BEAMIT Group (BEAMIT), partly owned by Sandvik, has invested in a ge.com/additive GE Additive Concept Laser M Line system to meet growing demand from its aerospace and defence customers for both large format metal 3-D printed components and assistance in industrialising additive production.

This investment comes six months after Avio Aero, BEAMIT and GE Additive signed a letter of intent regarding a strategic technology collaboration. BEAMIT is a longstanding customer of GE Additive and operates a fleet of Concept Laser and Arcam EBM machines, including the Mlab, M2 and X Line platforms, as well as two Q10plus machines across its three manufacturing plants and its subsidiary PRES-X.

Mauro Antolotti, president of BEAMIT Group, said: “As part of our ‘one-stop-shop’ strategy, we have continued to invest in our value chain over the past seven years and have also achieved rigorous ISO 9001, AS 9100 quality certifications and NADCAP accreditation needed to service the aerospace sector. That investment has not gone unnoticed and we continue to attract new aerospace, space and defense customers, while supporting existing customers who have already commenced their additive journey.”

“Today, we are seeing an increasing demand from customers for much larger, more complex parts, and in higher volumes — this is why we have invested in our first M Line system. Based on our strong and well-recognised expertise in discovering new applications for additive manufacturing (AM), we see in the new platform M Line, combined with our full cutting-edge end-to-end value chain, the key for a technological leap towards significantly increased production volumes in the near future.

Andrea Scanavini, BEAMIT Group chief commercial officer, said: “The BEAMIT team is ready to explore the potential of the M Line and continuously improve the industrialisation process by digitally connecting the system with all the subsequent post-processing phases. We will work closely with GE Additive’s AddWorks consultants to make this development even faster.”

The rise in demand for larger parts that BEAMIT is experiencing is replicated across the commercial aerospace, space and defence sectors, globally. Additive users across the aerospace supply chain continue to invest in innovation and in doing so continue to set the bar high for the deployment of increasingly mature metal additive applications.

The progression in terms of complexity and volume is a reflection of the evolving sophistication of in-house additive teams, one-stop shop companies like BEAMIT with an end-to-end approach, and the wider aerospace additive ecosystem.

This latest phase of industrialisation builds on widespread success in deploying metal additive across the aerospace industry, where users are able to demonstrate tangible return-on-investment, in terms of productivity and cost-part reduction, and are now able to make a tangible business case for scaling their additive operations.

Rob Dean, GE Additive’s AddWorks senior leader in Europe, said: “Being closely aligned through our own activities across GE Aviation, including Avio Aero, and many other customers in aerospace, we anticipated this next wave of industrialisation. For some time our common objective with BEAMIT has been to work closely together to enable their customers to make the shift to industrialization as seamless as possible, we feel now quite proud that this becomes a reality.”

Once installed at its facility in Italy, the BEAMIT team will push the utilisation of M Line to its full potential in terms of quality, productivity and driving cost out for additive production, also with the support of GE Additive’s AddWorks consultants.

The M Line has been developed for high-quality, high throughput scenarios and lends itself well to highly-regulated industries such as the aerospace and medical sectors. While it is intuitive and easy to operate, the M Line is a highly-advanced, industrialised production system that is well-suited to customers who have experienced metal additive users for many years and have already started to scale production volumes.

Wolfgang Lauer, GE Additive product line manager (M Line), said: “Customers, like BEAMIT, recognise that GE Additive’s experience and products can help them move to serial production more quickly. It is great to see BEAMIT invest in the M Line and build on our strategic technology collaboration that will not only benefit the aerospace industry, but also the wider industrial additive community here in Europe and around the world.”