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New HQ
The expansion mean more room for machines, more capacity and better client service, explained Snoeijs
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Hollow coil instrument spring
LayerWise's material and machine development includes upping the capabilities of the hardware to build finer details such as thinner walls and more accurate features.
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Process flow part
LayerWise, in a nutshell, offers high-end additive manufacturing for high-end applications and it continues to raise the bar one layer of a time.
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Orthopaedic implant
LayerWise relies on its additive manufacturing technology and made the decision early on to be both active as a technology developer and as a technology user, because it wished to deliver premium quality products and research in order to stretch the limits of metal 3D printing.
The industrial additive manufacturing sector in Europe is continuing to grow, but the businesses that will thrive in what is becoming an increasingly crowded marketplace are the ones who know how to steer their growth and target the industries they work within.
Belgium-based LayerWise - the country's first production centre to work exclusively with metal additive manufacturing - is making the most of its growth trajectory, recently relocating to new premises still within striking distance of the University of Leuven, with whom the organisation collaborates frequently. In addition, the business knows it cannot rely on the current growth trend in additive manufacturing alone to keep itself going - instead it must specialise.
TCT Magazine spoke to LayerWise's Managing Director Peter Mercelis and Marketing Manager Rob Snoeijs about the company's move to new premises, the industries the company works within and its new developments.
Snoeijs explained that right at the beginning, LayerWise only employed two or three people and was based at a facility dedicated to growing startups. That was fine in 2008 when the company started, but as the years passed and the number of people working for LayerWise grew and grew, the company was taking up half of this facility.
Evolving and improving
"Our move to the new location has two important reasons," said Mercelis. "One obvious reason is to increase the capacity of LayerWise and increase the number of printing machines, but another equally important reason is to further improve the quality of service to our clients. We now have the capability within this new building to evolve in terms of capacity and to further improve product quality, service and quality management systems.
"In our new premises, we not only have more space to grow our production division, but we are also installing the machines in controlled environments. While this may seem like overkill at first, it's a fundamental choice to guarantee material integrity. As we are growing at such a fast pace, we almost double our capacity on a yearly basis - so we really needed more space."
"Our old office was useful because it was literally next to the University of Leuven - LayerWise was spun out of this university - so it was very practical to be there, but it's normal to move away given this growth," Snoeijs said. "We have a lot going on with the university with PhD students and engineers who graduate and work afterwards for LayerWise, which is one of the reasons why LayerWise's new facility is in the Leuven area."
Snoeijs explained that in the last year LayerWise has expanded its workforce by 20 people, which is a massive investment for a company that has barely had its fifth birthday. LayerWise gets many of its new recruits from the University of Leuven, at first just recruiting one or two a year, but with this number growing as the pace of additive manufacturing has picked up.
"Most of our people studied engineering, some of whom holding a PhD and some don't have these backgrounds fulfilling technical roles especially with the 3D printing machines," Snoeijs explained.
LayerWise relies on its additive manufacturing technology and made the decision early on to be both active as a technology developer and as a technology user, because it wished to deliver premium quality products and research in order to stretch the limits of metal 3D printing.
"Controlling our own production infrastructure gives us an important competitive advantage, we have the absolute flexibility to develop our own technology," Mercelis said, adding that this side of their operation is tied into their close work with the University who are specialists in metallurgical development. "We are not limited by the off-the-shelf options in this marketplace for 3D printing," he noted.
"We recognised that a lot of in-depth material and manufacturing research is instrumental in order to deliver and validate high-end series production," Snoeijs added. "It takes less time to develop and process new materials when you have full control over the layered manufacturing technology. Understanding the additive manufacturing process and validating what happens during the powder-to-solid transformation is key to the validation of additive manufactured parts. While additive manufacturing creates the part shape, LayerWise generates premium solid material.
"Additive manufacturing research is a division within LayerWise. The key driver of the success is that our developments are directly tested on real applications. This makes our technology progress both very applicable as effective."
High-precision manufacturing
LayerWise's precise and cutting-edge advances in additive manufacturing have forked into three major sectors; industry, medical and dental, with medical growing at the fastest pace. More recently, the company has added a fourth string to this bow in the form of high-tech mechatronics.
As a customer-driven company, LayerWise's clients drive its innovation and application development, as it is the clients who ultimately choose to apply LayerWise's technology for their additive manufacturing solutions. As such, LayerWise has always strived to serve its customers as an additive manufacturing partner.
"In the medical device industry we are involved in producing patient-specific implants and mass-produced medical implants for orthopaedics applications, facial surgery, orthodontics and so on," Mercelis stated.
"Our dental business unit is really active in producing patient-specific dental implant prosthesis. Whereas many companies make crowns and bridges with 3D printers, we focus on implant-supported restorations involving accuracy better than 20 microns.
"In the industrial field, the application reach is very high. Market feedback shows that we create customer value through the opportunities offered by freeform additive manufacturing as well as our co-engineering and project management approach."
Building business in 2014
LayerWise knows it needs to be at the cutting edge to maintain the competitive advantage and it has identified areas in all its target markets where it can offer advanced manufacturing solutions, which is why the company is still working closely with researchers at the University of Leuven and other institutions to collaborate and maintain that technological edge.
Moreover, the company's drive to expand and recruit its workforce is on-going, with this investment running in parallel with heavy investments across the pond.
"As all our business units have major potential in the US, we are establishing a subsidiary there right now and we've done two major trade shows there recently including Rapid in Pittsburgh," Snoeijs remarked.
Mercelis added that the US market is extremely important to LayerWise, with the company working with clients in the US for a number of years now. It therefore became apparent LayerWise needed a permanent local presence there.
"Therefore we have established a full daughter company recently that will operate from Connecticut," he revealed. "We have attracted highly-experienced professionals to lead the US business development and plan to add a local manufacturing unit at a later stage."
New materials
By developing the technology to manufacture parts for clients, LayerWise understands the manufacturing process, giving the company the capacity to test new materials and expand its capabilities. In recent years LayerWise has introduced tantalum and tungsten materials into its portfolio, as well as numerous high temperature alloys that, once introduced, can open up new submarkets for LayerWise, keeping the organisation ahead of the curve.
Snoeijs explained that LayerWise's material and machine development includes upping the capabilities of the hardware to build finer details such as thinner walls and more accurate features.
"With thinner freeform walls, for example, and through function integration, you get more compact and reliable monolithic mechanical parts delivering higher performance and lower weight," Snoeijs explained.
But while performance gains delivered by additive manufacturing are key to LayerWise's successes, the true enabler, Mercelis said, is the company’s focus on quality control and process validation.
"Material quality comes first," he stated. "3D printing is a hype and in the midst of the enthusiasm, it's easy to forget how critical and difficult metal additive manufacturing processes really are.
"That is also why we partner with clients, because we know that good additive manufacturing applications require a good understanding of the technology, both by ourselves and our clients."
LayerWise, in a nutshell, offers high-end additive manufacturing for high-end applications and it continues to raise the bar one layer of a time.
With subsidiaries in the Netherlands, Germany and now the US, and with an expansion trajectory that has taken it from 25 staff to more than 50 in the space of one year, LayerWise almost seems untouchable, but it knows that it has to remember its roots at the University of Leuven and with academia if it wants to remain in such a position.
"R&D is in our genes and partnering with the University is therefore both very natural and synergetic. It's one of our key strengths," Snoeijs concluded.
