By Industrial Print Magazine Staff
MAN Truck & Bus, a company of TRATON GROUP, is one of Europe’s leading commercial vehicle manufacturers and transport solution providers. Its product portfolio includes vans, trucks, buses/coaches, and diesel and gas engines along with services related to passenger and cargo transport.
The manufacturer implements three-dimensional (3D) printing in its production process. Specifically, the technology is used to locally manufacture spare parts on demand, which eliminates the need for physical inventory.
Bronze Manifolds
The first project was the production of bronze manifolds for the cooling water supply of a marine engine. MAN—pre-3D printing—faced a challenge of having to urgently acquire ten bronze manifolds for the cooling water supply of a marine engine that were no longer in stock.
Not only was the original casting mold was unavailable, but conventional production methods wouldn’t meet the fast turnaround time required. MAN reached out to Replique with the hope that additive manufacturing would meet the short-term demand as well as high technical requirements necessitated by the job.
Replique offers a secure 3D printing platform that empowers businesses like MAN to produce high-quality products on demand, at the right place and in the right quality and amount. This not only saves on cost and production time, but the platform also provides peace of mind with intellectual property protection and quality assurance in decentralized manufacturing.
Once MAN connected with Replique, the provider reached out to one of its material partners—m4p material solutions GmbH—and selected a material that was technically equivalent to the original, Brz10.
Brz10 is an excellent engineering material with acceptable elongation by medium hardness. A tin bronze, it is characterized by good corrosion resistance, especially in seawater and mine effluents. This results in typical applications, such as valve industry, ranging from pump housings to guide vanes
and impellers for pumps and turbines.
With Brz10 chosen, a 3D model and manufacturing drawing were created. In touch with a network of more than 85 partners worldwide, Replique recommended a local 3D printing service that uses selective laser melting to process the parts. In total, ten manifolds were reproduced in original quality.
From MAN’s initial inquiry to the delivery of ready-to-install parts, close to seven weeks passed. Tensile tests conducted at MAN’s Central Material Technology department revealed that the chosen material actually exhibited better technical properties than the original. The use in practice of these parts was also successful, leading MAN to place an additional order for ten units.
“The collaboration with Replique was seamless from our initial contact to the moment we received the finished parts. It allowed us to promptly assist our spare parts customers, and we are already in the process of realizing another 3D printing project with Replique,” says Thomas Hauck, spare parts logistics, MAN.
Advantages in Mind
According to MAN, the 3D printed bronze manifolds surpassed the requirements of the original part. Another bonus—the production information is available digitally, which means parts can be reordered at any time with consistent quality. Compared to traditional methods of manufacturing where molds are required, 3D printing is must less time consuming and inexpensive. With these advantages in mind, MAN aims to undertake further projects in the future to reduce costs and further optimize service.
Jan2023, DPS Magazine