BMW additive manufacturing centre
The car manufacturer BMW has just opened a centre dedicated to additive manufacturing: the BMW Additive Manufacturing Campus in Oberschleissheim, north of Munich. Announced in 2019, this opening should enable the German group to accelerate the adoption of additive manufacturing in its activities, both for prototypes and series production. Having benefited from an investment of €15 million, the centre will also focus on research into new 3D printing technologies and associated training for the global roll-out of tool-less production. In this way, the group hopes to become a leader in 3D printing technologies in the automotive sector.
BMW has been focusing on additive manufacturing for more than 25 years, with very promising results, claiming to have 3D printed more than one million parts by the end of 2018. In fact, a number of projects including 3D printed parts, such as the BMW i8 Roadster, are worth mentioning. Milan Nedeljković, member of the BMW AG Board of Directors and responsible for production, explains: “Additive manufacturing is already an integral part of our global production system today, and is established in our digitisation strategy. In the future, new technologies of this kind will further reduce production times and enable us to exploit the potential of tool-free manufacturing even more fully“.
In addition to production and rapid prototyping, a unit at the BMW centre will be dedicated to research and optimisation of new materials, technologies and processes: the aim of the German group is to automate the additive manufacturing process as much as possible in order to make it even more viable and economical in the long term. To this end, it has begun the Industrialisation and Digitisation of Additive Manufacturing for Automotive Series Production (IDAM) project, which consists of reproducing the entire production chain, from the preparation of digital production to the manufacture and reprocessing of components. Production is expected to reach at least 50,000 series components per year, with more than 10,000 individual and spare parts.
For full official press release by BMW CLICK HERE
