New Million-Dollar Selective Laser Melting Additive Manufacturing System

17 Jun 10

Contract manufacturer Formero has introduced Australia’s first million-dollar Additive Manufacturing system and created new capability for its Melbourne manufacturing facility.

The selective laser melting (SLM) system uses an advanced form of ‘3D Additive Manufacturing’ to produce functional metal parts directly from three-dimensional computer aided designs (CAD).

Parts are grown layer by layer from powdered metals without the need for time-consuming traditional manufacturing processes, Formero says.

The system uses commercially-available metallic powders to produce near fully-dense metal parts in materials including titanium, stainless steel and tool steels.

Metal parts can be produced in a few days compared to the weeks, or months, it takes to produce parts using traditional manufacturing practices, Formero claims.

Formero’s managing director, Simon Marriott said: “From July, engineers and designers have tremendous opportunity to viably manufacture custom or short-run part production. In the past this has been a challenge to achieve and will radically accelerate production-cycles to levels never before seen in Australia.”

Marriott said two relatively distinct markets are developing for products made by Additive Manufacturing. One consists of professionals and includes the medical, dental, aerospace, automotive and motorsport industries. The other is the broad consumer market. Examples are home accessories, toys, game avatars, and fashion products.

The global market for Additive Manufacturing technologies was worth $1.5 billion in 2008 and is set to double by 2012.

“We have received very strong interest from industries where complex, quality precision metal parts are in high demand,” says Marriott.

In the US and Europe, companies like Siemens, Phonak and Invisaling use similar machines to produce hearing aids and dental implants. Boeing uses it to make parts for civilian and military aircraft.

Want to know more?

View Fomero's profile on ManufactureLink.

Contact Fomero.

Visit Fomero's website.

Register a free buyer account to lodge an online RFQ for prototyping from Fomero.