Wayland Additive has sold one of its Calibur3 metal printers to Fraunhofer IPK (Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology).
Confirming the sale at Formnext this week, the UK-based additive manufacturing company says the German research and development organisation is ‘ideally placed’ to adopt the unique advantages of its NeuBeam technology, and will use it to focus on developing new metal AM applications.
According to a statement from Wayland, the decision to invest in eBeam comes after much research into laser-based AM technologies where Fraunhofer IPK felt it had exhausted the physical limits of the technology. The belief is that NeuBeam will open up opportunities for processing materials such as titanium aluminides and CM247, and eliminate the need for timely post-processing steps typically associated with powder-based processes.
Tobias Neuwald, Head of the Manufacturing Technologies Department at Fraunhofer IPK said Wayland’s eBeam technology is “exactly what we need to meet today’s challenges in electron beam melting” and will allow the instate to process new materials and open up new applications.
Will Richardson, CEO at Wayland commented, “This announcement of yet another sale of a Calibur3 system is testament to the continuing growth of the metal AM sector, and the demand for production systems for advanced materials. We are looking forward to working with Fraunhofer IPK moving forward and accelerating even more production applications.”
Earlier this year Wayland secured another 4.2 million GBP in funding to enable the growth of its global customer base and increase in-house production capacity of its metal AM systems, which have already been adopted by the likes of EWI and the Royal Air Force (RAF).
