SLS or Selective Laser Sintering is a high productivity, automate-able additive manufacturing technology.
Nylon is by far the dominant polymer used in SLS, though a range of metals powders and other polymers are also available.
The market for polymers in additive manufacturing is highly skewed by value with the tonnage of 3D printing filaments sold being roughly double that of polymer powders, but the value of those powders being roughly double that of all the filaments combined. This means that for an average polymer the powder carries around 4x the value vs the filament of a similar polymer type.
Why ?
Two big factors; cost to produce (powders take extra work to produce at a high quality) and productivity (powder-based manufacturing can be very much more productive than filament-based).
Compared with filament-based printing SLS has been dominated by larger, more automated end-users as the cost to equip a factory, train the workforce and provide useful end products is quite high. The entry point for SLS printers is currently around £30,000 with an additional £20k needed in support systems and maintenance contracts on top of that. While most SLS-type machines have a print volume around 300mm cubed, meter-scale SLS printers, such as Farsoon’s Flight 1000 series are now available. So it has not been a hobbyist’s playground unlike the world of filament-based 3D printing where affordability has driven innovation outside of the big machine makers.
And that might provide an underlying reason why there have been no 100% recycled powders optimised for SLS until now.
Machine makers have locked out end-users from experimenting with new powders, both by removing their ability to tune their machines and refusing to support machines that don’t use approved materials. This is sometimes called the walled garden for materials. But the walled gardens are now breaking down under pressure from users who want and need access to a wider range of materials and newer machine makers who are providing ‘open’ hardware platforms that can be tuned by their owners.
Machine makers like Farsoon and Sinterit allow the SLS machine owners that freedom to use their plant how they want to.
So there is now potential for a market in recycled materials in SLS – to be fair there has always been a technical ability for machine owners to recycle their own materials internally – this is known as the so-called ‘refresh rate‘ whereby fresh virgin powder is added to un-used virgin powder that has gone through the machine at least once but been slightly degraded by that process.
But until machine makers allowed open materials use, the potential for a recycled material to be brought into the factory as a primary source rather than virgin materials was mostly excluded by design.
So here is where our OrCA® PA6-CF made from 100% recycled nylon 6 with recycled carbon fibre comes in.
When we launched in 2017 we did not think that a powdered version of our recycled nylon would be possible, but just before COVID we took a punt and tried to execute a powderisation program using our Porthcurno blend as its base. That program fell over in a heap when COVID struck and we didn’t have the opportunity to return to it until late in 2023 and a chance encounter revived it.
Ian attended the 3D Printing Industry Awards ceremony in December 2023 (to collect the award for Sustainability in Additive Manufacturing for the second time) and by chance met another nominee, Dominik Zdybał, the CEO of Alpha Powders based in Warsaw. The synergies between each company’s capabilities and goals were immediately obvious and a plan hatched that night to try and develop the world’s first 100% recycled nylon powder optimised for the highest performance in SLS.
Six months later here are the results of a bench scale test to produce a spherical powder that embeds recycled carbon fibre in a recycled nylon made from used Cornish fishing nets.
In bulk the powder must flow
We have now committed to produce and launch the worlds first commercially available 100% recycled PA-CF powder optimised for Selective Laser Sintering.
This will be our third world’s first, after the first commercially available 3D printing filament made from recycled fishing gear and the world’s first 100% recycled PA-CF filament, both of which brought global attention and won the Additive Manufacturing industry’s largest awards.
We think this one is bigger.
If you want to support us in bringing this recycled revolution to advanced manufacturing you can become a shareholder in Fishy Filaments via our equity crowdfunding campaign in Crowdcube.
We are aware some of you may not know what Crowdcube is or how to sign up.
Crowdcube is an equity crowdfunding platform that enables businesses such as ourselves to raise the capital needed for business growth.
This means that you can own shares in the business by investing anything from £10 upwards.
You can use the link provided below to sign-up
https://www.crowdcube.com/fishy-filaments
Disclaimer: Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment.