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Laser micro sintering (LMS) was developed by the research group at University of Applied Sciences Mittweida and the associated Laserinstitut Mittelsachsen e.V. as the result of research started in 2001 with a project on the possibility of generating parts by selective laser sintering (SLS) with improved resolution. For the successful generation of solid bodies from various metal powders the technology uses essentially sub-micrometer powders, a cylindrical coating blade and a q-switched solid state laser. The resolution and the surface roughness are by more than one order of magnitude better than those achieved by previous selective laser sinter technologies. Presently the technology shows advancements in selective laser sintering of highly resolved specimens of densely sintered Al2O3 and SiC ceramics too. This paper reports the process mechanism of LMS and its principal differences compared to other SLS methods. A variety of laser micro sintered parts from different metals and the newest results in laser ...

Miniaturization is one of the main imperatives in high-tech development and therefore a persistent challenge for mechanical engineering. Recently a freeform technique – Laser Micro Sintering – has been developed by which micro parts with an overall resolution of 30 μm can be produced from powder materials. The technique is a generative freeform fabrication method based on selective laser sintering; it can produce hollows and undercuts and does not afford shape-specific tools. Functional micro bodies can be generated from metals and ceramics.

Many materials have already been investigated for laser micro sintering. Nearly all technical metals can be processed with this rapid prototyping technology. A new field of investigation is the sintering of ceramics. For industrial and also for medical, especially dental, application silicon dioxide is a multiply applicable material. One of its interesting features is that the properties of the resulting material can be varied between ceramic on the one and vitreous on the other side, depending on the extent of crystalline or amorphous character of the nano-scale structure. A special problem with laser micro sintering of ceramics is the poor absorption of Nd:YAG laser radiation by most of the materials. Besides that, laser micro sintering of ceramics, in contrary to the process with metals, is not merely a series of aggregational transitions. A solution for the micro part generation of SiO2 is reported. Typical laser sintering results from this material are presented. Material specific behaviors during laser micro sintering are discussed.© (2008) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

The selective laser micro sintering (SLS), which was developed by the Laserinstitut Mittelsachsen e.V. (Ebert 1999) is used for generation of micro parts. Tungsten and tungsten alloys (especially tungstenaluminium) were employed as the first usable metal powders for laser micro sintering (Regenfuss 2003), (Exner 2003). Meanwhile many new materials were investigated (Regenfuss 2005).

As mechanical engineering industry encounters a growing demand of µm-sized or µm-structured components for an increasing range of applications, miniaturization is presently ranking among the most important goals in product and tool development.Compared to still higher resolving techniques, selective laser sintering (SLS) still bears the advantages of relatively low production cost and short processing times even for series productions of micro parts. Furthermore, next to prismatic or tapered microstructures, undercuts and hollows can be realized.Until recently commercial SLS units were unable to generate micro parts smaller than 100 µm. A novel modification of SLS together with a new setup, developed by Laser Institut Mittelsachsen e.V, extends the resolution to less than 30 µm with a minimal roughness of 1.5µm. The technique has been upgraded and successfully applied to produce micro tools or micro-components for tools from powders of refractory as well as lower melting metals in steps of 1µm thick sintered layers.Based on this process and device, 3D-Micromac AG (Chemnitz, Germany) launches into the market a commercial system, which, on an industrial scale, performs selective laser sintering of solid and structured metal and in future also ceramic parts.As mechanical engineering industry encounters a growing demand of µm-sized or µm-structured components for an increasing range of applications, miniaturization is presently ranking among the most important goals in product and tool development.Compared to still higher resolving techniques, selective laser sintering (SLS) still bears the advantages of relatively low production cost and short processing times even for series productions of micro parts. Furthermore, next to prismatic or tapered microstructures, undercuts and hollows can be realized.Until recently commercial SLS units were unable to generate micro parts smaller than 100 µm. A novel modification of SLS together with a new setup, developed by Laser Institut Mittelsachsen e.V, extends the resolution to less than 30 µm with a minimal roughness of 1.5µm. The technique has been upgraded and successfully applied to produce micro tools or micro-components for tools from powders of refractory as well as lower melting metals in steps of 1µm thick sinte...