Titanium Light-weight / Thin Walled (0,4 mm) OEM parts

Project Purpose: For a leading OEM active in the textile industry we've run a project based on "Industrialisation and mass customized production" of fingers used in yarn processing industries. The part flips, at maximum speed, 3000 times/minute over 180°. In this project a combination of lightweight product re-engineering and “mass” customization is made. The contact angle and the finger quantity change depending on the yarn characteristics. The re-engineered part is hybrid, customized and light-weight.

This project shows the advantages of Thin Walled products in highly dynamic operational environments. The fact that the contact angle has become variable offer the customer the possibility to add value in the process and to integrate with the end-user.

Project Features:

- 3D modeling and business process engineering of thin walled tubes

- Automated contact angle calculation (OEM) and mechanical property analysis (Conventional vs DDM Manufactured)
- FEA analysis
- Complete Part production and assembly from Solid to Model (Direct Manufacturing, coating & high-end component finishing)
- Industrialisation R&D and process definition, 1400 parts per year.

E-Texturing is a revolution in digital manufacturing

Market Release: Since a few months we’re actively developing e-texturing features on DDM parts. Mainly we add texture (soft gripping, leather texturing, topographical features) on 3D solids and produce these in a Direct Digital way. Instead of having advanced post-processing treatments such as milling/EDM, we simply add it on the surface of the digital model (STL based). Tests have been made on thin walled parts, mould inserts and even on some medical implants. All of them being ready for market release as from now!

e-Texture is one of the latest software solutions of Materialise. The software enables to apply a 3D Texture on a 3D digital model. The uniqueness of e-Texture is that the texture will thus be applied during printing and not after printing, resulting in time and cost savings. Lieve Boeykens, Sales Manager at Materialise says: “In house we can experiment enough with printing plastics, however having no own metal machine, we have to rely on our good relations with Melotte.” Being both partner of the Belgium Solar Team (http://www.solarteam.be/ ), a project was easily defined to print the first model in titanium with a leather texture immediately applied during printing. The pictures shows the first result coming from Melotte’s DDM set-up. The part is thin walled (0,8 mm) and freeform, cost savings are important and most of all, we respect extremely short delivery times and can easily confirm the accuracy by showing the optical comparison. Another good example of what DDM can bring to you!