Sintavia, LLC, the leading additively-enabled component OEM within the Aerospace & Defense industry, announced yesterday that it had signed a letter of intent with AMCM GmbH of Starnberg, Germany, to become the North American launch customer of the M 8K printer—one of the largest powder bed fusion 3D printers ever built. At 820mm x 820mm x 1600mm with eight nLIGHT AFX-1000 lasers, the M 8K purchased by Sintavia represents an enormous leap in productivity and design freedom compared with smaller printers. Delivery of the first North American M 8K to Sintavia is expected to occur in early 2025.
“Whoever says that there are no economies of scale in AM hasn’t been running a large enough printer,” said Brian Neff, Sintavia’s Founder and CEO. “With over one cubic meter of displacement and eight next generation nLIGHT lasers, Sintavia’s new M 8K will not only allow for very large, complex components to be designed and printed, but also dramatically reduce unit pricing on smaller units. In our experience, there is an exponential increase in product design utility when build chamber dimensions increase linearly, and the M 8K has the largest build chamber of all.”
“Over the past six years, it has been a pleasure to work together with Brian and his team as we have collectively pushed the envelope for larger and faster machines across the Aerospace & Defense industry,” said Martin Bullemer, Managing Director of AMCM GmbH. “It is a natural fit that the first M 8K in North America—and the first one anywhere with an extended Z-axis—would go to Sintavia. We look forward to working with the Sintavia team to see how they apply this game-changing technology.”
Sintavia currently operates a fleet of seventeen AMCM and EOS GmbH printers, including two M 4K printers it acquired in 2021. The M 8K architecture is based on the M 4K platform, which in turn was based on the architecture of the highly successful EOS M400-4 multi-laser printer. AMCM officially launched the M 8K in September 2023 with ArianeGroup as the European launch customer. ArianeGroup, a joint venture between Airbus and Safran, will use the first M 8K, when it arrives in early 2025, to print a large combustion chamber for its Prometheus rocket engine. It is expected that Sintavia’s M 8K will run a nickel alloy.
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