Sintavia announces $25M expansion in its Additive Manufacturing facility and equipment
Sintavia, LLC, based in Hollywood, Florida, USA, has announced its single largest expansion in facilities and equipment since 2019. The $25 million investment includes additional advanced manufacturing space, large-format Additive Manufacturing machines, large-format post-processing equipment, and component testing equipment. With this investment, Sintavia is expected to be able to meet the demand from the programmes it supports across the US Department of Defense for the balance of this decade.
“Looking into the next few years, it is clear to us that we need to make the investments today that will support the demand from our customers tomorrow,” said Brian Neff, Sintavia’s founder and CEO. “As the world’s first truly all-digital aerospace component supplier, Sintavia is in a unique position to push the boundaries of what is possible in terms of designing and manufacturing next generation aerospace components along a single, fully digital thread. But to do that, you need first to have the right facilities, hardware, and software in place. That is what we are doing today in support of our customers and their critical programmes.”
A major focus of the new expansion will be the continued design and development of high-performance thermodynamic components, in particular aerospace heat exchangers. Sintavia’s heat exchangers, which are enabled using additively designed triply periodic minimal surface structures, reportedly demonstrate improved heat rejection at comparative flow rates when evaluated against traditional versions. Additionally, the manufacturing sturdiness of a fully digital thread results in production is said to yield close to 100%, multiples higher than manufacturing yields often experienced by traditional heat exchanger manufacturers.
As part of the expansion, Sintavia signed a long-term lease for an additional 2,300 m2 of manufacturing space adjacent to its existing headquarters, which it will use for Additive Manufacturing, post-processing, and materials testing. New equipment included in the expansion includes Sintavia’s second SLM NXG XII 600, a third AMCM M4K-4, a second CT Scanner (450 kV), a second large air furnace, cold flow test machine, a shock and vibration table, pressure cycle testing equipment, acoustic testing equipment, multiple additional five-axis CNC machines, multiple additional fatigue rigs, and multiple additional polishing machines. Sintavia is also the North American launch customer for the AMCM M8K-8, one of the largest Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB) AM machines available to-date, with a build volume of 820 x 820 x 1600 mm.
The expansion is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2024.
