that allow the system’s laser to fire into dispensed powder while the recoater, or wiper, is spreading the powder layer. Therefore, “you are eliminating a significant amount of delay waiting for the wiper to make a movement back and forth across the build plate,” noted John Laureto, Renishaw’s additive manufacturing business manager for the Americas.

According to Renishaw, Tempus can cut build times by up to 9 seconds per layer compared to those of other machines in the RenAM 500 line. Since LPBF builds often contain thousands of layers, the technology can shave 10 or more hours off part manufacturing times, allowing the Ultra to complete builds in half the time taken by other RenAM 500 systems in some cases, Laureto noted.

The RenAM 500 Ultra can slash LPBF times without lowering build quality. Image courtesy of Renishaw

Also notable is the system’s advanced process-monitoring technology, which gives users detailed information about each build. For layer-by-layer assessments of build quality, white-light photographs of the build area are taken before and after each layer is created. In addition, Laureto pointed to the in situ process-monitoring modules that allow the system to capture data from the melt pool (the area of molten material created by the laser) using a series of photodiodes calibrated to certain wavelength frequencies.