Tue, 27 July, 2021
For high performance cutting blades, the most common tooth tip material is tungsten carbide. However, traditionally a 'tipped' blade uses less than 1% of the starting quantity of high value wear material, the rest is machined off during the manufacturing process or left on the substrate and discarded when the sharp edges are worn.
Over the past 2 years, TWI teamed up with C4 Carbides on the SmartTeeth project to develop innovative saw blades using Powder Bed Fusion-Laser Beam (PBF-LB), a metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology, to fuse super-abrasive powder to form tooling grade hard materials into net shape cutting teeth. PBF-LB technology is well known for its capability to produce fine features, with sub 50µm layer height, to form accurate net shape objects.
The SmartTeeth project is leveraging the design freedom of the technology to create a new generation of saw blades with complex cutting tip designs with unparalleled performance. It will also deliver environmental benefits including material saving of 70-80% and energy and production savings of over 50% when compared to conventional carbide saw blade manufacturing.
Watch a demonstration of saw blade sample production using PBF-LB and the cutting performance
For further information on this project or PBF-LB for other applications, please contact us below.
The SmartTeeth project is funded under InnovateUK Project Number 105745.