Digital spare parts manufacturing Morsan and Levoss anchor 3D printing in the food & beverage industry

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When a filling line stops, the right spare part often decides how quickly production can restart. Morsan and the Levoss Group want to address this challenge with digitally stored, additively manufactured components made from high-performance Luvocom 3F materials for the food and beverage industry.

Requirements for spare parts in the food & beverage industry are demanding: extreme mechanical loads, aggressive cleaning environments, and permanently high cycle rates in filling and packaging lines. Together, Morsan and the Levoss Group want to integrate industrial 3D-printing technologies in this industry — through digitally available spare parts manufactured from high-performance Luvocom 3F materials.

As a specialized manufacturer of spare and functional parts for the food and beverage industry, Morsan pursues a digital approach: instead of maintaining physical warehouse capacity for thousands of spare parts, components are stored as digital datasets (digital warehouse) and additively manufactured as needed.

According to the company, industrial 3D printing not only enables fast and flexible spare-parts supply, but also targeted redesign of existing components. “This can significantly improve service life, functionality, and cost efficiency of many parts — often at lower cost than conventionally manufactured original parts, especially for smaller quantities”, the manufacturer states.

Additive manufacturing for extreme operating conditions

In high-speed filling systems and conveyor applications, plastic components are exposed to considerable stress, including high mechanical laods, intensive chemical exposure from cleaning and disinfecting agents as well as wear intensive continuous strain due to 24/7 operation.

To meet these requirements, Morsan relies specifically on Luvocom 3F materials from the Levoss Group. The compounds developed for industrial FFF/FDM 3D printing are designed to ensure reproducible part quality, high interlayer strength, and application-tailored chemical and thermal resistance — ranging from PET and PA up to PPS.

Improved performance through design freedom

A key advantage of 3D printing is the freedom of design. Instead of copying existing injection-moulded or machined parts 1:1, components can be specifically adapted to their real load cases. “The result is functionally optimized components with improved performance”, Lehvoss states.

Morsan’s active portfolio already includes several hundred additively manufactured spare parts, including polymer conveyor-belt gears, sliding and guide plates for conveyor chains, bottle clamps and grippers, adjustable shaft guides as well as slides and pushers for beverage cans.

“This diversity clearly shows that industrial 3D printing has long since moved beyond prototyping and has established itself as a serial-production and spare-parts technology”, the partners write in a joint press release.

3D printing as part of modern production strategies

“For us, 3D printing is not an experiment — it is an integral part of modern production and maintenance strategies,” explains Christos Adam Morsy, Morsan. “By combining digital part availability, short production lead times, and high-performance materials, we can help our customers reduce downtime. In the next step, we will enable our customers - via new software solutions - to manufacture spare parts on site, no matter where in the world.”

From a materials perspective, additive manufacturing also opens up new opportunities for industrial users. Luvocm 3F materials were developed specifically to bridge the gap between conventional plastic granulate and the special requirements of 3D printing; with a focus on process stability, part performance, and industrial scalability. “Morsan’s concept shows where 3D printing is headed,” says product manager Dr. Marcus Rechberger of Levoss. “In prototyping you certainly need generalists, but in industrial printing you need a clear focus on markets and processes in order to work out the advantages of 3D printing.”

The Morsan example shows how digital spare-parts concepts and industrial 3D-printing technologies can be successfully integrated into existing production environments. Especially for the food & beverage industry, this opens up a path to greater flexibility, lower inventory costs, and higher equipment availability. These solutions can be experienced and touched at the Brau trade fair in Nuremberg in November at the Levoss Group stand.

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