3D Printing From Barstock Using Friction Stir Welding (Video)

Meld Manufacturing offers a solid-state metal additive manufacturing process: Metal parts are 3D printed in the open air, with no melting, using a process based on friction stir welding to apply the metal by deforming it. This video shows a Meld AM machine tool that 3D prints by rotating and compressing metal barstock.

How Does The Meld Manufacturing Metal 3D Printing Process Work?

The metal 3D printing process employed by Meld Manufacturing uses friction stir welding.

Metal is deformed under pressure, with no melting. Parts are built in layers from this metal deformation (then CNC machined to tolerance).

The process produces solid metal parts.

Because there is no melting, residual stresses do not form. Neither the part nor its substrate are prone to warping as a result of 3D printing (which is a common effect with other metal AM processes). Also because there is no melting, the process is effective for 3D printing metals that do not lend themselves to welding.

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Transcript

Peter Zelinski
I'm in Christiansburg, Virginia, Meld Manufacturing, seeing metal 3D printing without melting.

So Meld has a distinctive, unique approach to metal additive. The process uses friction stir welding to apply metal layer by layer. The metal is deformed, but it doesn't melt. The result is fully dense, solid metal parts properties approaching wrought material, and there are some advantages. Because there is no melting, because the material does not become liquid and solidify again, there aren't residual stresses. 3D printing can be applied to a thin substrate that will stay flat. This is a metal 3D printing process for materials that don't lend themselves to welding. This is 6061 aluminum. The process could be done with 7075 aluminum. Material handling is easy. The raw material is these square cross-section bars the process right now is using. It's running at the rate of about one 2-foot-long bar per minute. The bars are queued up in a magazine and load into the spindle that applies the pressure one by one by one.

Another advantage of the platform, this is a CNC machine tool. It is a machine that manufacturers recognize and know how to program using the same G code other machine tools do.

And because it's a machine tool, this process could be done for very big parts. Just need a very big machine tool to apply it. And because the process applies metal in an open environment, this is also a process for repair. Existing parts could be fixtured into the machine and Meld’s process could be used to 3D print just the feature that's needed for repair.