Our friends at Xact Metal are heralding a golden age of metal additive manufacturing. On Friday, they took home the 2019 Emerging Business Award from The Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County. This award is one of many to come as we witness Xact take off with new clients and distributors across the globe. Recently, the company was featured at Formnext, the world’s leading exhibition and conference on additive manufacturing in Frankfurt, Germany.
Our makers will be happy to know that this company is homed right here in State College at Innovation Park. There, these makers and innovators manufacture Xact’s highly competitive 3D metal printers.
Printing in metal is unlike your typical extrusion based PLA printer. Instead, the printing chamber is filled with an inert gas while powdered metal is laid across the build plate and a powerful laser scans the cross section of the model, fusing the powder together in a single layer. As the build plate moves, each layer is formed with more powdered metal and laser scanning until a full part emerges.
At Xact Metal, the printers are made using the latest and greatest technology, creating cost savings that are passed on to the consumer so that these printers can be priced comparatively low. If you have questions for the team at Xact, drop on by The Rivet during open hours and you may just find them volunteering in the workshop. Every one of them has been a great advocate for us and the Maker Movement.