Metal Additive Manufacturing Conference - MAMC 2022

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has an increasing impact on modern fabrication processes. Especially in terms of tools, gauges and other consumables like grippers and fixtures, AM proofs to decrease costs and speeds up development processes. In addition to metal AM processes 3D-sand-printing (3DSP) may fill the gap towards larger parts with several tons of weight for example tooling frames for presses. With the need of a reduction of the CO2 footprint of products and processes 3DSP allows to design more complex castings by using bionic principles. With this in mind lightweight designs for tools and big parts for mobility applications are accessible. For example it is a cost effective way to build big parts for trains and other heavy vehicles.
The benefit of new design opportunities can be shown in two case studies. A cargo hinge for railroad applications optimized with respect to bionic principles was manufactured with a reduction of 20% in weight in comparison to the conventional part. Furthermore a hybrid press frame manufactured by using WAAM and 3SPD technologies shows the potential of lightweight design to reduce energy consumption during press operations.
voestalpine Foundry Group, the Metal Forming Division and voestalpine Böhler Welding Group are joining forces to think new ways of developing tools and big parts. Especially 3DSP combined with wire+arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) is one of the options to reach such goals.