3D printing has taken very important steps in recent years, and it is already being used to manufacture many types of parts from very different materials. It began with plastic materials, gradually moving to more resistant metallic materials.
I have recently seen the news that they have been able to manufacture parts from 17-4 PH steel which is a high strength steel used in very critical applications.
The 17-4 PH stainless material is characterized by high yield strength, good corrosion resistance, and high wear resistance. 17-4 PH is one of the most important hardenable steels, used in the manufacture of some turbines like the one in the photo below.
The researchers have published their breakthrough in the journal Additive Manufacturing , and in the printing process they use high-energy X-rays to grow the material.
It is easy to say, but this impression is very complex to make, in particular due to the enormous changes in temperature that are generated in the process. Millions of powder particles are welded by the effect of the laser, which first forms a liquid and in a few moments cools and solidifies to form solid steel.
To give you an idea, the cooling process exceeds a million degrees per second, so the overall process to obtain the desired steel must be highly controlled. It is not something that anyone can do. At least not at the moment. Because the changes that occur in the structure of the material in thousandths of a second must be controlled.
After this step, other similar ones will follow and in the same direction of obtaining high-resistance metallic materials. And all this will help to facilitate obtaining prototypes and parts in small series, and also in a very short space of time (hours instead of days or weeks).
All technologies advance very quickly, and what used to be something new, today is something normal and more used every day.
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