Materialise and ITRI collaborate on developing metal AM technologies
September 8, 2016
Additive Manufacturing software developer Materialise NV, headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, has announced it is collaborating with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan, one of the world’s leading technology research and development institutions. ITRI has been engaged in the R&D of metal AM technologies in combination with the Materialise Magics 3D Print Suite that can be incorporated into a factory of the future.
ITRI has been devoted to applied research and technical services for more than 40 years, helping industries stay competitive and sustainable. In order to introduce the complete AM workflow to the industry, ITRI has developed its own industry-grade metal Additive Manufacturing machines, combining its specific process technologies with the Materialise AM software backbone.
Materialise Streamics software allows the capture of valuable information such as process, machine, material and sample data so that the user can efficiently create links between the different test data, gain deeper insight into the consequences of certain choices and help reveal bottlenecks more quickly and thoroughly. The software is an AM focused management system and is said to have a significant impact on the ease of process stabilisation and scalability of the AM process. It decreases human labour and error through different software automations such as automatic part labelling, which further increases the efficiency of the process, beneficiary for larger production runs. Materialise Streamics monitors the Additive Manufacturing machines and stores all relevant build data in a centralised system, ensuring traceability and enabling repeatable quality.
To increase process control and to make optimal use of ITRI’s scanning technologies, a direct communication between the Materialise Streamics production management system and ITRI’s metal AM machine is established through the Materialise Build Processor. This is a central printing management system that provides a simplified workflow for the user, with the possibility to create and assign machine-specific build styles to the parts and platform, as well as slicing and exporting the data to the machine.
