Traditional metal casting has been around for centuries and has, over time, evolved to be the predominant production method for metal parts. Benefits of metal casting include scalability, the ability to cast a wide selection of metals and cost competitiveness. On the other hand, traditional casting requires expensive investment in tooling and is very limited when it comes to part complexity. Until now.  We meet Anja Stolte, winner of Women in Innovation Award, who is combining 3D printing with traditional casting to revolutionise additive manufacturing. By combining the best of 3D printing with traditional casting, Anja is able to manufacture complex metal parts through what she describes as Additive Casting^®. 

Her innovative approach uses industrial 3D printing to produce moulds from which she can cast parts using virtually any kind of metal. The technique eliminates the need for tooling and delivers high quality and complex products at a lower cost than current techniques. 

 

Anja, who has studied at both the Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada and the Hof University of Applied Sciences, Germany, will focus her Women in Innovation Award on creating a data management and tracking system to further reduce lead-time for products made with Additive Casting.  It will provide a platform to monitor an order right through to invoice, automatically generating and sharing manufacturing data. By tracking and recording the manufacturing stages through the supply chain and it gives complete visibility and traceability for the end customer.  The project will support the commercialisation of the Additive Casting technology and fulfil the company’s ambition of being able to supply castings within four weeks, as opposed to the six to 12 months as is standard with traditional casting, providing a unique service to customers. 

Anja says, ‘Our goal is to offer high quality, complex and affordable metal parts for industry applications including automotive, marine, aerospace and industry. Manufacturing metal parts in a traditional way requires high expenditure for tooling, long lead-times and high inventory holdings of finished or work-in-progress parts. This leaves manufacturing businesses in-flexible to changing customer demand and cash-poor as money is tied up in inventory holdings.’ 

This became particularly relevant last year when the COVID-19 pandemic meant businesses found themselves unable to obtain parts from China as the world ground to a halt. Anja, who is based in the East of England, says her Additive Casting approach should help UK business to innovate quicker, re-shore productions and reduce carbon footprints. 

In autumn 2020, Enable collaborated with Gen3D on the production of a highly complex lattice structure for filter, heat exchanger or catalyst converter applications. This part was to be produced using Enable’s Additive Casting process, a hybrid process combining the benefits of additive manufacturing and traditional casting, making un-castable parts castable.

UK based Gen3D specialises in the design of lattice structures and fluid flow geometry for additive manufacturing and has developed a proprietary software application, allowing engineers to design and optimise complex fluid flow components. This software can reduce part cost and material use by adding complex lightweight structures to standard CAD models. The properties of the lattice structures can then be tailored to the application and production method by grading the cell size and density across multiple axes.

Usually, the team at Gen3D would design lattices for Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) which allows for wall thicknesses as thin as 1mm and helps to maximise the surface area within the lattice that air or fluid can pass through.

‘This project was very exciting because complex parts like this can now easily be scaled at cost whilst offering great quality and a wide choice of materials.’ Steven Goguelin of Gen3D.

This part, however, was specifically designed for Enable’s Additive Casting process which meant that some design parameters had to change, a task that Gen3D’s software could quickly complete.

‘Our software has built-in manufacturing checks and compensation tools which really helped us to adapt the design parameters to the Additive Casting process, whilst still making sure the part will cast successfully. We were pleased that we could reach a wall thickness of 1.5mm for this cast part, allowing for the design of a perfectly functional lattice structure.’ Steven Goguelin of Gen3D.

To cast this part, Enable chose its ultra-fine investment casting process, ideal to manufacture parts as small as 190mm x 160mm x 160mm and allowing for small enough wall thicknesses to meet the part requirements. In this process, a pattern is printed in polymer that is later used for casting the designated metal, aluminum in this case.

‘Additive Casting is the perfect fusion of benefits from traditional and additive manufacturing. A part like this could have never been produced with traditional metal casting processes and this is where Additive Casting sets new parameters of what is possible when combining casting with 3D printing. We call this Casting 4.0.’ Phil Kilburn, Sales Director at Enable.

Using Additive Casting for a complex part like this lattice structure not only ensures high quality, but it’s also cost competitive. Since this part could not have been produced with traditional manufacturing, the only available manufacturing methods would have been DMLS or Additive Casting. At a unit price of £400 per part for a quantity of 5pcs when produced with Additive Casting compared to anywhere between £2000 to £6000 per part for the same quantity of 5pcs when produced with DMLS*, Additive Casting should be a serious consideration for engineers developing similar parts.

Enable is bringing a new, innovative manufacturing process to life – Additive Casting. The process uses moulds made via additive manufacturing to cast high-quality production parts from over 130 different metals. It bridges the gap between traditional casting and state-of-the-art manufacturing, offering the volume benefits of casting while increasing possible complexity, cutting lead times and eliminating the need for expensive tooling.

For more information visit:
www.ktn-uk.org/programme/women-in-innovation/