With a view to industrialising the 3-D printing process, ThyssenKrupp’s newly opened Additive Manufacturing TechCentre in Mülheim, Germany, has started making customised products from metals and plastics in a single digital process.

Housed in a production shop at the premises of a ThyssenKrupp steering components facility, a small team is initially working with one printer for metals and one for plastics. Both printers process powdered materials by selective laser melting or sintering. (www.thyssenkrupp.com).

An interdisciplinary additive manufacturing (AM) project group set up at ThyssenKrupp in early 2015 has identified potential applications and is already in the process of obtaining patents for several products to be made by 3-D printing.

One example is the development and manufacture of a complex probe to take gas samples from furnaces. Thanks to its integrated cooling channels, this probe is so heat resistant that it can be used in cement plant kilns, for example.

For the next three years, the TechCenter will be managed by the group’s central development department, after which it will become part of the materials services business area.

Hans-Josef Hoss, a member of the board of Thyssenkrupp Materials Services, said: “We involve our customers from the word go and can now manufacture parts quickly, in line with their individual requirements — and in batch sizes as low as one.”