COVER STORY MAY/JUNE 2020
Sandvik innovation increases
3D printing output by 200x
and the wider industry.”
www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk
20
Above,
clockwise from
left: Protolabs’
AM expertise
was leveraged
to produce a
CPAP device
for UCL and
Mercedes AMG;
the fi nished
CPAP device;
the door opener
3D printed by
AMAP, University
of Sunderland
“Traditional manufacturing has
long had a reliance on global
supply chains,” says Andy
Langfeld, president EMEA of
3D printing giants, Stratasys.
“Additive manufacturing
off ers a combination of
speed and agility across the
product lifecycle in what is
an increasingly unpredictable
world. As global supply chains
become disrupted, AM enables
you to manufacture what you
need, where you need it.”
Demonstrating this is the
fact that 3D printing is now
amongst the top investment
priority for manufacturers in
which is a material that has been dosed
with nanoparticles of copper, making it
anti-bacterial.”
O’Brien and the team were keen to
leverage another advantage of AM, by sharing
the design free-of-charge for anyone with
access to a 3D printer to download and make
their own door opener. “It’s about sharing our
expertise where we can, and we’ve had all sorts
of people get involved,” enthuses O’Brien.
“We’ve seen individuals downloading our
designs, and Barclays Eagle Labs have helped
us by 3D printing components for a face shield
design that we’ve also developed. And then,
of course, you get the traditional mainstream
manufacturers doing their bit too. The whole
industry – and beyond – has got behind it,
thanks to the additive manufacturing aspect.
It’s opened up new
possibilities and new
ways of working for us
A watershed moment?
There is another reason why
additive manufacturing has
come to the fore in recent
months – and why the
technology may now be about
to hit the mainstream. Since
China went into lockdown
back in January, the global
reliance on Chinese industry
has meant manufacturing
supply chains across the world
have struggled to source parts.
At its industrial facilities in Sweden, metal cutting giants Sandvik has developed
a new 3D modelling technique that enables as many as 200 facemasks to
be 3D printed in the time normally taken to print one. Several businesses are
already producing 3D-printed face shields. However, because 3D printers are
usually restricted to printing one CAD fi le at a time, production output has
been slow. To solve this problem, engineers at Sandvik Coromant’s Press Tools
department have developed a new modelling progress to allow machines to
recognize a stack of multiple face shields as one solid CAD fi le.
Duplicating the 3D image data of a single face shield, engineers at Sandvik
Coromant are able to stack multiple shields on top of each other. Using a dual
extruder, the 3D printer can then be instructed to create structural support
between each product — essentially printing a thin string of plastic between
each shield. Printing this support in water-soluble material allows the shields to
be easily separated once printed.
/www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk