Yibo3D Launches Mini Metal 3D Printer for Jewelry

Chinese 3D printing company Yibo3D has launched a mini metal 3D printer for jewelry.
According to an article on 3Ders.org:

The global 3D printing industry is booming right now, and experts are eyeing several huge developments and innovations already. Increasingly, the Chinese market and 3D printing industry is becoming impossible to ignore. Interesting new 3D printers and 3D printing startups are appearing at a very high rate in the Chinese market, and yesterday Beijing-based company Yibo3D reached another very interesting milestone. At the China-Germany industrial park in Qingdao city, Shandong province, they unveiled the YBRP-140 SLM miniature metal 3D printer: China’s first small-scale metal 3D printer and the first metal 3D printer in the sub-1 million RMB ($150,000 USD) range.
As you might know, metal 3D printers usually only come in a room-filling full cabinet size, can cost millions of dollars and are almost exclusively used for the production of high quality metal parts for aerospace, aviation and other high tech sectors. In a nutshell, the YBRP-140 SLM miniature metal 3D printer is a reaction to that exclusive product. Though like many others equipped with Selective Laser Melting (SLM) technology, which uses laser beams to melt metal particles into very exact shapes, it is only about the size of an ordinary household washing machine. But like its competitors, it can also be used to create multi-material high performance metal parts. Costing just a fraction of many other SLM 3D printers, it could open industrial grade 3D printing up to a wide range of other startups and industries.
The company behind the YBRP-140 SLM 3D printer, Yibo3D (Yibo Sanwei), is specifically thinking about the jewelry industry. At the unveiling, they further revealed that their 3D printer is also a perfect option for the 3D printing of unique jewelry pieces in gold and other materials. However, high level aerospace materials are also on the table, including iron, nickel-based, copper-based alloys, titanium and others. This makes it a perfect option for 3D printing small, high precision and high density parts, such as low-volume jewelry, research tools, and medical equipment such as teeth prostheses.
And just because it’s cheaper than other metal 3D printers, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re sacrificing much quality. “Taking the example of iron materials, the machine can 3D print in layer heights of just 0.02mm. Furthermore, if we make a 100 mm part, accuracy will deviate as little as 0.1 mm,” they say. That would indeed make it suitable for a wide number of applications, and not just jewelry.

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