The growth of additive manufacturing (AM) at the end of the last decade has brought new opportunities and applications for gas supply and recycle, specifically argon and helium. It’s also brought a fresh and holistic view of the entire value chain, which uses these inert gases directly in the process or for controlled atmospheres: from high-grade alloy production to printing and through final part processing.
Manufacturers with medium and large gas usage – those that use more than 25 million standard cubic foot (SCF) of argon or 2 million SCF of helium per year – achieve substantial savings and risk reduction with integrated, centralized gas recovery systems that recycle over 90% of their inert gas rate.
But smaller gas users, particularly AM print operations, can suffer at the wrong end of the economies of scale. Without enough gas throughput to justify recovery, they’re left with absorbing the high cost and inconsistent availability of argon and helium on a once-through basis. This puts them at a competitive disadvantage on multiple fronts: production margin, resource reliability, and future pricing uncertainty.
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