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Two More Metal Printers for Sintavia, Destined to Produce Commercial Space Parts

January 19, 2021

Sintavia, LLC has acquired two M4K-4 printers from AMCM GmbH of Starnberg, Germany—the printers are ‘stretched’ versions of EOS M400-4 printers, each using four 1-kW lasers to print single-unit components with dimensions to 450 mm by 450 mm by 1m. Sintavia will use the new machines to expand its portfolio of thrust-chamber design and manufacturing for the rapidly growing commercial space industry. The two new printers will be delivered in June and July of 2021, and will be dedicated to printing copper and nickel alloys.

“Since the acquisition of our first M400-4 three years ago, Sintavia has devoted tremendous resources to developing successful and repeatable operating procedures for the quad-laser printing of extremely thin walls, such as those found in the thrust chamber of a rocket,” says Brian Neff, Sintavia CEO. “We now have eight M400-4 quad laser printers, and we expect that the successful strategies employed on the M400-4 will likewise work on these new M4K-4 units. We are pleased that we will be the first rocket printer in North America to offer the expanded footprint of the M4K-4 to our commercial space customers.”

Developed by AMCM, an affiliated company of EOS GmbH, the M4K-4 is a stretched and widened version of the EOS M400-4 printer, with more powerful lasers and an upgraded cooling system. The design of the M4K-4 was driven largely by demand from commercial space-launch customers looking to optimize thrust-chamber assemblies with fewer traditional joining steps. For most existing commercial rocketry currently in production today, the M4K-4 is able to manufacture the entire thrust chamber assembly as a single unit, including optimized regenerative cooling passages, thereby, dramatically reducing manufacturing complexity and time, according to AMCM officials.

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