Additive Manufacturing at EMO 2017

This 3D printing robot comes from a project aimed at printing industrial spare parts at the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. A propeller made this way is being tested in use right now, Autodesk says. The company is one of many partners in this project, called Ramlab.

DP Technology, provider of Esprit CAD/CAM software, debuted its Additive Suite. Aimed at providing programming capability for manufacturers (as opposed to one-off part producers), the new set of software tools includes capabilities such as integration with Solidworks, support structure generation, and capture of the part’s build parameters for traceability and later replication of successful builds.

Additive permits short-run production of parts that typically need tooling, and therefore typically come in large volumes. That promise applies to plastic parts that are 3D printed instead of injection molded. But here Trumpf shows a metal AM version of the same promise. Namely: Additive can be used to create short runs of sheet metal parts without the sheet metal and without any tool such as a stamping or forming die.

Then again, additive can also be used to improve the tool itself. Using its AM S 290 Tooling metal additive machine, GF Machining Solutions made this mold insert for coffee capsules that reduces the injection molding cycle time by 10 percent, thanks to a design that includes conformal cooling channels for better thermal regulation.

A glimpse inside Okuma’s MU 6300V hybrid CNC machine, which is capable of both direct-deposition metal 3D printing and machining of the 3D-printed forms. Part examples on display demonstrated the use of the machine for repair of molds, valves and turbine blades, as well as directly printing the blades onto a disk as seen here.

Through the use of separate metal-powder reservoirs such as this, the Okuma machine can additively apply up to four different metals within the same build.

Welcome to Germany! I spotted Boston-based low-cost metal 3D printer maker MarkForged at the show, snapping this photo as I hurried by to an appointment.

As 3D printing proceeds ever farther into production, Renishaw’s technologies (AM and metrology) draw ever nearer together. Here are components made on the company’s metal AM system in an automated finish-machining process that involves inspecting the components using a Renishaw Equator programmable gage.

One of Renishaw’s display parts, the “Hedgehog,” made of Inconel 625, demonstrates the use of variable strut thickness to achieve extreme unsupported build angles.

Cutting tool supplier Komet continues to advance its use of additive manufacturing for making tool geometries that would be difficult to produce otherwise, particularly milling tools with very closely-spaced flutes. In this variation on that idea, a 3D-printed ring with numerous tightly-spaced flutes can be removed from the tool body (darker in color) and replaced with a similar ring with a more conventional number of flutes where needed.

What might a milling tool look like if it was optimized through AM to provide the strength needed with the minimum of mass and material? It might look like the tool in the foreground, Komet says. The tool beside it, a real catalog item, is a drilling tool with 3D printed inserts that provide passages through the flutes to let chips be transported safely and easily out of the drilled hole.