September 5, 2018: Optomec - a global supplier of production-grade additive manufacturing systems for 3D printed metals, announced the LENS 860 Hybrid Controlled Atmosphere (CA) System. The addition to the Optomec LENS Machine Tool Series provides capabilities for metal hybrid manufacturing. The system will be on display at IMTS (Chicago, McCormick Place, Sept 10-15, 2018 in the West Building, Booth # 432204).
The LENS 860 Hybrid CA system has an 860 x 600 x 610mm work envelope, is equipped with a hermetically-sealed build chamber that maintains oxygen and moisture levels below 10 ppm for processing reactive metals, such as Titanium. The system can be configured with closed loop controls and a 3kW fiber laser, making it ideal for building, repairing or coating mid to large size parts with metal quality. In addition to the LENS 860 Hybrid CA model, three more configurations are available. The LENS 860 Hybrid Open Atmosphere (OA) system provides a platform for processing non-reactive metals, such as Stainless Steel, Tool Steel Inconel, etc. Two Additive-Only models (both Open and Controlled Atmosphere) round out the new large format Machine Tool Series of LENS systems.
All Machine Tool Series systems incorporate Optomec LENS 3D Metal Printing technology, which has been enhanced for power and additive manufacturing. One feature of the LENS Hybrid configuration is the ability to use the milling capability to perform finish machining on a printed part without re-fixturing or aligning the component on a second machine.
The LENS 860 Hybrid CA system can produce and repair larger parts and also provides the ability to print fine-features for thin wall structures and perform wide area cladding for wear coating applications. Optomec software enables 5-axis build strategies that combine additive and subtractive operations in a single tool path. A range of material starter recipes are available to help speed adoption with the LENS 860 Hybrid Controlled Atmosphere System.