3D Printing in the Manufacturing Sector
Applications and Practical Examples
Best Practices for 3D Printing in Manufacturing & Production Environments
Cost pressure, regulatory requirements, increasing demands from customers, and much more. Companies in production and industry face a constantly expanding collection of challenges. At the same time, issues such as energy and resource efficiency are becoming increasingly important.
Additive manufacturing offers a broad spectrum of potential cost-efficient and sustainable advantages to companies in production and industry.
Industrial 3D printing opens new opportunities and provides solutions in many different ways, from part production to optimizing return on investment. At EOS, we offer custom solutions from a single source for technology and everything else you need for a safe and rapid transition.
More Efficiency in Cost, Functionality & Design
DMLS offers many advantages to companies in the electronics industry, including faster time to market, the manufacturing of prototypes, pilot and small production series parts, and swiftly implementing customer-specific solutions. Whether you need heat exchangers, housings, communication parts, drones, three-dimensional circuit boards or inductors – the diversity of possible additive manufacturing applications spans the entire industry.
At EOS, we’re ready to support your applications, from machines and peripherals to materials, to consulting services for the successful introduction, implementation and expansion of your additive manufacturing program. Our portfolio is built upon decades of market experience, expertise with industry-specific topics and collaboration with leading partners.
Advantages of 3D Printed Heat Exchangers
- Produce light-weight and space-efficient parts
- Realize highly complex cooling channels
- Avoid joints and achive excellent thermal conductivity
- Rapid product development
Betatype
Betatype is a technology company specializing in design for 3D printing that constantly pushes the limits of additive manufacturing. By carefully balancing the stacking of cooling elements while also minimizing support structures, the available space was exploited optimally: 384 parts were manufactured in a single batch.
An optimized design and intelligent laser scanning paths reduced the production time from 444 hours to just 34 hours. This provided significant cost advantages to Betatype’s customers: the unit costs were reduced by 90%.
Conflux
Heat exchangers can be 3D-printed from high-quality thermally conductive alloys combining various advantageous properties such as flexible design, optimized heat transport properties and reduced size.
Additive manufacturing allowed Conflux to design internal geometries that radically increased the surface area in a given volume. This tripled the thermal heat rejection and at the same time the pressure drop is reduced by two-thirds. Additionally, a compact and new design with a 55 % reduction in length was realized.
TheSys
TheSys is an engineering service provider that develops cooling systems, air conditioning systems and heat exchangers. Together with EOS and AM Metals, they pushed the limits of feasibility to develop a state-of-the-art gaming CPU heat exchanger that was optimized for additive manufacturing in just a week of development.
With the flexible EOS M 290 metal manufacturing system, AM Metals GmbH manufactured a water-cooled heat exchanger that provides the same cooling capacity with just one fifth of the size. Compared to other leading gaming CPU coolers, it is also 76 % lighter.
