Materialise partners with HCL Technologies on hybrid manufacturing
June 5, 2018
Heat exchanger produced at the Materialise metal AM factory in Bremen, Germany, with a glass-bead-blasted finish and milled threads (Courtesy Materialise)
Materialise NV, Leuven, Belgium, has partnered with global IT services company HCL Technologies to develop a platform which will provide increased integration for hybrid manufacturing. Under the partnership, HCL’s CAMWorks® software will now incorporate a module powered by Materialise’s metal Additive Manufacturing technology, with the aim of combining the freedom of design offered by AM with the speed and accuracy of CNC machining. The partnership is said to represent the first time an integrated CAD/CAM solution for hybrid manufacturing has been offered in a SOLIDWORKS® environment. The new technology is expected to be available for release later this year.
Hybrid manufacturing aims to bridge the benefit of subtractive and Additive Manufacturing processes to produce parts with complex designs and close tolerances. It is said that the integration of AM and CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) software in one platform will facilitate the traceability of the production process, while minimising redundant manual work. Users of the new CAMWorks AM module will be have the ability to create support structures directly in CAMWorks and interface with the main metal AM systems on the market via the Materialise Build Processor.
Stefaan Motte, Vice President of Software at Materialise, stated, “The market space and applicability of the Additive Manufacturing technology has been growing dramatically in the past five years. Integration with current manufacturing systems is the next step to unlock digital transformations in manufacturing. This requires in-depth understanding of both subtractive and additive processes. We are certain that companies adopting hybrid manufacturing will benefit greatly from this collaboration, which combines our thirty years of experience in AM with the CAM expertise of HCL.”
“We are very excited with the new partnership and the potential hybrid manufacturing offers to the future of computer-aided design and manufacturing,” added GH Rao, President of Engineering and R&D Services at HCL Technologies. “By combining advanced integrated CAM technology from HCL with the innovative 3D printing technology from Materialise, we look forward to enabling companies to create innovative products which can be brought to the market faster and at a lower cost.”
