You may have heard of tungsten. No, Tungsten isn’t Bertie Wooster’s nebbish friend who’s more interested in toads than being courted by one of the Wooster women. Found in almost everything, from cheap, colourful wedding bands to electronics, tungsten is a metal that is extremely useful for its strength, density and high melting point. And, just last week, industrial 3D printer manufacturer ExOne and rapid prototyping firm rp+m announced a partnership that will see tungsten added to the 3D printing material range for ExOne systems.
Lead has long been known to be poisonous. It’s been removed from paint, but we still see it in doctors’ and dentists’ offices around the world as a necessary protection against radiation during X-rays. The partnership between ExOne and rp+m will allow for the replacement of that deadly metal with a much friendlier bonded tungsten. As business development manager at rp+m, Russell Wolff, told DOTmed, “It’s roughly double the density of lead so the advantage of tungsten is that you can get by with 40 to 50 percent less wall thickness and less mass than lead.” Using ExOne’s M-Flex machine, rp+m will now be able to 3D print tungsten as a replacement for lead in a variety of contexts.
This may be a development important for fields outside of medicine, as well. rp+m, in working with its partner Radiation Protection Technologies, sought to comply with EU Restriction of Use of Hazardous Substances (“RoHS”) standards, which limits the use of six toxic substances in manufacturing, including lead. These standards apply to a wide range of items, and not just those used for radiation protection. According to the Wikipedia page on RoHS,
RoHS and other efforts to reduce hazardous materials in electronics are motivated in part to address the global issue of consumer electronics waste. As newer technology arrives at an ever increasing rate, consumers are discarding their obsolete products sooner than ever. This waste ends up in landfills and in countries like China to be “recycled.”…
…American electronics sent offshore to countries like Ghana in West Africa under the guise of recycling may be doing more harm than good. Not only are adult and child workers in these jobs being poisoned by heavy metals, but these metals are returning to the U.S. “The U.S. right now is shipping large quantities of leaded materials to China, and China is the world’s major manufacturing center,” Dr. Jeffrey Weidenhamer says, a chemistry professor at Ashland University in Ohio. “It’s not all that surprising things are coming full circle and now we’re getting contaminated products back.”
If 3D printed tungsten can replace lead in this circumstance, perhaps it can be used to replace lead in other circumstances as well. While not all countries have adopted similar standards to the EU – so far, only California in the US has followed the EU’s lead – many are considering such practices.
Now, if only we could get Bertie’s friend Tungsten to be bonded with his cousin Gussie. Then, by God, we might be able to get those two out of our hair!
Source: MarketWatch
