Re: [rp-ml] Gold sintering

Hello Dears,

In the last ten years, a bunch of improvement has
been made in metal sintering and surely the next 5
years will be interesting.

The sintering process need, in the view of getting
a nice and smooth surface, to have very fine metal
powder.
The process to atomize the metal has a certain
cost and today, the granulometry is about 5
microns for gold.

Some limits are there. First a fine powder can
under some cicumstances explode !
Even it is a metallic powder, the static
electricity can play a odd role.
Another aspect are the constraint in the model and
make it bind (need to be CAD computecompensation).

The inside of the model is solid, but the surface
will have a certain rugosity.

If the model is not too complex, it will work for
jewellery, still some important repar work to be done.
Thank you to the laser.

Avec mes salutations

With my best regards

Paul-Henri Tinguely

Altair Consulting

Tel 022 301 53 60 int +41 22 301 53 60

http://www.altair-consulting.com/

Le 13.12.2010 21:09, EdGrenda@aol.com a écrit :
> In a message dated 12/13/2010 7:23:47 A.M.
> Eastern Standard Time, mpegi@nus.edu.sg writes:
>
> Dear rp-ml
>
> I know that there has been research in the
> past about sintering gold
> powders but I was wondering whether there
> are any commercial systems
> that can do gold or silver powders?
>
> On the other hand, if I wanted to make
> complex gold jewelry directly
> from CAD, are there any companies out there
> that can do it for me?
> Anyone out there who can quote for me?
>
> Regards
>
> IG
>
>
> Hi Ian:
> I don't know what the commercial state of the
> art is these days, but a listing of all the
> jewelry/art specialist service bureaus is
> provided on this page. Some of these companies
> claim turnkey processes, but I don't know if
> anyone is doing things directly yet or if
> they're all indirect processes.
> http://www.additive3d.com/ar06_lks.htm
> In addition, EOS has recently been granted a
> patent for a powder for manufacturing precious
> metal products. Gold and silver particles are
> coated with solder which acts as a binder to
> hold the green shape together. The same group of
> inventors has had a couple of additional
> jewelry-related patent applications published in
> the past, and has associations with a Swedish
> jewelry company, Particular AB. I couldn't find
> contact info for the company when I tried a
> couple of years back. See US7,740,683.
> Best route is to contact EOS and see what they
> have to say about commercialization.
> Let us know what you find out, if anything or not.
> Regards,
> Ed
>
> Ed Grenda
> Castle Island Co.
> EdGrenda@aol.com <mailto:EdGrenda@aol.com> (email)
>
> The Worldwide Guide to Rapid Prototyping
> www.additive3d.com