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Thermal Radiation Heating Patent Loophole

A project log for prism laser scanner

bringing additive manufacturing to the next level

hexastormHexastorm 02/06/2023 at 08:500 Comments

I studied the thermal radiation heating patent US20210387401A1, a bit more.
Orion AM basically claims it solved the homogeneity issue for fused filament printing, see picture.


Strong interlayer bonding

This is big. At first sight, there seems to be an issue with their patent.
If you look at the actions from the US patent office, you see that the first 11 claims are withdrawn and the 12th claim is amended.
It has one big loophole; " at least one print heating device for applying thermal radiation"
Thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation generated by the thermal motion of particles in matter.
Solid state lasers and LEDS do not create electromagnetic light via thermal motion.
As such, you are able to circumvent it.
Reason seems to be that using lasers to increase bonding between layers has been patented by Mark Gordon in 2016 US9339972B2.

The patent expired due to fee issues. Someone seems to have made an expensive mistake here.
There seems to be some other patents, one which also uses a roller.
A crucial one is by Stratasys (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9339972B2/en)

Key seems to be that they apply the laser prior to deposition.  Stratasys seems to envision some sort of of theta control.


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