MAN Energy Solutions expands its Additive Manufacturing capability with SLM NXG XII 600
July 18, 2023
MAN Energy Solutions, headquartered in Augsburg, Germany, has expanded its Additive Manufacturing capabilities at its Oberhausen plant with the purchase and installation of a SLM NXG XII 600 Additive Manufacturing machine from SLM Solutions Group AG, Lübeck, Germany.
The Oberhausen plant has been a central hub for Additive Manufacturing at MAN since mid-2019, housing – among other AM machines – an SLM 280 series AM machine and producing thousands of components. From November 2022, the company used the NXG XII 600 at SLM Solutions’ headquarters in Lübeck, before the new machine was installed at their Oberhausen plant.
“The expansion of the company’s own manufacturing capabilities will allow the range of components to be extended on the one hand and the productivity of the existing applications to be increased on the other,” stated Michael Kleinhenz, Head of the Supply Chain and Production at MAN Energy Solutions in Oberhausen.
“Each new generation of printers is expanding our Additive Manufacturing capabilities,” explained Anders Such, Head of Additive Manufacturing in Oberhausen. “For example, the new installation space of 600 x 600 x 600 mm on the NXG enables the industries business unit to Additively Manufacture small housings.”
A total of twelve lasers with 1000 watts each in parallel operation enables the NXG to produce components six times as fast as the SLM 280 model.
Development potential can also be expected with regard to topology-optimised components. “Thanks to the newly enabled geometric freedom, designs can be further optimised in terms of availability, performance, service life, costs and service,” explained site manager Dr Sven-Hendrik Wiers, Head of Engineering at MAN Energy Solutions in Oberhausen. “We are on the threshold of a new age where traditional manufacturing constraints are being overturned by AM. It’s time to adopt an additive perspective at the start of the product lifecycle and reimagine geometries.”
MAN uses AM for various applications, including parts of compressors, turbines, two-stroke engines, turbochargers, and four-stroke engines. On the application side, Additive Manufacturing methods are currently being researched for hydrogen, among other things. The use of Additive Manufacturing for components of gear compressors, which MAN uses for CCUS (i.e., technologies for the capture, storage and use of CO2) is also being tested on the application side.
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