ExtrudeHone’s (Irwin, Pennsylvania) ProMetal Rapid Tooling System – named RTS-300 – is the commercial realization of MIT’s Three Dimensional Printing (3DP) process for manufacturing metal parts and tooling.

The machine is capable of creating steel parts up to 12 x 12 x 10 inches (300 x 300 x 250 mm) in size. ProMetal applications include tooling for plastic injection molding, vacuum forming, blow molding, lost foam patterns and the direct fabrication of powder metal components.

ExtrudeHone sold its first commercial RTS-300 to Motorola, which was installed in early 1999. Motorola joined a collaborative effort consisting of several industrial members, all part of MIT’s Three Dimensional Printing Consortium. Although early reliability problems delayed the implementation effort, recent advances have provided acceptable results.