Closed vane impellers are critical components in pumps, compressors, and turbomachinery. Their complex geometry—tight shrouds, enclosed passages, and intricate vane profiles—makes them notoriously difficult and expensive to manufacture with traditional methods like casting, machining, or even laser-based metal 3D printing.
That’s where Cold Metal Fusion (CMF) is changing the game.
A closed vane impeller consists of blades enclosed between two shrouds, forming sealed flow channels. This design is preferred in applications requiring:
However, producing these parts is a nightmare for traditional methods. Casting often struggles with precision and internal quality. Machining requires costly multi-axis setups and wasteful material removal. Even laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) faces productivity and cost barriers when building dense, shrouded geometries layer by layer.
Cold Metal Fusion is a powder-based additive manufacturing process that combines polymer laser sintering with conventional metal powder metallurgy. Parts are printed in polymer-bonded metal powder, then debound and sintered into fully dense metal components.
Here’s why it excels for closed vane impellers:
Complex Geometries Made Simple
CMF builds near-net-shape impellers with enclosed passages and intricate vane curvature—geometries that would be prohibitively expensive or impossible with casting or machining.
Superior Surface Quality
CMF delivers smoother surfaces and tighter tolerances than typical L-PBF. For impellers, this means reduced post-processing and better hydraulic efficiency straight out of the furnace.
Material Versatility
High-performance alloys such as titanium (Ti-6Al-4V), Inconel 625, and stainless steels can all be processed via CMF. This allows engineers to match material performance to application needs—whether it’s high strength, corrosion resistance, or lightweight efficiency.
Scalable and Cost-Effective
Unlike laser-based systems that scale poorly with part size or quantity, CMF supports batch production. Multiple impellers can be nested in a single build, reducing cost per part and enabling economical small-to-medium batch runs.
Made in the U.S.
With Cold Metal Fusion application centers being established domestically, companies can source critical impellers without overseas lead times, helping secure supply chains for energy, aerospace, and defense applications.
Imagine a pump manufacturer who needs titanium impellers for corrosive offshore environments. Casting titanium is slow and expensive, and machining enclosed vanes is impractical. CMF makes it possible to produce high-strength, lightweight impellers with repeatability—meeting both performance and cost requirements.
For industries under pressure to innovate—whether oil & gas, aerospace, or water treatment—Cold Metal Fusion provides a production-ready path to parts that were once considered impossible.
If you’re exploring new ways to produce closed vane impellers or want to learn how Cold Metal Fusion could fit into your supply chain, let’s connect. At CADmore Metal, we’re already helping companies bring complex titanium and Inconel impellers into production—faster, more cost-effectively, and at scale.