Metal film for additive metal manufacturing
| DWPI Title: Feedstock used e.g. for metal additive manufacturing apparatus comprises metal film comprising metal voxels and support region, and junctions, in which first metal voxel is removable from support region upon application of energy pulse from metal additive manufacturing apparatus |
| Abstract: A metal film for use by an additive manufacturing apparatus is described herein. The metal film has a support structure and metal voxels removably attached to the support structure by respective junctions. When a metal voxel in the metal film is impacted by an energy pulse from an energy source of the additive manufacturing apparatus, one or more junctions that attach the metal voxel to the support structure are broken, resulting in the metal voxel detaching from the metal film (at a desired location in a two-dimensional plane). |
| Use: The feedstock is useful for: metal additive manufacturing apparatus (claimed) to form a three-dimensional object; and manufacturing a metal film. |
| Advantage: The feedstock utilizes metal films, which: are safer to use than metal powders as they cannot be inhaled; have more precisely controlled size and geometry of voxels, hence leads to creation of three-dimensional objects having strict tolerances; may be wound around a spool, thus enabling a large amount of metal film to be stored in a relatively small space; achieve faster layer print times when compared to traditional techniques; can easily recover and recycle unused portions; and are much more straightforward with few practical constraints on the spatial location of the different materials, and with little risk of cross-contamination. |
| Novelty: Feedstock for metal additive manufacturing apparatus, comprises: a metal film (100) comprising many metal voxels (102), and a support region (120), where boundaries of the metal voxels in the metal voxels are defined by gaps (122) in the support region of the metal film; and many junctions that attach the metal voxels to the support region, where each of the junctions is a member that extends between the support region and a metal voxel in the metal voxels across a gap in the gaps in the support region, a first metal voxel in the metal voxels is attached to the support region by a first junction in the junctions, and further the first metal voxS01llti0IlSel is removable from the support region upon application of an energy pulse from the metal additive manufacturing apparatus, and the first junction is configured to break upon application of the energy pulse so that the first metal voxel is detached from the support region and deposited onto a receiving surface. |
| Filed: 8/31/2017 |
| Application Number: US15693040A |
| Tech ID: SD 13681.0 |
| This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. DE-NA0003525 awarded by the United States Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. The Government has certain rights in the invention. |
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