additive industries
Additive Industries HQ Eindhoven (Credit: Joost Duppen)
In 2012, When Daan Kersten and Jonas Wintermans decided to branch out into the AM market with their own 3D metal printing company, the business partners made a promise to one another. The duo saw an undeniable opportunity to industrialise additive manufacturing and they both agreed, rather than sitting back with a wait-and-see style, they were going to be hands-on and take an active approach by tackling obstacles head-on. Their new enterprise: Additive Industries
At its inception, Additive Industries was designed to be different to other AM companies. Instead of heading straight to the drawing board to immediately design its own 3D metal printer, Kersten, Wintermans and Mark Vaes - the first to join as Additive Industries’ CTO - opted for an entirely different approach. They were going to take their business on a world tour to speak directly to potential customers in an effort to find out what users thought of existing machines and what exactly the market wanted.
Productivity is key
The results from their face-to-face interactions with customers around the globe yielded an unexpected result, as there was a great deal of consensus among users looking to push the technology forward: productivity was key. Up to this point, additive technologies were mostly utilised in the prototyping realm, where price is not a huge factor. However, to enter the stage of industrialisation and series production, cost reduction is essential and the best way to achieve this is through higher volume production, increasing yield by improving reproducibility and by reducing the number of operator hours it takes to run the complex printers.
Committed to ushering in the future of digital-based AM fabrication, the Eindhoven-based technology company took the customer feedback with them to the drawing board during the design process of the MetalFAB1 – its first commercially available industrial 3D metal printer. Aimed at delivering the most productive machine of its kind, the company went against the grain of the competition and opted for some very distinct design choices.
MetalFAB1, four laser modular 3D metal printing system which can be expanded with growing demand.
The MetalFAB1 has many unique features. For example, the machine has auto-calibration capabilities, which are essential to reproducibility and a key differentiator between building one-off prototypes and series of identical parts. Additionally, its build size is the largest symmetrical volume commercially available. Additive Industries was the first to apply four lasers simultaneously to build parts in this large volume. Additionally, only the MetalFAB1 has an in-house developed dynamic laser assignment software to guide its system of four lasers to work in tandem, with each individual laser capable of covering the full eld of the build plate. A stark contrast to the few competing multi-laser systems where each laser is assigned a specific zone with minimal overlap. When these lasers are used to build large products, each laser works in its independent area and then the product is stitched together after the fact.
Modular thinking
The base MetalFAB1 is a relatively simple, single chamber printer. However, with an eye to scalability for its diverse set of customers, Additive Industries developed a system of modules (i.e. additional printing, storage, and exchange post processing modules, like a stress release heat treatment furnace) that could be added to offer enhanced production capabilities and efficiency. For instance, by adding a second printing chamber, clients can print with one material in the first chamber and then, after it’s completed, automatically shift the optics to the second chamber to print with almost no downtime, because the melting laser beams can continue to run. All process steps that don’t add value, are done in parallel, reducing the total cost. Moreover, the different print jobs can be done using a different material - a feat that, due to the risk of cross contamination, would have normally required an entire second printer or a labor-intensive and time-consuming cleaning of the single chamber before starting on the next project – which offers big savings in cost and time.
Series production helicopter parts.
Additionally, Additive Industries has worked to accelerate industrial AM through its development of machine automation aimed at drastically reducing the overhead of costly machine operator hours, roughly from 20 to 2% in one distinct business case, and cutting down on the time spent for material handling. With the addition of storage and exchange modules, customers are now able to utilise a robot to physically move and store the finished materials, keeping the production line moving, further boosting efficiency and creating the opportunity to run the system in a 24/7 lights out manufacturing mode. By offering modular upgrades to the base system, it’s now possible for customers to scale the system to fit their development phase. From prototyping to process development to series production, the MetalFAB1 can grow in line with the maturity and volume required by the end user.
More than just equipment
You don’t become the most productive metal 3D printing machine by simply designing and delivering equipment to a customer. It takes a team of support engineers, working in close proximity to the user to deliver on their specific needs. At Additive Industries, this meant that building the Process and Application Development team was just as important as developing the best 3D printer. And through its customer lifecycle support team, the 3D printer company looks to provide personalised customer service to each of its clients around the world. It’s more than just buying equipment, it’s about matching next-gen capabilities with the specific desires of the market – a crucial step in the industrialisation of AM technologies.
Of course, to claim to have built the most productive printer is easy to say, but the market is always looking for results. That is why Additive Industries has commissioned an independent benchmark study to compare its MetalFAB1 with other leading printers on the market. While Additive Industries’ modular design offers the potential for a whole host of solutions for enhanced productivity and efficiency, the aim of the benchmark was to give an apples-to-apples comparison with market competitors. For that reason, the study was designed to focus expressly on machine availability, printing capacity and quality with which products were printed.
The proof is in the pudding
WINNER of the TCT Industrial Product Award 2019. Submit your design-to-manufacturing innovation for this year’s TCT Awards here.
A collaborative project between Additive Industries and partner Kaak – the world-renowned baking equipment manufacturer – scooped this year’s TCT Award for Industrial Applications. The “Industrial Robot Dough Cutting Knife” is a topologically optimised, additively manufactured part that is in use cutting 8,000 dough pieces per hour.
In 2016 the Kaak Group set up the K3D team to focus on how additive manufacturing could impact Kaak’s industrial equipment. The group has printed in excess of 35,000 parts on its Additive Industries machines and is at the forefront of proving that this technology is not a future technology but one for here and now.
Metal 3D printed dough knife.
The knife project came about when assessing a part that was a constant pain point due to its many manufacturing steps. The new part, printed on a MetalFAB1, offers a 90% weight-saving thanks to a part consolidation from 20 parts to one. Both the lead time and production price offered a 60% reduction in comparison to its traditional counterpart.
The industrial dough cutting knife is used in the food industry. Therefore the material should be non-corrosive, allowed in the food industry and needs to be cleaned easily and be resistant to many different types of chemicals. Stainless steel 316L (1.4404) is the ideal material for this application and fulfils all the requirements.
The project was a runaway winner in its category with judges impressed by a relatively unsung use case in the real- world application of additive manufacturing. One judge commented:
“This is a classic case of somebody thinking about 3D printing this blade and then just keep going and going to leverage as many advantages offered by the technology as possible thus solving multiple problems with the same part. This is great example of using an AM for what it is truly good at.”
