minimizing inventory costs via 3D Print-on-demand solutions.
The industries Immensa services range from oil & gas, marine, construction, tooling industry, and injection moulding among many others.
One example of such a value-based solution from Immensa is a centre forming tool used widely by a large regional construction organization based out of Abu Dhabi, UAE. The lead time for ordering the part coupled with the high cost of maintaining spare units of the part where increasing costs unnecessarily; further non-availability of the part during part breakdown created operational delays. We at Immensa reverse engineered the existing part and did a topology optimization achieving weight reduction of 25 %. The optimised 3D Printed part used Maraging Steel (MS1), which was identical in performance to the conventional part. The solution provided eliminated the long lead times and significantly reduced inventory carrying cost as the client has now the option of produce-on-demand service with a turnaround time of fewer than 72 hours.
Other important application of Metal Additive Manufacturing includes conformal cooling design in injection moulding, which is otherwise near impossible to achieve via traditional machining.
Cooling channels are responsible for dissipating heat in tooling inserts used in injection moulding. The production process using Additive Manufacturing technology can furnish the core inserts with optimally designed cooling channels. For the above case, the heat was evacuated far quicker form the tool insert, cutting the existing production cycle from 14 to just 8 seconds, and bringing about a 56,000 unit rise in monthly production. The quality of the end-product improved thanks to the use of Additive Manufacturing. In addition, the reject rate fell from 2.0% to 1.4%, bringing cost savings and a reduction in the environmental impact of the production process.
In the Oil & Gas sector, there is a huge interest in 3D Print-on-Demand solutions for spare parts that are getting obsolete or difficult to source.
3TRPD out of the UK produced a Titanium Gateway Manifold for pipelines using their metal Additive Manufacturing technology, and it was certified as the first additively manufactured part for the Oil and Gas industry by global engineering firm Lloyd’s Register.