Wire feedstock costs around 20% less than powder for additive manufacturing and gives over 95% material utilisation during printing, yet wire-based deposition case studies for C103, a costly niobium alloy used in rocket nozzles, remain scarce. KARI launched this project to close that gap.
LabAM24 has delivered three C103 rocket nozzle components to KARI, printed on their in-house gantry-type laser-wire DED system with Aibuild CAM. Mechanical testing shows ultimate tensile strength of 470 to 495 MPa, yield strength of 378 to 445 MPa, and with elongation of 22.2 to 29.4%, all above the ASTM B655 minimum and comparing favourably to as-cast benchmarks.
When CAM and hardware need to work together.
LabAM24’s Morphing Shield Technology (MST) replaces a sealed inert chamber with a portable inert environment, dynamically optimising argon gas flow to each part’s deposition geometry as it prints. That’s what makes their chamber-free process possible, but it means the CAM software has to compute the gas flow along with the toolpath, not just plan the toolpath.
Aibuild CAM’s flexibility let LabAM24 build that fully custom capability, with Aibuild’s team working closely with them through the customisation process. This capability currently exists only within LabAM24’s Aibuild-based workflow.
