Comparison between the products of four RPM systems for metals

Abstract

PurposeTo compare the capabilities and product quality of four state‐of‐the‐art metal rapid prototyping and manufacturing (RPM) systems. This comparison could help industrial companies to know the advantages and disadvantages of each system and decide which system is the most appropriate for their application field.Design/methodology/approachThis work evaluates and compares the quality of four identical benchmarks fabricated from different metallic powders by using four recently developed RPM systems for metals. The evaluation considers benchmark geometry, dimensional precision, material type, product strength and hardness, surface quality, building speed, materials, operation and running cost.FindingsResults show that using RPM technology for the production of metallic products proved to be successful and promising technology to fabricate high strength products such as dies and molds parts which have complicated geometry and fine features. The best quality and strength was developed by the technique of complete melting of metallic powders (selective laser melting/micro‐welding). Comparing to the technique of selective laser sintering, this gave the impression to be more successful and reliable in future in addition to the ability to prototype different types of metallic powders. However, it was very slow and costly. Results by other techniques were evaluated as well.Research limitations/implicationsThe discussed resulted were based only on one benchmark built by each evaluated system and using only one set of processing parameters (which were recommended by the machine manufacturer to be the optimum parameters). However, different results could be obtained if different processing parameters were used. Future work should include the affect of changing the process parameters for each system.Practical implicationsA very useful research study for industrial organizations need to use RPM for the production of metallic products.Originality/valueThis paper provides very important comparison between different state‐of‐the‐art metal RPM systems that are very new to the market. This paper should be very valuable to industrial organizations industrial organizations need to use RPM for the production of metallic products.