Arcam EBM technician 3D Prints Thomas Edison in Titanium

Oskar Zielinski, a R&D technician at Arcam EBM, has honored GE’s founder, Thomas Edison, with a 3D printed Titanium bust statue of him using Electron Beam Melting (EBM) technology.

Oskar Zielinski hold his Arcam EBM Titanium 3D printed Thomas Edison statue
Oskar Zielinski hold his Arcam EBM Titanium 3D printed Thomas Edison statue.

The idea was actually from Oskar’s colleague, Mark Meyer, who requested for a piece of Edison for educational purposes. With a file of a low-resolution model, Oskar then did some remodeling to come up with a high-resolution statue. Using an Arcam Q20plus electron beam machine to test its capability, it took 90 hours to complete the whole 387mm tall twistable build using Titanium (Ti64) as the material.

The build specifications:

  • Created 25 parts
  • Each part consisted of different net structures
  • 4,300, 90-micron layers were printed in one go
  • Only a little support was needed between the outer skins of the slices
  • Internal net structures were all free-floating without any supports
Arcam EBM Titanium 3D printed Thomas Edison bust statue
Arcam EBM Titanium 3D printed Thomas Edison bust statue.

Zielinski remarked that he was happy with what EBM technology had accomplished, and wondered what Thomas Edison would be thinking if someone had told him about this technology during the 19th century.

Time-lapse video showing the status being printed layer by layer. The video was captured from inside the machine using an Arcam LayerQa, normally used for defect detection in AM parts.

Visit our Arcam EBM 3D Printer product page for more information on their 3D printing capabilities or you can also contact us via our contact form, info@creatz3d.com, or +65 6631 8555 for any enquiries.

(photos and video courtesy of Arcam EBM)

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