The Digital Manufacturing Centre (DMC) has confirmed that it will be using a re-engineered RPS NEO800 machine alongside DSM Somos® PerFORM Reflect polymer material when it opens in Q1 2021.
The RPS NEO800, which was ordered for KW Special Projects (KWSP), the DMC’s founding company, has been reconfigured by KWSP to adopt a new stirrer application to ensure maximum efficiencies and minimal wastage of polymer material.
KW Special Projects, the leading high-performance engineering firm, who is behind the Digital Manufacturing Centre and provided the ideation and match funding, has been using the RPS NEO800 system since 2019. The KWSP team, based in the Midlands, found that there were certain drains and wastages within the NEO800 system, which caused material to collect within the machine, and since developed and installed an innovative stirrer application to the system.
Since the RPS NEO800 machine arrived, the KW Special Projects team has been using and re-engineering the system and has incorporated an innovative stirrer application. The stirrer has been created by KWSP to ensure that material doesn’t collect within the machine, it keeps the material constantly moving, thus decreasing the risk of clogging and increasing the number of parts produced and reducing material wastage. The RPS NEO800 has been utilised by KWSP to create products for a range of medical and land transport products, ranging from smaller prototype applications to full production parts.
Commenting on the stirrer application and use of the RPS NEO800 system within the DMC, Kieron Salter, Digital Manufacturing Centre Managing Director CEO, said:
“KWSP and the DMC are both companies that were born to innovate and use engineering skills and knowledge to achieve certain goals or solve problems. Myself and the KWSP team identified a way to maximise the RPS NEO800 to become more efficient, reduce material waste, which in turn created more quality and consistent parts for our clients.
“We’ll be continuing to use the DSM Somos® PerFORM Reflect polymer material and the RPS NEO800 system at the Digital Manufacturing Centre when it physically opens next year Q1 2021]. We’ve seen major benefits in using PerFORM Reflect in carbon fibre tooling and creating injection moulding tools, but the real stand-out application for both the material and machine working together has been in creating wind tunnel models. PerFORM Reflect is particularly ideal wind tunnel models due to being optimised for particle image velocimetry (PIV) testing, which is used to obtain instantaneous velocity measurements at high speeds to assess flow visualisation. The NEO800’s build volume of 800 x 800 x 600 mm, as well as its high scanning resolution, will not only allow sizeable components, like wind tunnel models, to be produced, but also promises to ensure parts have the required side-wall quality.”
KW Special Projects and the Digital Manufacturing Centre will be included within RPS’ ‘Transform Industrial Production: Make the Most of Stereolithography with RPS Neo Open System Printers and DSM Somos®’webinar on 17thNovember from 3-4pm GMT, with Spencer J. Robertson, DSM’s Technical Sales Manager, explaining how KWSP has and the DMC will utilise the DSM Somos® PerFORM Reflect material and which production applications has benefitted from using RPS’ NEO800 additive manufacturing system.
Opening in Q1 2021 the Digital Manufacturing Centre will offer a range of metal and polymer materials, bringing a carefully-selected group of additive manufacturing technologies to a range of clients and industries, all within the UK’s stand-alone additive manufacturing production centre, based at the Silverstone Technology Cluster. The DMC’s objective is to provide engineering-led parts production manufacturing to any sector that would benefit from using additive manufacturing technologies.
