Form follows function

Related Vendors

So Grindaix decided to enlist the help of the Hamburg-based company Bionic Production. Founded by former employees of the Laser Zentrum Nord, Bionic Production aims to ramp up 3D-printing processes to an industrial scale. As well as manufacturing parts, Bionic Production also offers its customers services including consulting, training, component optimisation, and process and material development.

“The team of experts at Bionic Production revised and optimised our initial design to make it suitable for 3D printing. They showed us what we needed to focus on. We learned so much from them that we’re now able to design 3D parts on our own,” Friedrich explains. Matthias Schmidt-Lehr, head of sales at Bionic Production, knows all the ins and outs of 3D printing.

“Designers need to start by forgetting everything they’ve learned before and opening their minds to this new technology. Only in exceptional cases do you need straight lines and rectangular structures. 3D printing gives you the opportunity to create free-form surfaces, many of which would be difficult or impossible to produce using conventional CAD tools.”

Equally important is the ability to recognise the limitations of the 3D-printing process and sidestep them where possible. “In 3D printing we hold the part in position on the 3D-printer platform using supports, which have to be removed once the process is finished. But in many cases you can avoid using supports completely by designing the part in a certain way,” says Schmidt-Lehr.

Nothing is impossible

To design a part for 3D printing, the first step is to model all the essential aspects, in this case the defined lubricoolant entry and exit points and the space required to avoid collisions with moving machine parts. The designer then adds only as much material as is absolutely necessary for the part to fulfill its purpose.

“Machine cost per hour is still a key cost driver in 3D printing. The smaller a part’s volume, the shorter the process time required to construct it. By leaving out any material that is unnecessary we make the part lighter, and that’s often a major advantage in its own right. But even if it doesn’t matter how heavy the part is, reducing the volume still makes it cheaper to produce,” says Schmidt-Lehr.

Unlike conventional methods, the designer can focus purely on optimising how the part works. In the case of Grindaix coolant nozzles, curved channels lead to a lower drop in pressure thanks to reduced flow losses. That reduces the amount of pumping power required, so the end customer benefits either from the ability to use a smaller pump or from a higher coolant exit velocity.

Using the specifications provided by Grindaix and a Trumpf Tru Print 1000, Bionic Production created the perfect model of the new nozzle in a step-by-step process. “Software allows you to perfectly simulate many aspects of the design, such as the direction of the coolant jet. But the benefit of 3D printing is that it makes it so much easier to create prototypes, try them out and then modify them as necessary,” says Schmidt-Lehr.

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Case Study

Form follows function

Nothing is impossible