News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
Oerlikon AM, the additive division of Swiss tech group Oerlikon, has announced a partnership with United Launch Alliance (ULA) at Formnext today. The AM company will additively manufacture and provide qualification and flight components to ULA—one of the world’s most recognized launch service providers—for its next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket.
Faced with increased competition and under new management, the ExOne Company is now increasingly focused on simplifying binder jetting for part production and making it a reality. In order to further streamline the process, ExOne and simulation software expert ANSYS have entered into a partnership to develop software that predicts the sintering behavior of binder jetted metal parts.
Siemens has announced the official launch and availability of the Siemens Additive Manufacturing Network, which will provide an advanced cloud-based solution to facilitate collaboration and process orchestration along the workflow—from engineers, to procurement and suppliers. The launch follows a successful pilot period with partners at Siemens Gas & Power, Siemens Mobility, HP, Materialise and Decathlon.
Global standards organization ASTM International and German certification organization TÜV SÜD have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at developing programs to drive the adoption and overall trust of additive manufacturing. The partnership creates further global ties between global AM standards organization—a critical step in establishing industry-wide regulations.
APWORKS, the Airbus-owned industrial 3D printing specialist, has revealed that it provided 3D printed exhaust finishers for the Bugatti Chiron, a hyper sports car that broke a world record when it reached 300 miles per hour (482.80 km/h) in August. APWORKS is currently showcasing the 3D printed exhaust finishers at Formnext.
MSC Software Corporation, a provider of CAE simulation software, has launched a new design optimization solution, MSC Apex Generative Design, at Formnext. The program provides a high degree of automation for design processes and reportedly has the potential to improve productivity by up to 80% compared to more traditional topology optimization tools.
Optomec, a global supplier of production-grade additive manufacturing equipment and software, has announced the integration of its Huffman brand AutoCLAD vision system with its LENS metal 3D printer family. AutoCLAD is a proprietary integrated vision and software system that generates custom toolpaths for additively manufactured parts.
Process simulation software provider Simufact has announced the release of Simufact Additive 2020, a software solution for optimizing metal AM processes. The company, part of Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division, has also introduced a new simulation software solution to improve the quality of Direct Energy Deposition (DED) metal additive manufacturing. The software will be offered as a module within Simufact Welding 2020 software.
Royal DSM, Chromatic 3D Materials and German RepRap (GRR) have formed a partnership to develop high-performance, flexible solutions for 3D printing using Chromatic’s line of FlexTune polyurethane (PU) materials. Together, the companies will create PU-based 3D printed parts for the automotive, rail and footwear sectors, to name a few.
After acquiring a 30% stake in Italian metal AM service bureau BEAMIT, Swedish company Sandvik and its Italian partner are showcasing a combined metal powder and AM offering at Formnext. At their joint Sandvik-BEAMIT booth, the companies are displaying a range of Sandvik’s Osprey metal powders and customer use-cases, as well as introducing new nickel-based superalloys and titanium powders.