Blue Origin, the industrial house firm constructed off of investments from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has donated two EOS M290 powder mattress fusion (PBF) printers to Auburn College’s Nationwide Middle for Additive Manufacturing Excellence (NCAME), in order that the latter can contribute to the advance of copper printing processes. In January, 2025, Blue Origin turned the primary “new house” firm to efficiently attain orbit on its first launch, sending its New Glenn rocket into house from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station.
Auburn College has lengthy performed a major position in serving to advance the AM business, together with an R&D relationship with NASA that goes again over a decade. Notably, one of many alloys that NCAME can be finding out, copper-chromium-niobium (GRCop-42), was initially developed by NASA.
EOS has demonstrated rising competence with creating copper alloys for its platforms, together with EOS CopperAlloy CuNi30, created in partnership with Phillips Federal and Austal USA in reference to work for the US submarine industrial base. EOS and AMCM have additionally partnered with the UK’s College of Wolverhampton to ascertain a UK heart of excellence devoted to copper AM.
Picture courtesy of EOS
In a press launch about Blue Origin’s donation of two EOS M290 printers to Auburn College’s NCAME, the director of NCAME, Nima Shamsaei, mentioned, “Copper’s excessive reflectivity presents challenges for conventional laser-based 3D printing methods to successfully soften and fuse the powder, as a lot of the laser vitality is mirrored. We already had two EOS M290s, however these new additions will permit us to expedite the form of utilized analysis that may assist Blue Origin’s wants for this alloy.”
NCAME analysis scientist Jonathan Pegues added, “Copper additionally has excessive thermal conductivity, which makes melting much more inefficient. As soon as it lastly melts, absorptivity will increase and results in inconsistent soften pool conduct and potential defects within the printed half. Specialised laser methods that couple higher with copper are sometimes wanted to beat these challenges, however sure alloys like GRCop-42 have confirmed to be printable with customary IRF lasers, like these built-in within the EOS M290.”
Blue Origin’s New Glenn at liftoff throughout its NG-1 mission in January. Picture courtesy of Blue Origin through NCAME
New house has been having one other “second” because of the return to the White Home by President Trump, founding father of the Area Pressure. There may be purpose to consider that this second can be extra than simply momentary, as a wide range of catalysts for Trump’s reshoring targets converge within the house business.
Extra so than any explicit expertise or utility, house business AM exercise may play its greatest position in accelerating R&D into materials feedstocks, because the Blue Origin/NCAME story illustrates. R&D into copper, specifically, may simply emerge as a winner for the AM business, as tariff threats have recently precipitated renewed resurgence within the value of the steel.
With that in thoughts, the comparatively small variety of corporations with proficiency in printing copper could possibly be among the many greatest beneficiaries of Trump’s ongoing, more and more complicated commerce battle insurance policies, to the extent that end-users in the end discover it simpler to construct up their home copper manufacturing capabilities, than it’s to proceed to depend on imported copper elements. Trump has, fairly astonishingly, solely been again in workplace for 2 months at this level, however there already does appear to be some reality to the notion that his administration’s insurance policies will pace up the reshoring efforts initiated by earlier presidencies (together with his personal).
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