2024-01-16 17:12:18
“If AM production not only proves to be more productive, but also helps save raw materials and reduce the carbon footprint, its adoption in the industry will increase significantly.” This is what Professor Ingomar Kelbassa, director of the Fraunhofer IAPT in Hamburg, says. Crucial steps to increase acceptance are further automation and industrialization of AM and the sufficient availability of trained non-academic employees.
Professor Kelbassa, who has in Hamburg Fraunhofer Institute for Additive Manufacturing Technologies makes his statement on the eve of Nortec, the technology and supply fair for the metal industry that starts on January 23 in Hamburg. From this year onwards, Nortec will be organized by VDW and Messe Stuttgart. Additive manufacturing is one of the themes.
Non-academic AM training will start in mid-2024
In Hamburg, additive manufacturing is now seen as a strategic goal. Professor Kelbassa points to IAMHH – Industrialized Additive Manufacturing Hub Hamburg. About 70 companies from the region are participating in this initiative; Virtually every R&D institution is also participating. The main goal is to industrialize additive manufacturing as quickly as possible. In mid-2024, the Fraunhofer IAPT, together with the Handswerkkammer in Hamburg and the Elbcampus, will start with a training 3D printing specialist, who will have to educate and train professionals at a non-academic level.
SolidCAM start samenwerking Desktop Metal
The German machine builders within the VDW also tackle the theme of training themselves through the Mechanical Engineering Youth Foundation. This does not alter the fact that companies must also take their own initiatives, says Jörg Vollmann-Schipper, Sales Manager at SolidCAM Additive in Schramberg. “Although training institutions are very interested in future technologies such as AM, there is hardly any room to actually include it in the curriculum.” Although a solution is being sought by attending events, this appears to be “long and difficult”. SolidCAM, an exhibitor at NORTEC, wants to make access to additive manufacturing easier, especially for machine builders and the SME manufacturing industry. SolidCAM Additive was founded for this purpose, which works together with Desktop Metal. The main reason for this initiative is that additive manufacturing involves much more than just installing a 3D metal printer. SolidCAM integrates 3D printing into the software for CNC milling, so that clamping materials can be printed directly, for example.
Approximately 5 to 20 percent of the production time and resulting costs can be directly attributed to the 3D printing process
Post-processing and finishing are the largest cost items
Ingomar Kelbassa welcomes these types of initiatives. After all, post-processing and finishing are factors that increase lead time and costs. “If AM is considered as an end-to-end production route,” he says, “it turns out that only regarding 5 to 20 percent of the production time and resulting costs can be directly attributed to the 3D printing process.” For example, much more time and very high costs were spent on depowdering, removing parts from the construction platform, removing the support structures, heat treatment, milling and other process steps related to surface finishing. “The further industrialization of AM is therefore certainly not just a matter of developing the 3D printing process, but rather a matter of integrated optimization of the complete production process.”
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