3D printing is now conquering industrial metals too. What was once laboriously made on lathes, such as aircraft engines, can be copied and produced in no time at all with a 3D printer. A Spanish company is already selling them.
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00:00A small technical part that is required for a very large machine, like for gas-fired power
00:10plant turbines, the technology consists of thousands of these precision metal parts.
00:16To do this, the components have to be milled to the nanometer and made to fit.
00:22But one Spanish company has an alternative.
00:26Their metal parts come out of a printer ready to use.
00:30Will this kind of technology replace conventional production in the future?
00:34This is what their 3D printer from metal looks like.
00:37And that's what it can do.
00:39The experts call it additive modeling.
00:42That means that no material is milled away, but the shape is created by permanently applying
00:48new layers using laser technology.
00:51The idea came from Lukas Hoppe.
00:54For us, what we really want is a machine that is autonomous and super easy to use.
00:59So we made our own interface, and basically what you do here is you load your part.
01:03Once you have your part loaded in the location where you want it to be, then all you have
01:06to do is close the door and test print.
01:08And you get all of the process information down here.
01:11You have your printing parameters up here.
01:13So far, they have sold over 300 3D printers to industrial customers.
01:19The cost per machine?
01:20Around 200,000 euros.
01:22There are different versions like this compact printer.
01:26Or this one with a robotic arm, which can produce very complicated shapes.
01:34Many companies today lack the specialists who can still do this.
01:39A lot of problems that our customers are facing is trying to replace a specialized workforce
01:46that doesn't exist anymore in some of the more traditional jobs.
01:51But more and more industrial customers want to make their own spare parts,
01:55and printing is the solution.
01:57However, this takes time.
01:59It can take up to 20 hours before a part is ready.
02:03The laser printer uses metal wires of different alloys, which are fed via wire spools.
02:10However, printers are not yet able to produce all alloys of special steel,
02:14and the object size is limited.
02:19The Melteo company is located in northern Andalusia, in Pinares,
02:23an impoverished former mining town.
02:26The inventor of the technology chose this location because there was already a company here in Spain
02:32that specialized in 3D printing technology.
02:35He was able to benefit from this, such as in marketing.
02:40According to the startup, it's precisely because of the high unemployment rate of around 30%
02:45that it's easy to find new people.
02:48We started out as a really small team, now we're 100 people,
02:51and I'm going to say every week there's somebody new.
02:56The objects that their printers produce?
02:58Ship propellers, injection nozzles, such as in the chemical and food industries,
03:02and pipes for gases and liquids.
03:05The printers can print up to 2 meters in length or in two parts,
03:09such as this exhaust pipe from a car manufacturer.
03:17And this is a very complex design that was able to be manufactured in two components
03:23with our robotic integration system, that would need some machining.
03:29Machine processing is what the head of technology means by milling.
03:36The company has developed a 3D printer that can do both,
03:39printing and then milling and polishing until the printed parts are shiny and as smooth as glass.
03:47This is the base plate where we started printing on top,
03:51then we would cut it off or machine it out.
03:55The company is profitable, but the profits are not paid out to investors.
03:59They want to reinvest all surpluses.
04:01Our aim is to become the reference and changing how metal parts are manufactured in the world,
04:06and for this we need to grow.
04:10They don't want to get rid of the old technology, but change the market instead.
04:15These 3D printers are ready for shipping.
04:21This one is packed up and ready to go to the US,
04:24to a car manufacturer that wants to become more independent from suppliers
04:28with a new 3D printer from Spain.