Zetasinter tubular sintering furnace

One of the main revolutions in FDM printing in recent years has been the appearance of ceramic and metallic powder-filled filaments that allow ceramic or metallic parts to be obtained at low cost through heat treatment. Manufacturers such as Nanoe and The Virtual Foundry offer quality materials that can be easily sintered.

Image 1: Parts printed with metal and ceramic filaments after sintering. Source: Nanoe

However, one of the main drawbacks until now was the accessibility of suitable equipment to carry out the heat treatment at an affordable price.

Nanoe is a renowned French company founded in 2008 and specialised in the production of innovative materials. It stands out mainly in the production of ceramic powders, with a production capacity of more than 100 tons of high purity ceramic powder per year.

Taking advantage of the high degree of know-how in the field of ceramics, in 2018 they created the Zetamix brand, the first brand of filaments with technical ceramics aimed at producing all-ceramic parts in an accessible and affordable way.

Video 1: Meet Zetamix By Nanoe. Source: Nanoe.

As a complement to its Zetamix filaments, Nanoe offers a complete solution designed to carry out the complete flow to obtain all-metal or ceramic parts. This solution consists of two pieces of equipment:

Zetadebind, an ultrasonic bath that facilitates the chemical debind stage and Zetasinter, a high-temperature tubular furnace that allows to carry out the thermal debind stage, the sintering stage and any other heat treatment to be applied to the final metal or ceramic part.

Image 2: Zetasinter and Zetadebind. Source: Nanoe

Nanoe Zetasinter is a high-temperature tube furnace, suitable for carrying out sintering heat treatments of metal and ceramic filaments. It consists of 6 molybdenum silicide U-shaped heating elements capable of providing a constant temperature in the chamber of up to 1550ºC.

It also incorporates a programmable controller, capable of configuring multiple temperature ramps, with an accuracy of ±1 ºC.

Image 3: Zetasinter temperature controller. Source: Nanoe

Zetasinter includes a tubular chamber made of high purity alumina with a diameter of 90 mm and a length of 1m. The ends of the tubular chamber can be sealed and coupled to a gas or vacuum line.

This makes it possible to carry out heat treatments in air, in an inert atmosphere or in a vacuum.

For high temperature sintering treatments, the working volume is 100 x 75 x 75 mm.

Zetasinter, together with ceramic and metallic filaments from Zetamix and The Virtual Foundry, are the perfect solution to make metal printing accessible to the vast majority of FFF printer users.