BMW launches 3D printing campus
Additive manufacturing is already out of the experimental stage, explained the BMW board member responsible for production, Milan Nedeljković, at the opening of the new campus. With this innovative technology, the company hopes to be able to further reduce production times in the future.
An important goal of the company is to industrialize 3D printing processes for automobile production and to implement new automation concepts in the process chain, said Daniel Schäfer, Head of Production Integration at the BMW Group. “This will make the manufacture of components for the series production of automobiles more economical and we are helping to accelerate development processes”.
Over the course of almost 30 years, the automaker has built up expertise in the field of additive manufacturing. Last year, the BMW Group produced about 300,000 parts using 3D printing. Currently, up to 80 employees work in the competence center; about 50 industrial 3D metal and plastics production systems are already in operation.
The development of 3D competence at BMW has also been achieved through cooperation with machine manufacturers and universities as well as technology scouting for newcomers. In 2016, BMW i Ventures – BMW Group’s venture unit – invested in Carbon, a company based in Silicon Valley. With DLS (Digital Light Synthesis) technology, Carbon achieved a breakthrough flat processes that can be used to significantly accelerate production.
The BMW Group made another investment in 2017: Start-up company Desktop Metal specializes in the additive manufacturing of metal parts and develops innovative and highly productive manufacturing processes. Here, too, there is close cooperation. In the same year, BMW i Ventures invested in the US start-up Xometry, the world’s leading platform for on-demand manufacturing. Through a network of manufacturing companies, for example in the field of 3D printing, Xometry offers fast access to components.
The latest investment, the German startup ELISE, enables engineers to create a “component DNA” that includes all relevant technical data such as specs, manufacturing constraints, costs and possible optimization parameters. Based on this DNA, and using established development tools, ELISE automatically generates components.
In the pre-development area of the Additive Manufacturing Campus, new technologies and materials are optimized and prepared for widespread use throughout the company. The team is particularly concerned with the automation of process chains, which up to now have tied up a lot of manual work, in order to make 3D printing processes more economical and to enable large-scale production in the long term.
Research projects are of central importance in the industrialization of 3D printing processes. These include the joint projects “Industrialization and Digitization of Additive Manufacturing for Automobile Serial Processes (IDAM)” and “Integrated Line Application of Polymer-Based AM Technologies (POLYLINE for short)”, which are funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
In the IDAM project, the BMW Group, together with twelve project partners, is laying the foundation for the integration of additive manufacturing into the series production environment of the automotive industry. In the Additive Manufacturing Campus, a production line is being set up that maps the entire process chain: from digital production preparation to the manufacture of components and post-processing. The targeted quantities clearly point in the direction of industrial large-scale production: In the future, the production line should be able to produce at least 50,000 series components per year and over 10,000 individual and spare parts in very high quality.
3D printed components are already being produced at almost all the company’s production sites. The areas of application there also range from prototype parts and production aids to country-specific parts for customers. 3D printing makes it possible to produce the parts where they are needed – the manufacturing data is downloaded directly from the CAD computer to the machine tool, where the corresponding parts can be produced immediately without any costly conversion.
Related articles:
Metallic 3D printing on the road to automotive series production
Additive manufacturing alliance aims to advance testing methods
“Implanted” code makes 3D printed products identifiable
3D printing pays off for spare parts, experts say
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
