3d Printed Metallic Glass Components Increase Electric Motor Efficiency
3D printed metallic glass components let motor buyers optimize efficiency and reduce battery dependencies.
Amorphous Metals
Structural State
Non-crystalline metallic solids produced through rapid cooling lack the long-range atomic order found in conventional metals. In industrial manufacturing, amorphous metals present an isotropic atomic configuration created by quenching molten alloy streams at cooling rates exceeding one million kelvin per second. This rapid thermal extraction prevents liquid atoms from arranging into periodic crystal lattices, yielding a frozen liquid microstructure with high yield strength and low magnetic coercivity.
The atomic disorder eliminates grain boundaries entirely, removing the localized defect sites that typically initiate corrosion or mechanical fatigue in structural components. Production boundaries are governed by critical casting thickness, as melt ribbons thicker than a few millimetres cool too slowly to avoid crystallization.
Magnetic Permeability
Transformer core manufacturers exploit low hysteresis loss by substituting conventional electrical steel with rapidly chilled ribbon stock. Because amorphous metals exhibit minimal magnetocrystalline anisotropy, magnetization rotates easily under alternating electromagnetic fields, reducing core power dissipation by up to seventy percent in distribution equipment. Electric utilities evaluate these core losses over a twenty-year operational horizon, factoring the upfront material cost against avoided power generation capacity.
The low saturation flux density of iron-based amorphous ribbons requires larger core cross-sections compared to grain-oriented silicon steel, setting a strict volumetric threshold for substation design.
Processing Penalty
Brittle ribbon geometries limit mechanical forming operations to continuous slitting and planar winding procedures. Working with amorphous metals introduces tooling wear during cutting due to high hardness levels, forcing manufacturers to adopt specialized shearing methods or photochemical etching. Scrap rates during winding remain elevated because mechanical shock creates micro-fractures across the ribbon edge, which impairs magnetic domain alignment.
Final annealing requires precise temperature regulation in inert gas atmospheres to relieve internal casting stress without triggering atomic re-crystallization.