The Dutch company Additive Industries, which makes metal 3D printers, has introduced a new model, the MetalFab 420K. This is a laser powder bed fusion system designed to produce high-quality parts in industrial volumes.
It’s not so much a brand new design but more of an evolution of the existing system architecture. Thus, it is a highly automated modular system that can be expanded in the field to run up to eight jobs automatically with up to three materials installed simultaneously. It has the standard build area of 420 x 420 x 400 mm, which is common to most of Additive Industries’ machines. It produces layers of between 30 and 180 microns.
It’s fitted with four full-field Yb-fiber lasers with 1kW power. Each one of these can cover the entire build area, and they each have a variable beam diameter that can be set between 100 and 500 microns. It features automated laser calibration and in-built laser-to-laser alignment.
This is complemented by a high-velocity optimised gas flow, double the gas flow rate of the older MetalFab G2, with less than 10% velocity variance across the build area. This should ensure consistency and quality across the powder bed, enabling high laser power and scan speeds to be achieved without compromise.
There’s also a new permanent filter design to reduce maintenance intervals and improve waste handling without interrupting the printing. The system has an open architecture so that users can develop their own process parameters, either to push productivity further or to develop parameters for hard-to-process materials.
It’s mainly aimed at the space and aerospace markets, where quality and consistency are the main criteria. Mark Massey, CEO of Additive Industries, explained, “Based on the feedback of our valuable global customer base we have built this new system from the proven DNA of our MetalFab product portfolio with a key focus on the needs of our demanding users in the space, aerospace, automotive and high-tech sectors who are looking to push productivity further in their manufacturing operations, where no compromise in quality is acceptable. The MetalFab 420K delivers this.”
It can handle a range of different metals, including AlSi10Mg/ AlSi7Mg 0.6 aluminium alloys, 316L stainless steel alloy, and M300/ M789 tool steel alloys, as well as Ti6Al4V Grade 5 and Grade 23 Titanium, among others.
It comes with various software, including the Additive Industries build processor, developed by Materialise, as well as Autodesk Netfabb, Dyndrite LPBF Pro, and Dynamic Laser Assignment.
The MetalFab 420K has been through a six-month beta test with Stoke Space, which already uses Additive Industries’ MetalFab G2 model. The company is based in Kent, Washington, in the US, and works in the space sector.
Kunal Naik, senior manager for additive manufacturing at Stoke Space, commented, “The MetalFab 420K gives us the productivity, precision, and reliability we need to move quickly from design iteration to flight hardware. Additive Industries has been a strong partner throughout the beta program, and this next step reflects our confidence in the system’s readiness for production.” Having completed the beta testing, Stoke Space went on to order five MetalFab 420K production systems.
It’s available to order now, with deliveries scheduled to start in Q2 2026.
