Video: Controlled Porosity Can Be Functional Advantage Realized via 3D Printing

Between the bowl and the channel is a region that is 90% dense by design.

Additive manufacturing (AM) makes it possible to realize geometric features no other process can produce. The video below shows an example: A wall of metal that looks solid from a distance, but is actually just 90% dense, allowing gas to pass through it. Mold venting is one application.

Transcript

In this mold component, this drilled hole doesn’t go all the way through, but the air escapes anyway. It escapes because this was made additively. It was made on this machine from Matsuura, a powder-bed additive machine – metal additive specifically for injection mold tooling. And by controlling the parameters of the build only in this spot, the metal was made to be 90% dense. That means it’s a little porous, just porous enough so that the air can escape. The result is a solution enabled by additive for mold venting.

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