Additive Casting Enable Manufacturing DMC
The Digital Manufacturing Centre (DMC) has announced a partnership with Enable Manufacturing that will see the latter’s Additive Casting technology available to the former’s customers from March.
Headquartered at Silverstone Park, the DMC has been developed to harness digital manufacturing technologies to provide serial production parts to a host of industries. The facility, set up by KW Special Projects, opens its doors in the first quarter of 2021, with a process that is capable of producing parts in more than 130 different metals.
Additive Casting is said to provide ‘scalable and cost-conscious’ manufacturing without compromising on part quality or performance. Depending on the part requirements, design and material selection, DMC will be able to process customer models on one of three Additive Casting processes: sand casting, for parts up to 60 tonnes; investment casting for fine detail parts (250 x 250 x 250 mm); and investment casting for ultra-fine detail parts (190 x 160 x 160 mm). When deploying the investment casting processes, Additive Casting uses a 3D printed polymer tooling part coated in a sacrificial ceramic shell to form the mould, but the sand casting mould is built by printing a binding agent onto a bed of sand. Each process, however, sees parts shot blasted once cast and cooled to improve surface finish.
The DMC believes the integration of Additive Casting will expand the facility’s capabilities and help to deliver production parts for sectors including aerospace, defence, automotive and motorsport.
“Our mission is to provide engineering-led manufacturing solutions for the most demanding applications from aerospace to industrial,” commented Kieron Salter, CEO at the DMC. “This means that we seek out the best manufacturing processes and technologies and apply them to solve the challenges that our customers face. Enable Manufacturing’s Additive Casting process offers perfect synergies to the DMC’s additive, net shape and subtractive capabilities, giving us a diverse array of production options to suit exacting customer requirements.”
“Casting is often seen as a traditional manufacturing method that cannot meet the high-specification requirements of leading-edge industries. In developing Additive Casting, our team has completely revolutionised the process, allowing for far more complex parts, much shorter lead times and eliminated the need for expensive tooling,” added Enable Manufacturing’s Phil Kilburn. “We are excited to work alongside the DMC to bring this technology to the global manufacturing marketplace.”
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