Page 14 - 3D Metal Printing magazine Fall 2022

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3D Printing Without Compromise
he says. “Now, we have several AM prod- ucts in production. While we still run pro- totypes in the AM machines and perform validation builds, we’re focused primarily on the AM parts that we believe will turn into production parts.”
While some Knust-Godwin customers contract the firm for both subtractive and AM work, the majority of its customers still focus on subtractive machining. “Some of our customers go back nearly 37 years,” Corliss says, “so we know the pain points of making some of these parts inhouse with subtractive processes. With our added expertise and capacity in AM, we’ve been able to convert many jobs over to AM, working with customers to provide them with shorter lead times and lower costs.”
When it comes to its AM-only cus- tomers, some do their own inhouse machining, outsource the AM work to Knust-Godwin and then take the AM parts inhouse for any post-process machining.
An example of AM-only work?
“The space industry is moving at a rapid pace,” Corliss says. “They are moving quickly, failing often, and reengineering and doing it again. That’s the pace that we see, and it plays right to the advantages of AM. AM allows us to innovate quickly and learn from failures, and then reengi- neer until we get it right.”
Corliss also finds that with the latest- greatest LPBF technology available with its newest machines, it also can deliver a lot of parts to customers as-printed—no post-processing needed.
“We often can provide such close tol- erances on surface finish,” he says, “so that we can avoid any finish-machining. In the past a lot of the parts had to be re- machined. Now, at the end of the day probably 80 percent of the blueprint can be left as-printed, and we only have to machine seals, O-rings and threads.
“At the same time, we’re moving a lot of our post-process machining from com- plex five-axis machines to standard CNC machines,” he adds, “where we have more capacity. From a business standpoint, this allows us to steer more complex non-AM- related machining to the five-axis machines.” 3DMP
12 | 3D METAL PRINTING • FALL 2022
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