Skip to navigation

A Revolutionary New Way to Manufacture Metal Parts

Today’s metal 3D printers are the mainframe computers of manufacturing. They are large, slow, and expensive ($500k -1M). In the same way mainframes were disrupted by cloud data centers, large-format metal printers will be replaced by smaller, low cost machines working in parallel - print-farms. Markforged’s Atomic Diffusion Additive Manufacturing (ADAM) process for printing metal unlocks a new era of metal parts production. 3D metal print-farms will shorten development time, closing the gap between prototyping and production.

Request a free metal sample part

The Keys to 3D Metal Print-Farms

1. ADAM (Atomic Diffusion Additive Manufacturing)
An end-to-end process that fundamentally scales down in cost, built on our existing reinforced extrusion technology.

2. 3D print farm platform
High-precision, low cost, printer instances enabled through smart sensors.

3. Fleet management software
Enterprise grade software which can optimize workflows, provide predictive analytics, connect, monitor, and report results across a fleet of connected printers.

At Markforged we are working to push each technology front forward with the goal of unlocking printed metal production at scale within 2 years.

Request a Metal X quote

Atomic Diffusion Additive Manufacturing

ADAM is an end-to-end process that starts with metal powder, captures it in a plastic binder (which makes it safe to handle), and then forms it into the part shape one layer at a time. After printing you sinter the part in a furnace, burning off the binder and solidifying the powder into the final fully-dense metal part.

Printing the Form

The part creation process builds on our existing carbon fiber reinforced extrusion technology — where micro strands of carbon fiber are bound in plastic. In the case of ADAM printing, 60% metal powder is substituted in place of the carbon fiber. The Metal X is the first step down the print farm path — an industrial quality ADAM machine built on our 4th generation printing platform. This printer will solve the hard problems — machine reliability, surface finish, final-part dimensional accuracy, and repeatability. Its designed from the ground up to reliably shape beautiful metal parts.

Thermal sintering

Thermally sintering parts is well-established in the Metal Injection Molding (MIM) industry to create end-use parts for medical, aerospace, and consumer applications. The sintering step burns off the plastic binder and causes the metal powder to diffuse together into 99.7% dense metal. Sintering furnaces start under $30K and process parts into their finished state overnight. A full stack production furnace runs $800k and is designed to keep up with an injection mold - so it can handle the part output of a 500-1000 unit print farm.

Materials

ADAM leverages well known MIM materials that are used in demanding, end-use applications. Best of all, the process supports hundreds of metals. 17-4 stainless steel is the first material we will ship, but many others are in beta testing including tool steels, titanium, aluminum, and inconel.

Eiger

We have spent the last 4 years building out a comprehensive cloud-based fleet management solution called Eiger. There are thousands of Markforged printers churning out parts all over the world — all running with full telemetry, error monitoring, feedback, and analytics. Think of it like a distributed print farm. At Markforged, we run over 100 printers in parallel. Half are dedicated to producing parts for developing our new printers. 30 run long-term cycle testing, and 20 are used in operations to manufacture sample parts — about 6.5k parts per month.

Bringing Manufacturing into the Digital Age

Humans have been pouring metal into molds for five thousand years. Now we have a better way. In the next 2 years Markforged will achieve the technological leap to true digital metal manufacturing. The digital age transformed every other industry known to man — music, photography, writing, telecom, email, the internet. But manufacturing is largely the same as it was in the 50s. It’s time for mechanical engineering to enter the digital age.

― Greg Mark, founder & CEO

All of the blogs and the information contained within those blogs are copyright by Markforged, Inc. and may not be copied, modified, or adopted in any way without our written permission. Our blogs may contain our service marks or trademarks, as well as of those our affiliates. Your use of our blogs does not constitute any right or license for you to use our service marks or trademarks without our prior permission. Markforged Information provided in our blogs should not be considered professional advice. We are under no obligation to update or revise blogs based on new information, subsequent events, or otherwise.

Never miss an article

Subscribe to get new Markforged content in your inbox