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Technical Papers
SMS group GmbH
Wafer-thin layers and a great future – Additive Manufacturing at SMS group
Additively manufactured roll cooling header
The breakthrough of 3D printing for home use, predicted in 2010, is yet to come. Nevertheless, the revolution is taking place - not as predicted at the homes, but in industry. And it is happening with breathtaking speed. More and more sectors of industry have been recognizing and making use of the advantages of 3D printing and Additive Manufactur- ing, last but not least the plant and mechanical engineering industry. For many years, SMS group has been very active in the eld of Additive Manufacturing. A young and dedicated research and development team is advancing and promoting this innovative technology within the company. The team members do not limit their activities to investigat- ing which new and optimized components could possibly be produced by Additive Manufacturing (AM). They rather dedicate a great deal of their activities to introducing a new way of thinking in the design and engineering departments.
Agile project team for the promotion of Additive Manufacturing
Norbert Gober, initiator of SMS group’s AM team: “The AM project team has been given a lot of freedom and lean structures to allow us to test out new approaches, take a critical look at traditional methods and be able to act exibly and agilely. Since shortly, we have an own powder bed 3D printer for metal printing, which has been provided by our cooperation partner Additive Industries. With this printer, we will in future be able to implement new concepts right here, in-house.”
The full range of AM technologies at a glance
As a manufacturer of plants and machinery for the steel and NF-met- als industry, SMS group focuses on components made of metallic materials because the machines and equipment will be subjected to
extremely high loads during oper- ation. The performance potential of the materials are investigated and tested under eld conditions. Besides metals, also alternative materials, such as plastics and ceramics, are examined. Additive Manufacturing means producing an object based on digital 3D design data by adding material layer by layer.
The number of available AM tech- niques is great. However, for the time being two main techniques are commonly used for plant and heavy machinery applications:
selective laser melting in a powder bed and the laser melting deposi- tion process. In selective laser melting, layer by layer of a high-purity
ITAtube Journal No3/October 2019
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