New piFLOW®am vacuum conveyor by piab handles high bulk density

The new piFLOW®am vacuum conveyor

piab vacuum-conveying equipment is available in Canada through Firing Industries Ltd., and the manufacturer recently launched its latest solution: the piFLOW®am. This new member of the piFLOW® family is designed to convey powder with bulk density of at least 500 cubic pounds with a very small footprint and an impressive throughput.

This piab device is a particular boon to additive manufacturing, an industry in which tight spaces must make room for large equipment.

Maintaining the material purity

Additive materials are often heavy, expensive, and toxic and should be managed in a way that maintains the purity of the material base. piab has optimized the piFLOW®am to convey metal powder used in powder bed fusion processes, including laser sintering, and binder jetting processes. Tight spaces and other large equipment often restrict building height; users can integrate the compact piFLOW®am into a three-dimensional printer or sieve station.

The piFLOW®am has a design that features the proprietary, highly efficient piab COAX vacuum technology and a butterfly valve. Not sensitive to pressure fluctuations, the valve can keep a material batch inside without turning on the pump. The device has a standard TC connection, which makes it easy to integrate into different kinds of additive-manufacturing machinery; users can also integrate it easily with any three-dimensional printer brands, sieves, hoppers, and other intermediate vessels. Pneumatic or electrical control units control the product.

Among the many advantages of this vacuum conveyor from Firing Industries:

• worker safety, including no exposure to toxic metal dust;
• low building height;
• low noise and energy consumption;
• easy cleaning;
• easy operation and maintenance; and
• minimum product scrap.

Among the target applications of this device are reclaiming metal powder from an overflow bin or from the building plate of a three-dimensional printer, recirculating material from the overflow bin, and filling the printer, sieve, or hopper with metal powder. The piFLOW®am is recommended for conveying powder from titanium, steel, stainless steel, aluminum, copper, nickel-based alloys, and precious metals like gold, platinum, palladium, and silver, as well as other types of metal powder.

To learn more, contact Firing Industries’ application-sales engineers at ddubuc@firing.com or (877) 688-0974.

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