TU/e and DIFFER celebrated the commissioning of an Aconity Midi 3D printer during a festive kick-off meeting. With the printer, metal structures with a high melting point, such as tungsten can be printed.
The 3D printing system is part of the LiMeS lab; the Liquid Metal Shield laboratory. NWO Institute DIFFER and Eindhoven University of Technology can use the 3D printer to print metal structures with a high melting point, such as tungsten. The research is part of the project 'Development of additively manufactured tungsten heat shields for nuclear fusion', recently honored by NWO. This project will exploit the unique infrastructure that is developed between TU/e and DIFFER. The 3D printer is located at the Equipment and Prototype Center (EPC) of the TU/e.
Thomas Morgan, group leader Plasma Material Interactions at DIFFER:
“In particular we aim to use additive manufacturing to create metal scaffolds that are shaped to hold the liquid metal in place on the wall. Using a new 3D metal printer which is specially adapted to process the high-melting point metals we want to use, like tungsten, we aim to do two things in this project in particular: firstly we will develop the print strategy to produce high quality, high resolution printed pieces, and characterize and optimize their microstructure. Secondly we will use this approach to produce optimal structures to confine the liquid metal in our scaffolds, and then test the performance of these structures under realistic loading conditions using our specially adapted linear plasma device, which is another part of the LiMeS-lab project."
Read more
- Starting signal for research on the development of additively manufactured tungsten heat shields for nuclear fusion | Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research (differ.nl)
- LiMeS-Lab: An Integrated Laboratory for the Development of Liquid–Metal Shield Technologies for Fusion Reactors — Research portal Eindhoven University of Technology (tue.nl)
- NWO kent 2,5 miljoen toe aan DIFFER en TU/e voor bouw nieuw fusielab (tue.nl)
Author: Rianne van Hoek
Go to the News page.