Divergent Technologies purchases three SLM NXG XII 600 AM machines
October 11, 2021
Divergent Technologies, Torrance, California, USA, has purchased three SLM NXG XII 600 Additive Manufacturing machines following a long-term development partnership with SLM Solutions, Lübeck, Germany. The machines are scheduled to be delivered in Q1 2022.
The companies entered a joint development partnership in 2017 and, for the last eighteen months, Divergent has been operating three of SLM Solutions’ pre-production systems in its facility in Los Angeles, California, which enabled SLM Solutions to accelerate the development and time to market for the next-generation machines.
The three additional NXG XII 600 AM machines will bring SLM Solutions’ installed base for this machine to six, making Divergent the largest user of this model in the USA. This new fleet will join its current installed base of seven SLM®500 machines, three SLM 280 machines, and one SLM 125 machine.
The SLM NXG XII 600 is equipped with twelve 1 kW lasers, said to make it the fastest AM machine on the market. It is reportedly capable of building at speeds 5–20 x faster than that of the current state-of-the-art, and features a build envelope of 600 x 600 x 600 mm.
“The purchase of the SLM NXG XII 600 is the culmination of years of intensive joint development that completes the shift from prototyping to production of complex structures, when combined with the Divergent Adaptive Production System as the future of human-AI design and sustainable systems,” stated Kevin Czinger, founder and CEO of Divergent and SLM Solutions Supervisory Board member.
Divergent’s initial factory deployment will involve the production of thousands of tons of complex, automatically assembled structures, which will be hitting the road over the next two years. This will be followed by the scale-up of its advanced facilities, specially designed for sustainable production using Divergent Adaptive Production System (DAPS®), including ‘fab-less’ vehicle manufacturing, which will begin with the fully homologated Czinger Vehicles 21C hypercar.
Sam O’Leary, CEO of SLM Solutions, notes that the NXG XII 600 “is designed to be used in serial production for high-volume applications as well as for printing large parts. The NXG XII 600 is the modern-day ‘da Vinci’, crafting masterpieces at serial production scale, making it the ideal choice for advancing Divergent’s unique digital manufacturing platform for the automotive industry.”
