Prima Additive, Materialise Collaborate for Additive Manufacturing Efficiency, Process Control

Prima Additive and Materialise have strengthened their partnership for optimizing metal additive manufacturing (AM) systems. The collaboration has resulted in the optimization of the Print Genius 150, the AM system by Prima Additive with powder bed fusion (PBF) technology which features two lasers working on the same area.

Prima Additive has integrated Materialise’s Materialise Control Platform (MCP) hardware control on this machine in order to obtain real-time control functions and a streamlined combination with external systems to assist the process, such as monitoring and control systems.

A major result of the integration is the development of a laser workload balancing algorithm that enables the system to utilize the two lasers to their maximum effect and, in a balanced way, optimizing their workload. Thanks to this algorithm, the two lasers are able to work in each layer for the same amount of time, automatically distributing the work in a homogeneous way and eliminate the moments in which only one of the two lasers is at work, maximizing the benefit of having two lasers on the same machine, the company says. The first Print Genius 150 resulting from this collaboration was installed at the University of Leuven in Belgium in April 2021.  

Prima Additive’s 150 series of printers are said to offer a flexible, smart machine platform which enable users to explore AM, as well as develop new alloys and qualify new materials and applications. All 150 machines are equipped with different sensors that monitor the process in real-time; a double preheating system to heat the surface of the powder bed both from the top and from the bottom through the heated plate (up to 300°C); as well as the possibility to integrate lasers with different wavelengths (for example, green lasers).

Furthermore, the machines are said to offer users the possibility to set the laser parameters and the layer thickness in real-time during the job. Given the product’s characteristics, Materialise MCP is said to adapt well to the software architecture of this machine series and is a flexible tool to optimize the unique features of this machine.