Having decided to apply Directed Energy Deposition (DED) technology, MT Aerospace AG has established an extensive co-operation agreement with the Strasbourg-based company BeAM, with the aim of establishing a European competence centre for the manufacture of large structures using additive manufacturing.

MT Aerospace (www.mt-aerospace.de) selected a BeAM Modulo 400 machine as the basis for its development work, and it aims to qualify this technology with different materials as well as the entire process chain — from data preparation to finishing and certification of components for use in the aerospace industry.

Vincent Gillet, CEO of BeAM, said: “We are very pleased to establish such a partnership with MT Aerospace, a leading industrial company in the aerospace market. It highlights the potential of DED to manufacture large structures and is an important step for BeAM in its journey to industrialise additive manufacturing.”

MT Aerospace says it is particularly interested in the possibility of using a controlled atmosphere to build up reactive materials such as titanium alloys. For this purpose, the machine has a sealed internal enclosure with antechamber.

Preliminary tests at MT Aerospace show that BeAM’s technology enables one of the best deposition qualities (and surface qualities) in the DED market.

The Modulo 400 will be used to qualify initial materials and medium-size parts using blow-powder laser metal deposition technology.

The simultaneous five-axis machines from BeAM feature a Siemens Sinumerik control and can print thin-walled structures without support structures.

Furthermore, metals can be processed using the ‘sandwich method’. This allows a hard wear-resistant material to be applied to a tough soft one in order to achieve the best material properties.