3D printed assembly-line tool designed to hold switches during production process.
Schneider Electric has reportedly saved around 20,000 Euros in the last year with the installation of a Stratasys 3D printer on its production line.
The multinational company has been using additive manufacturing (AM) for some time, having previously spoken about the adoption of Stratasys technology to speed up its product development cycle with 3D printed manufacturing aids and injection mould tools. Now, through the large-scale rollout of its 'Smart Factory' project which is designed to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs using Industry 4.0 technologies, AM is proving itself as an integral component.
This is most evident at the company's Puente la Reina plant in Navarra, Spain, which is seeing significant benefits across its tooling operations using FDM on an F170 3D printer to produce upwards of a hundred new production tool designs a year. The plant was recently named winner of the internal European-wide 'Smart Factory' Schneider Electric competition, recognising the acceleration of the plant's Industry 4.0 transformation owed largely to efficiencies brought about by 3D printing.
"In the past year, using Stratasys FDM additive manufacturing we've achieved a saving of about €20,000 in the production of assembly-line tooling alone, which has easily paid off our original investment in the F170 3D printer," says Manuel Otamendi, Industrialization and Maintenance Manager - Global Supply Chain at Schneider Electric's Puente la Reina plant. "With this technology we're able to produce new high-performance production tools in just one day, whereas it would have taken at least one week to outsource the same tools previously. This crucially reduces our dependency on suppliers and gives us much more control over tool production, which has increased the overall flexibility of our manufacturing process and accelerated our time-to-market for many products."
The machine is used for a range of tooling applications, previously outsourced for injection moulding or CNC machining, including assembly-line tools, jigs, fixtures, robot grippers and other end-of-arm tools. In the case of the robotic grippers, 3D printing has allowed Schneider Electric to come up with new application ideas to improve performance, reduce costs, and quickly replace traditional aluminium grippers prone to breakages with 3D printed alternatives.
Otamendi adds: "To put the cost-saving into perspective - outsourcing a machined gripper used to cost us 200 euros per tool. Now we can 3D print one on-demand for around 100 euros each. The ability to also reduce the complexity of our supply chain is very important to us right now, so having this on-demand production capability in-house is essential."
Otamendi says AM has transformed the way the plant works and changed the "entire mindset in terms of the way we think about doing things in the future." The company is also said to be actively exploring other high-performance FDM materials to address final end-use part applications on the production-line.
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