Renishaw's additive manufacturing system to boost production capabilities at Directed Manufacturing Inc

27 July 2012

Directed Manufacturing Inc. (DMI), a leading provider of additive manufacturing services, has acquired a Renishaw AM250 laser melting machine. The AM250 will augment DMI's existing range of machines at its engineering facility in Texas, USA, where the company supplies production metal parts and complex geometric components to the medical, industrial, aerospace and defence industries. The machine has been sourced to respond to the demand from design engineers needing to reduce production lead times and costs.

The Renishaw AM250 is particularly advantageous to DMI because of its large build chamber, allowing the construction of parts up to 250 x 250 x 360 mm in size, but also because of the vast range of metal powders that can be used in part construction. This will allow DMI to supply metal parts in aluminium Al-Si-10Mg, cobalt-chrome (ASTM75), inconel 718, inconel 625, stainless steel 316L, stainless steel 17-4PH, titanium CP and Ti-6Al-4V via additive manufacturing.

Alex Fima, Directed Manufacturing Inc CEO explains: “We're pleased to add this system to our equipment list and expand our capacity to deliver direct metal part manufacturing services. We thoroughly researched our options and selected the Renishaw AM250 due to its reputation for building precision Titanium prototypes and parts.”

Renishaw's additive manufacturing machines use a pioneering additive process featuring a unique build system. The machine build chambers are a vacuum chamber that is filled with a controlled atmosphere of inert argon gas. This enables the manufacture of components from highly reactive materials, such as titanium, without the metal powder reacting with oxygen. There is also the potential to run the system with non-reactive materials in an atmosphere of nitrogen gas.

Simon Scott, Director of Renishaw's Additive Manufacturing Products Division says, “This sale further reinforces Renishaw's growing reputation as a credible supplier within the additive manufacturing market. Directed Manufacturing has substantial experience in rapid manufacturing technologies and it is therefore very satisfactory to have our machine selected ahead of other established suppliers.”

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