Our process

We want to meet and talk with our customers. We want to understand their unique challenges and needs to help them get the most out of our awesome technology. By sharing our in-depth knowledge of Selective Laser Melting, we want to guide our customers from the initial design stages up to the final delivery of their parts, establishing a long-lasting trustful relationship.

One of the biggest misconceptions involving metal 3D printing is that all designs developed for conventional manufacturing are also suitable to be produced by additive manufacturing. Indeed if a part was originally scoped and designed for conventional manufacturing, then it is more likely not a good candidate for 3D printing production. Moreover, if a part has a low complexity to size ratio, the printing time is relatively high without any added value or improved functionality enabled by additive manufacturing, not justifying the higher cost of the technology. Hence the need to talk with the customer from the beginning of the project, considering both the application and the expected performance together with the quantities to produce. Our aim is to evaluate if additive manufacturing can really provide added value and be convenient in the prototyping, validation and production of that component.

Benefits of additive manufacturing include weight reduction, improved performance, rapid development and validation of prototypes, as well as expanded design capabilities. With our support, engineers can easily re-think their approach to design as well as enhancing the efficiency and performance of their components.

Design For Additive Manufacturing (DFAM) consists of promoting the collaborative design, enabling a deep understanding of additive manufacturing strengths and weakness, maximising the firsts while limiting the seconds. The primary objective of our DFAM service consists of the fine-tuning your 3D models, enabling all the benefits of additive manufacturing. Optimising features and shapes, building complex geometries or changing the internal topology to lighten your parts, are just a few examples of the ways our experience can benefit your designs.

Additive manufacturing refers to a process in which a digital 3D design is used to build up a component depositing material layer upon layer. Before starting a build on a metal additive manufacturing system, a variety of steps are required to ensure that the parts will build successfully and can be finished optimally.

One of the first steps is to anticipate the areas on a part where post-processing and finishing might be required. Carefully reviewing the specification of a part is essential to understand the required surface finish and where the most critical tolerances are located. With this information, modifications can be made to the CAD model before printing, in order to add material in areas where CNC machining or post-processing will be needed.

Support material is required for the first layers and down-facing surfaces, as well as for anchoring the part to the build platform, thus reducing warping due to thermal stresses. The success of a build depends upon an effective support strategy, both in terms of the types of support structures used and their location. 3D printed parts can then be finished by CNC machining to achieve tight tolerances by removing any material allowance. Clamping fixtures, used for blocking the component into the CNC machining centre, can be integrated into the CAD model, avoiding the production of tooling equipment.

To summarise, when it comes to metal 3D printing, engineering means identifying the best positioning of the component within the laser melting chamber, designing optimised support structures and integrating clamping fixtures for CNC machining. This workflow guarantees a perfect and consistent CAD / CAM integration, optimising both 3D printing and CNC machining, allowing us to meet both cost and quality requirements.

Our manufacturing capabilities include not only metal additive manufacturing, but also CNC machining and finishing. By integrating all of these processes in a single cohesive workflow, we are able to offer fast delivery times and cost competitiveness.

Thanks to our additive manufacturing systems, we can deliver geometrically complex parts without any need for tooling. Our in-house 5-axis CNC machining centres allow for the precise machining of mating surfaces, enabling us to respect the tight tolerances of functional features.

Using the most advanced finishing techniques, we are able to finalise the part before delivery.

Once your parts are fully processed, a variety of methods can be deployed to measure the part, ensuring its accuracy robustness. Techniques can range from simple measurements with gauges to more sophisticated and accurate methods such as CMM, white light and laser scanning. These methods come with varying degrees of complexity, time and cost demands, and should be chosen based on quality requirements.

We regularly build samples for mechanical testing with our in-house tensile-testing machine. It ensures that our results regarding mechanical properties are accurate and repeatable. If required, we manufacture specimens that will be built alongside your parts, with the same batch of powder and laser parameters. Testing can be carried out before or after any heat treatment.

Besides optical and mechanical tools to test external features, we can also perform X-ray inspection or Computed Tomography Scanning to detect internal cracks, voids, or possible trapped powder, as well as air pressure tests.