Metal 3D printer developer Meltio has launched the M600, its newest laser metal deposition (LMD) 3D printer, at the Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) 2024 conference currently being held in Chicago, Illinois.
Incorporating a newly developed Blue Laser deposition head, the 3D printer is designed for industrial-scale manufacturing and is optimized for machine shops and other 24/7 production environments.
According to Meltio, the M600 has been developed to overcome manufacturing challenges associated with long lead times, high-cost stock keeping, and supply chain insecurities.
“The design brief for the new Meltio M600 was to imagine what the perfect 3D printer for the machine shop would look like,” explained Lukas Hoppe, Meltio’s Research & Development Director.
“The vast majority of metal 3D printed parts require post-processing which is carried out in the machine shop and, since our ambition is to push the large-scale adoption of metal additive manufacturing, we have a very clear vision that the modern machine shop is the ideal point of entry.”
The 3D printer’s autonomous production capabilities minimize the need for manual user input. This allows for 24-hour light-out manufacturing operations, increasing productivity and reducing manufacturing costs. In addition to 3D printing metal parts, this new system can add features to existing components and repair damaged surfaces.
The Meltio M600 is compatible with a range of materials including aluminum and copper alloys, titanium, stainless steels, tool steels, nickel, invar, and Inconel.
Spanish cement company Cementos La Cruz has been announced as the first customer to adopt Meltio’s new 3D printer. The firm has leveraged the M600 to 3D print a stainless steel nozzle for the production of more sustainable, additively manufactured cement structures.
Meltio’s new M600 wire-laser 3D printer
According to Hoppe, the M600 seeks to advance Meltio’s mission to increase the adoption of metal additive manufacturing. He believes that metal 3D printing is yet to achieve its full potential, with the technology still largely limited to the low-volume production of high-value parts.
The new 3D printer uses welding wire as its feedstock. These materials are much cheaper and safer to handle than their powder-based counterparts, allowing the M600 to be more easily integrated into existing manufacturing workflows.
With a substantial build volume of 300 mm x 400 x 600 mm, Meltio claims that the wire-laser deposition process of its new 3D printer can produce high-quality parts with comparable material properties to those made with more conventional methods.
The M600’s Blue Laser deposition head enables increased 3D printing speeds with lower energy consumption, thanks to the lasers’ short light wavelength. This offers higher absorption compared to most industrial lasers which emit near-infrared (NIR) light, while reducing the carbon footprint of the production setup.
The Blue Lasers are particularly well suited to reflective materials such as copper and aluminum alloys, where NIR lasers often produce poor results.
Meltio has worked to improve energy distribution and wire guidance, ensuring that the deposition head is properly aligned before leaving the factory floor and cannot be adjusted by the user. This reduces maintenance requirements and enables a more consistent output. Reliability is also improved by the addition of sensors which monitor the entire 3D printing process.
The Meltio M600 has also been designed to integrate into industrial environments that feature existing CNC machines. With a built-in 3-axis touch probe, the system supports various types of workpieces. Therefore, besides 3D printing, Meltio’s new offering can also be used to repair or add features to existing metal parts.
A highly-autonomous system, the M600 requires very little operator interaction. Common inputs such as manual laser alignment have been removed altogether. Meltio states that this will increase the reliability and productivity of the 3D printer, which has been designed for lights-out manufacturing. The Meltio Horizon toolpath generation and slicing software is also compatible with the M600, allowing 3D print jobs to be prepared in a matter of minutes.
Meltio announces first M600 customer
With the M600, Meltio has sought to design a 3D printer that can integrate into any machine shop and work alongside existing CNC hardware.
The company claims that its new 3D printer offers notable value by reducing material waste, cutting lead times, increasing manufacturing flexibility, and completing complex 3D print jobs with minimum operator input. This is said to make the M600 well-suited to a wide range of industrial verticals, including automotive, aerospace, oil and gas, mining, defense, and construction.
The Meltio M600’s first publicly announced customer falls into the latter of these categories. Cementos La Cruz focuses on the production of cementitious materials that possess a low carbon footprint. Focused on using a circular economy, the company also develops concrete 3D printing technology for construction applications at its 3DLAB.
3D printing with concrete requires high control of material flow. To achieve this, the company has leveraged Meltio M600 to 3D print a nozzle that can produce high-quality layers of extruded concrete. According to Meltio, the M600 has allowed Cementos La Cruz to design and produce parts impossible to produce with traditional manufacturing methods.
Technical specifications of the Meltio M600
Meltio is yet to release pricing information for its new M600 3D printer.
| Dimension | 1050 mm x 1150 mm x 1950 mm |
| Build Envelope | 300 mm x 400 mm x 600 mm |
| Weight | 1000 kg |
| Movement System | Servo Motor Linear axis with Absolute encoder on all axes |
| Filtration System | 3 stage particulate and chemical filtration included |
| Environmental Control | Control O2 and humidity levels |
| Laser Type | 9x Direct Diode Lasers |
| Laser Wavelength | 450 nm |
| Total Laser Strength | 1,000 W |
| Total axes | 3 |
| Process Control | Closed loop, laser and wire modulation |
| Touch Probe | Automated XYZ Touch Probe integration |
| Enclosure | Laser safe, fully inert |
| Cooling | Active water cooled chiller included |
| Wire Feedstock Diameter | 0.7 mm – 1.2 mm |
| Wire Feedstock Spool | BS300 or External Wire Drum |
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Featured image shows a Large glass mold 3D printed with the new Meltio M600 on display at AMUG 2024. Photo by 3D Printing Industry.
