With extensive experience in material handling within the Pharmaceutical, Food and Chemicals industries, Piab is now extending its offer to the Additive Manufacturing industry.
Our innovative vacuum conveying technology is a well suited to solve challenges related to Additive Manufacturing such as safe handling of hazardous materials or easy transfer of materials to and from the printer. Piab’s vacuum conveyors are ideal for filling a printer with metal powders, reclaiming or cleaning excess material from the printers´ post-production, and filling or emptying metal powders from and to adjacent equipment such as a sieve or a powder container. Vacuum technology can handle high density materials and transfer them with speed and reliability.
Vacuum conveyors offer an enclosed system both improving operator safety by protecting her from contact with hazardous materials, as well as protecting sensitive and sometimes reactive powders from contact with unwanted matter. Powder handling is usually a manual process, but with vacuum conveying the process is automated. Piab’s vacuum conveyors also allow for an easy changeover of materials and are easy to clean and maintain.
For Additive Manufacturing applications, Piab’s piFLOW®p is an excellent choice. It is ATEX certified and comes with variety of accessories and possible configurations to meet the needs of the industry. Recommended configurations for Additive Manufacturing are:
- piFLOW®p 3 liter with a 200 pump, PLR02 filter and conveying line 32mm
- piFLOW®p 3 liter with a 400 pump, PLR04 filter and conveying line 32mm or 38mm
Recommended accessories are a feed nozzle, a feed adapter and a module to fit the receiver. Moreover, Piab offers solutions for inert gas applications, compact conveyors as well as other suitable accessories.
