Metallic 3D printing, the new industrial revolution

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Scientific Journalism
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If we try to imagine a typically tough industrial sector, we probably think of a metal

smelter, with its hot-melting cauldrons and its mammoth facilities. But when last
November the corporate giant General Electric (GE) presented its new equipment for
the manufacture of metal components, its appearance resembled that of a supercomputer
rather than the classic forge. It is one of the new 3D metal printing systems, a new
generation of capital goods that experts say is destined to star in the next industrial
revolution, in the same way that its predecessors pushed the first back in the eighteenth
century.

General Electric presented the beta version of ATLAS at the Formnext trade show in
Frankfurt (Germany). Credit: GE Additive

3D printing has become popular throughout this turn of the century to become a
technology commonly used in various scenarios, from prototyping to small-scale
manufacturing, and even NASA studies its application to the construction of a station in
Mars. But until now these systems have been based mostly on the use of plastic
polymers as raw material, which limits their usefulness. However, the new 3D printing
technology in metal is currently taking off; or more correctly, additive manufacturing,
as it is called in the industrial field in reference to the production of components by
adding one layer after another. For the magazine MIT Technology Review, it is one of
the 10 revolutionary technologies of this 2018.

In fact, 3D metal printing took its first steps almost simultaneously to plastic, in the 80s
and 90s. The basic technique consists of a laser that moves on a bed of metal alloy
powder, melting it in places precise to create a cross section of the object, to which new
layers will be added following the digitized plans of the piece. But this technology has
been slow to take off because the benefits are lower than those of traditional mold
manufacturing, especially in terms of strength - the metal obtained by printing is more
porous - and scale - both in the size of the pieces as in its quantity-.