3D Printed Metal Filters Protect Circuit Breakers from Explosion | The Cool Parts Show #57

Circuit breakers used in industrial facilities like oil and gas or water treatment plants protect workers and equipment by interrupting power in the event of an overload. But when a breaker does trip in one of these high-voltage circuits, it releases a large amount of energy in the form of hot plasma gas carrying particles of burnt material; filters are necessary to reduce the pressure and temperature of this explosion and to capture any particulate. Schneider Electric previously produced these parts through assembly, but now is offering circuit breakers featuring 3D printed filters. The filters are produced by contract manufacturer GKN Additive, using HP’s Metal Jet platform for binder jet 3D printing. The binder jetting process enabled the complex and compact geometry needed for the application, while also making the parts affordable enough to produce at scale.

This episode of The Cool Parts Show brought to you by Carpenter Additive.

LEARN MORE ABOUT:

Metal Jet, the binder jetting platform used to manufacture these filters https://www.additivemanufacturing.med...

Another Cool Part that “filters” out pressure, in this case for high volumes of liquid https://www.additivemanufacturing.med...

A previous binder jet Cool Part, a proof-of-concept copper filter created in response to coronavirus https://www.additivemanufacturing.med...

Another example of a manufacturer able to adopt binder jetting naturally because it already had the sintering capability https://www.additivemanufacturing.med...

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