Filtration and fluid flow engineering firm Mott Corporation has purchased an additional metal additive manufacturing machine from Renishaw.
The new RenAM 500S Flex system is said to have already help Mott Corporation to reduce machine turnaround and set-up times, as well as providing its engineers with 'more confidence in the performance of printed parts.'
Based out of Connecticut, Mott Corporation specialises in solving filtration and flow control engineering challenges in integrated components, point of use sub-assemblies, and integrated subsystems. To this end, the company serves some of the largest technical and performance brands in the world, working across the aerospace, semiconductor and chemical processing industries.
Historically, Mott Corproation has used the axial, isostatic and rolling compaction methods to product components, but in more recent years, the company has identified laser powder bed fusion 3D printing as a technique that can help enable more complex geometries. Its first 3D printing system was a Renishaw RenAM 400 system, which was selected for its open architecture, enabling Mott Corporation to edit parameters during its research and development.
The company has now upgraded the a RenAM 500S Flex, which uses the same gas flow system, safety, and precision digital optics as the RenAM 400, but also has the ability to swap the metal powder feedstock in a short amount of time. Renishaw's RenAM 500S Flex is available with either single (S) or quad (Q) laser configuration - Mott has opted for the single-laser set-up - and the laser(s) can be used in either modulated or continuous wave regimes, adding an additional level of customisation.
So far, Mott Corporation has reported a 50% reduction in machine turnaround and setup times compared to the RenAM 400, with a 30% improvement to the standard deviation of performance metrics 'in certain cases.'
“Our ethos is to combine our design, filtration, and flow control expertise with cutting-edge technology to create highly engineered products,” said Vincent Palumbo, Technical Program Manager at Mott Corporation. “That’s exactly what we’re doing here. The new machine gives us greater confidence in the reliability and performance of our parts, while speeding up development cycles, and better enabling us to bring our designs to life.
“The Flex has been the most popular stop on our facility tours. It’s great to see customers’ reactions to the parts we have been able to create. It has also generated useful dialogue between us and our customers to come up with development projects and think of other components we can design with them in the future.”
“Renishaw’s philosophy is that process parameters should be as customisable as possible,” added John Laureto, AM Business Manager at Renishaw. “Using the RenAM 500S Flex, Mott Corporation was able to optimise its processes for specific applications and can tweak the parameters as needed for novel projects.”
