LPW Technology
LPW Technology, a leading metal powder developer, manufacturer and supplier, has today announced Stratasys has made a strategic investment in its growing business.
Over £20 million is expected to be financed over the next two years to establish new facilities in both the UK and US, which will further develop LPW’s processing solutions, which includes the PowderLife lifecycle management system.
LPW believes the investment from a company of Stratasys’ size and reputation, shows the quality of its metal additive manufacturing powders and will work to support the company’s strategic growth aims.
“We have worked with Stratasys through its parts-on-demand unit – Stratasys Direct Manufacturing – for over three years,” said LPW Founder and CEO, Dr Phil Carroll. “We recognise that it, together with the Stratasys solution business units, brings deep understanding and experience in production across the vertical markets. They will help us realise our strategic growth plans to ensure the LPW solutions meets the requirements of the medical, aerospace, defence and automotive segments.”
Stratasys’ Vice president of Corporate Development, Alon Elie, explains the investment in LPW as one which will strengthen the company’s knowledge in a continuously growing area of additive manufacturing.
“LPW’s vision is closely aligned with our goal of bringing 3D printing to production environments through closely integrated solutions, combining materials, software and hardware,” said Elie. “As metal 3D printing extends to production environments, issues of quality control, integrated workflows, and process know-how become more critical in the supply chain. This investment in LPW is part of our strategic decision to strengthen our knowledge and expertise in metal additive manufacturing, in which we are already active today via Stratasys Direct Manufacturing.”
Already serving Original Equipment Manufacturers and Tier-1 suppliers, LPW offers metal powders for additive manufacturing processes, as well as PowderLife. PowderLife is an intelligent powder management system that enables the traceability and management of metal powder batches throughout their lifecycle. It provides material history tracing and close monitoring to ensure the powders stay within manufacturers’ specifications and meet their stringent production requirements.
PowderLife is designed to comply with the special quality requirements of the aerospace, defence, automotive and medical-implant industries. This powder lifecycle management system’s unique selling point within the 3D printing space is its tight integration of powder supply, proprietary process management software, powder-handling equipment, and a powder measurement and classification system.
Deployed within a facility, PowderLife enables the user to safely control and recondition powders. Alternatively, used powder can be sent to LPW for reprocessing before being returned to the customer for re-use in the additive manufacturing system.
“LPW’s PowderLife solution will enable us to apply our current quality driven approach to additive manufacturing,” said Mr Giuseppe Facchini, CEO of Swiss-based Precicast. “Having full traceability and control over our materials and process is absolutely central to our manufacturing philosophy.”
Precicast makes critical investment castings, such as single crystal turbine blades for the aerospace and industrial gas-turbine segments.
