Future BMW Group Additive Manufacturing Campus
The BMW Group is to invest more than €10 million in a new Additive Manufacturing (AM) Campus.
Located in Oberschleissheim, near Munich, the new campus will house over 30 industrial metals and polymer AM systems and serve as a pilot facility for the latest technologies in the BMW Group production network.
Scheduled to launch in early 2019, the facility will focus on prototype construction, series production and customised solutions, and will also act as an training and project area.
Jens Ertel, Head of the BMW Group's Additive Manufacturing Centre and the future campus director, commented: "Our new facility will be a major milestone in additive manufacturing at the BMW Group. The team there will evaluate new and existing technologies in both plastics and metals printing and develop them to series maturity. Our goal is to provide the optimum technology and process chain, be it for individual components, small production runs or even large-scale manufacturing."
BMW has been applying AM since 1991 and recently became the first car manufacturer to 3D print a production run of several thousand optimised metal parts for its BMW i8 Roadster. The company is also looking at using AM for customisation with the MINI Yours Customised programme, which allows customers to design certain components such as indicator inlays and dashboard trim strips, and have them 3D printed.
MINI Yours Customised - Trims for the passenger side
Furthermore, BMW foresees significant potential for AM in local on-demand manufacturing for custom and small-run components.
Jens Ertel explains: "The 3D printers that are currently operating across our production network represent a first step towards local part production. We are already using additive manufacturing to make prototype components on location in Spartanburg (US), Shenyang (China) and Rayong (Thailand). Going forward, we could well imagine integrating it more fully into local production structures to allow small production runs, country-specific editions and customisable components - provided it represents a profitable solution."
Since 2016, the BMW Group has been a major investor in the AM industry via its BMW i Ventures venture capital arm, investing in both Silicon Valley-based 3D manufacturing company Carbon and also Boston-based metal 3D printing startup, Desktop Metal which now works closely with the Additive Manufacturing Centre at the BMW Group. In addition, last year BMW invested in Xometry, a web-based platform that networks suppliers and manufacturers from different sectors with each other. Pilot projects are already underway in a range of areas including spare parts manufacturing.
