TCT magazine & JOBAT reports on Melotte

The Rapid Manufacturing Market is growing rapidly, TCT Magazine is the leading media partner for the RM industry. On their blog, www.tctmagazine.com/x/blog.html, TCT reports on Melotte's developments in Direct Digital Manufacturing and the impact of this technology on the environment.

We quote Mr. Duncan Woods, " I'm often struck by the disruptive nature of RM and how it completely changes the way people go about their daily tasks, we all know that designing for RM has a complete set of new rules, but imagine the change in thinking for a surgeon if within 36 hours of having a CT scan the patient in question can be the recipient of bespoke, ready to use, titanium heart valves. Sounds good doesn't it? Well Melotte have done this and plenty more besides with their Selective Laser Melting, Direct Metal Deposition and Electron Beam Melting technologies.Melotte have a an interesting take on things. Yes they expound the business case for RM, reducing time-to-market, reducing cost and improving efficiency but they also take this to a natural conclusion, and one that is gaining more and more momentum in this sector as we move forward. The conclusion is that RM is also good for the environment with less material use, less energy used and less waste."

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Also JOBAT, a leading Belgian magazine reported on Melotte's DDM activities. In the article JOBAT focussed on the HR topics related to the development of MElotte's DDM set-up and the way our team worked together during these challening times. Many times we went form zero-to-hero and back! We still commit to transparancy and mutual respect and this has been te trigger for JOBAT to report on our developments.

During his lecture at the Rapid Prototyping & Product Design Conference, held last week in Kortrijk Melotte's CEO explained the huge impact of RM on the Business Resources Efficiency & Waste metrics and the related economics. Though we agree that we're still far away from a total take-over of Conventional Processes by DDM the economical crisis boosts the development. Lost wax processes are currenthly being replaced by DDM methods.

Next week multiple engineering sessions are planned and engineers are being transformed into DDM Design Specialists. We really appriciate the efforts made by the engineers and are convinced about the positive outcome.

During the lecture a young and brilliant believer, Mr. Nils Ferlin (Lector Industrial Design at the HOWEST), challenged the impact of CO2 on Global Warming. We agree that CO2 is often used as a buzzword and we believe that pollution, energy saving or raw material savings could have been a better and more appropriate term in our marketing. Nils will visit Melotte in the next few weeks and discuss the topic with Melotte's Environmental Advisory Board. Conclusions will be taken into consideration and our marketing campaign will be adapted upon. We thank Mr. Ferlin for his positive and constructive contribution and look forward to the meeting.

Cost savings DDM far beyond expectations

Customer Case Medical devices: The OEM medical systems manufacturing Market is a very challenging business environment. Melotte delivers since many years high precision assemblies to GE's corperate R&D Department. Miniaturazation & hybrid part geometries are commonly used in this field. As soon as a device gets in contact with human organism the quality parameters are getting more substantial. A few months ago Melotte has been asked to think about optimising different parts in a bloodpump device. Given the operational environment we had to think about reducing the number of different parts in the assembly and to miniaturize the entire system. All these interventions should finally lead to cost savings of at least 35%. Another topic was the centrifugal device optimisation, this device generates important vorticity and the existing assembly of curved channels had a major impact on the product price.

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The picture (left) shows two of the parts that have been re-engineered and produced in aluminum (body) and 1.4404 (centrifuge). We're showing the rough built parts. After RM the parts are put on the high-precision milling center for finishing, the internal channels are pasta polished up to 0.15 Ra.

Economics: Fly to buy ratio reduced from 6/1 to 1.3/1, product cost reduced by almost 23%, assembly cost reduced by 40%. Yearly consumption estimated at 400/year. R&D, re-engineering and prototyping costs (NRC) are depreciated in 18 months.

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Another good example of how RM can be used in costsaving programs and individual part manufacturing (DDM) reduces the impact on Global Warming. 80% saving is raw material & about 65% in energy consumption per assembly!