Additive Industries has 3D printed a range of ready to-use spare parts with improved process performance and quality.
This follows a collaboration with steel and metal company ArcelorMittal. According to the companies, 3D printing spare parts can offer on-demand, on-location production, reducing the need for stocks. It can also shorten the production cycle as well as improving flexibility. However, during the initial stages of the collaboration, a challenging aspect was to achieve these requirements both for quality as well as for the size of the components, limiting the potential uses of spare parts.
However, in the last two years, the companies have reportedly improved both quality and reliability and made up to a fourfold increase in the size of components, with the number of applications increasing from small size part consolidation applications to applications where large, complex, functional and strong parts are required.
‘Innovation and market leader ArcelorMittal have helped us to stress-test our MetalFAB1 system for critical spare-part production,’ said Daan AJ Kersten, CEO of Additive Industries. ‘This enabled us to expand our experience to the steel industry from our main application markets in aerospace and automotive. It has become clear that metal 3D printing is a serious alternative for a large variety of cast parts.’
This story uses material from Additive Industries, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
