Production Methods: What’s the Difference Between Selective Laser Sintering, Direct Metal Laser Sintering, Laser Melting and LaserCusing?
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As an industrial designer, if you confuse extruding with embossing during a job interview or at an engineering meeting, you’ll get some funny looks. But if you screw up the difference between laser sintering and laser melting, you’re likely to be given a bit more slack. That’s because there’s a lot of confusion about the difference between Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and LaserCusing (no sexy acronym), and in fact, some vendors of these technologies themselves do not always draw clear distinctions between their capabilities. As conflicting information is being circulated, here we will attempt to explain the difference between the terms. (And hopefully those of you in our readership directly experienced with these technologies will sound off in the comments.)
First off, all four procedures follow the same basics:
1. A designer/engineer designs a part
2. Software cuts that part up into virtual slices on the horizontal plane
3. A chamber in the production machine is filled with powder
4. A laser runs over the powder, solidifying it and building up a thin layer of material
5. Layer after layer is built up from bottom to top, until the part is finished
6. The leftover powder is re-usable, leaving no waste
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