New FS621M-Cu designed for large aerospace components made from highly reflective metals.
Additive manufacturing (AM) has had many notable successes in aerospace applications over the past decade, but there are still some difficult hills to climb. One particular to the metal AM space is processing highly reflective metals, such as copper.
Copper and copper alloys are useful in combustion chambers due to their electrical and thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance, and ductility. However, the fact that they reflect near-infrared lasers has made them difficult use in metal AM processes, such as laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF).
The latest attempt to bridge this gap comes from Farsoon Technologies, which has just announced a new FS621M-Cu system, which incorporates four 1000W ytterbium fiber lasers to process high reflective metals, including copper alloys, such as CuCrZr. In addition to the ytterbium lasers, the system also has an anti-reflective chamber coating and a smart thermal management system.
According to the company, the new system can 3D print copper alloy thrust chamber liners with optimized cooling channels as a single piece. Farsoon also claims that an aerospace customer used the FS621M-Cu platform to produce a 600 mm diameter × 850 mm height thrust chamber liner with 8.86 g/cm3 density and thermal conductivity exceeding 345 W/(m·K).
For more Farsoon news, read about the company doubling the laser count on its large-format system.
