New technology revolutionizes 3-D metal printing

Selective LED-based melting (SLEDM)—the targeted melting of metal powder using high-power LED light sources—is the name of the new technology that a team led by Franz Haas, head of the Institute of Production Engineering at TU Graz, has developed for 3-D metal printing and has now applied for a patent. The technology is similar to selective laser melting (SLM) and electron beam melting (EBM), in which metal powder is melted by means of a laser or electron beam and built up into a component layer by layer. However, SLEDM solves two central problems of these powder bed-based manufacturing processes: the time-consuming production of large-volume metal components and the time-consuming manual post-processing.