WEBINAR: Aluminum AM in Your Lab: Manchester and Twente on ValCUN’s MMD Technology

Metal additive manufacturing has never been an easy fit for a research lab. Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) means a laser safety enclosure, powder handling protocols, an inert atmosphere and three-phase power. Binder jetting adds a debinding and sintering chain on the back end. Either way, aluminum research sits behind a wall of infrastructure that most departments cannot justify. In this webinar, 3Dnatives and ValCUN looked at what changes when that requirement disappears, with researchers from the University of Manchester and the University of Twente presenting what they found working with ValCUN’s Minerva printer and its Molten Metal Deposition (MMD) process.

What We Covered:

MMD melts industry-standard aluminum wire and deposits it in a single step. The Minerva system runs on a single-phase 110 V or 230 V connection, weighs 1.1 tonnes and fits through a standard doorway, with no ATEX certification, gas infrastructure or clean room required. Process parameters, data capture, nozzle configuration and material selection are all left open to the user.

▸ Where MMD sits among aluminum processes: how single-step wire deposition compares with powder-based aluminum AM on cost, footprint and lead time, and which applications it does and does not suit.