Sandvik
Beam IT Sandvik
Kristian Egeberg, President of Sandvik Additive Manufacturing, and Mauro Antolotti, Chairman and founder of Beam IT, signing the deal in Milan, Italy.
Sandvik has acquired a 30% stake in additive manufacturing (AM) service provider Beam-IT with the option to increase its control at a later date.
The investment in the Italian service bureau has been made to enhance Sandvik’s metal additive manufacturing offering according to Sandvik's leadership team.
Sandvik has had a play in the AM market since 2013, looking to harness its wealth of experience in materials and post-processing methods to bring powder alloys to market and advise customers through the entire 3D printing process. Earlier this year, the company integrated its Powder division into its Additive Manufacturing division to bring these offerings together under one business unit. The investment in Beam-IT is a continuation of the company’s ambition to have a growing presence in the wider manufacturing industry, a presence it hopes to achieve by investing in additive.
Beam-IT has been working with additive manufacturing technologies for more than 20 years, supplying parts to customers in the aerospace, automotive, energy and racing industries. It boasts a workforce of 38, a 20-strong fleet of powder bed fusion machines, and AS 9100 certification and NADCAP approval. The company recently installed an additional two SLM Solutions machines and announced its participation in a material parameters research programme with the German vendor, a not too dissimilar endeavour to that of Sandvik and ExOne’s partnership announced back in May.
Like Sandvik, Beam-IT has big ambitions in the additive space, projecting an increased demand for parts in the coming years and wanting to meet that demand with an improved service.
“The demand for additively manufactured components is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years,” commented Mauro Antolotti, Chairman and founder of Beam-IT. “In Sandvik, we have a very good owner who can help us accelerate the growth and who can provide us with leading materials expertise, development of high-quality metal powder suited for all AM processes, as well as world-leading post-processing know-how.”
“The AM sector is developing fast and there is a need for AM-specialist partners with the advanced skills and resources required to help industrial customers develop and launch their AM programmes,” added Kristian Egeberg, President of Sandvik Additive Manufacturing. “With the investment in Beam-IT we provide our customers with the opportunity to access the complementary and combined power of Sandvik and Beam-IT.”
