ARRK claims Direct Digital Manufacturing is the next industrial revolution for the manufacturing industry.
Direct Digital Manufacturing, also called Rapid Manufacturing, manufactures components directly from computer generated data. ARRK says it dramatically accelerates products’ time to market, and can reduce parts production costs.
Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) is the fastest growing Direct Digital Manufacturing method. It is the current method of choice when sourcing low volume digitally manufactured parts.
The SLS process does not require support structures during manufacture, allowing production of very complicated components.
ARRK says it recently used Direct Digital Manufacturing to great effect when Minelab Electronics, a manufacturer of advanced metal detectors, was looking to upgrade its F3 Mine Detector.
As part of the process, Minelab Electronics needed to produce 500 pins. ARRK used Direct Digital Manufacturing to build all 500 units in 38 hours.
The 500 pins were manufactured from Polyamide (Nylon 11) using the SLS process. A computer controlled laser beam selectively melts one cross-section at a time, layer by layer until all parts are complete.
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