Amace Solutions Pvt Ltd - Bangalore, India

The most matured market in utilisation of additive manufacturing techniques is the Aerospace & defence sectors upgrading from prototyping to productionising the process. It is believed that Aero companies are willing to pay up to €1,000 to reduce 1 kg of weight from the aircraft and for space projects this value can go up to €10,000. Light weighting and topology optimization of components is one of the most popular applications in this industry” in the aerospace section.

In many cases, 3D printing of parts has proven to be more cost-effective than machining them from solid blocks of expensive material such as Titanium. Multiple instances of part consolidation have been successfully demonstrated and have been productionised. amace solutions has the capability to design & analyse parts for AM, print them in metal and perform post-processing operations on them meeting the desired specifications.

One of the biggest advantages of AM techniques in the manufacture of toolings is the ability to create conformal cooling holes. The heat generated from the moulding process has a detrimental effect on the life of the tooling and on the quality of the moulded part. However, conformal cooling allows holes to be created which follows the shape or profile of the mould core or cavity providing rapid uniform cooling to the tooling.

Around 10-20% reduction in injection moulding cycle times have been achieved with conformal cooling process. The experienced team at amace solutions can assist in designing of conformal cooling paths and print parts to provide desired results.

Some of the other popular applications in engineering include manifolds, turbine blades with internal cooling holes, complex oil channels, valves, waveguides, etc. Since the quantity in this industry is comparatively lesser and since parts with higher complexity can be designed and produced, manufacturing through AM techniques may be more suitable in this industry. Some of the advanced tools available with the amace team allows solutions to be arrived upon for complex manufacturing problems.

The automotive industry has been leveraging on additive manufacturing through rapid prototyping for faster design and validation of new products for some time. From crankshafts, oil pans, cylinder heads, crankcase to manifolds, AM solutions are being applied to design and manufacture many automotive parts especially prototypes.

Currently, AM techniques are also being used for small batch production of niche automotive components and to develop customised parts. Another area of applications is leveraging on the digital manufacturing with the production of spare parts for obsolete models of automobiles.