Aurora Labs Launches Beta Metal 3D Printer

The story of Aurora Labs continues with their announcement of a new metal 3D printer.

We’ve been following the Australian company for some years now, as they have been secretly developing what might be a revolutionary metal 3D printing process that could enable large production metal 3D prints of up to 1000Kg in a single day. This is so far beyond the current state of metal 3D printing I can’t even.

Late last year they finally revealed their secret metal 3D printing process, and it turned out to be ingenious: they essentially parallelized a common metal 3D printing process involving a flat bed of fine metal powder and a powerful sintering laser. Their approach is highly interesting because it not only uses well-proven elements, but is also highly scalable, and should enable them to achieve their goal of 3D printing 1000kg metal objects in 24 hours or less.

The latest development is that the company has now produced a beta version of their proposed RMP1 metal 3D printer. This is a version of the device that could become the final commercially-available machine. They explain:

“The RMP1 Beta Printer is a pre-production machine which will be almost identical in operation to the Company’s final production line machines, with the exception of improvement and changes that come from feedback from customers.”

Aurora Labs says the beta device is vastly more capable than their previous alpha devices, as it has a larger build volume by ten times! They’ve also redesigned the casing for the RMP1 by engaging with an industrial design firm to create a brand new look.

At this point Aurora Labs is apparently negotiating placement of the first device with a trusted partner for testing in a real environment. We don’t know who that is, but I’m sure we’ll be told by Aurora Labs sooner or later.

Meanwhile, they are now open to negotiating sales of future machines based on the RMP1 Beta 3D Printer via pre-orders.

I’m thinking that the company will be able to fine tune their device based on extensive feedback from the initial customers. Barring any significant findings, it could be that the RMP1 may “go production” by the end of this year.

That’s merely the start for Aurora Labs. The RMP1, while a powerful metal 3D printer, is not the machine that will 3D print 1000kg in a day. For that they will have to scale up significantly in a future device design.

However, the road to that design goes through the RMP1. This is merely the first step of many.

Via Aurora Labs (PDF)