Metal additive manufacturing (AM) specialists Renishaw has teamed up with simulation solutions provider Altair to develop processes and workflows designed to push metal AM parts into wider production.
The new partnership will enable a two-way flow of information between the companies, allowing Altair to increase its knowledge of the physical hardware side of metal AM, while also allowing Renishaw to increase its knowledge of simulation processes. The end result will potentially provide a greater understanding of the entire metal AM workflow—for both companies, their customers and the world at large.
“Working closely with Renishaw benefits the development and application of our software to optimize designs for functionality as well as for printability, accuracy and suitability for its designated purpose,” said David Coates, Altair’s senior program manager. “This collaboration helps ensure AM part development, print cycles and scrap rates are minimized for our customers.”
Altair is well positioned to offer its simulation guidance to Renishaw, having a number of solutions that are of value to metal AM process simulation—in particular, Altair HyperWorks suite, which includes Altair Inspire and Altair OptiStruct.
Better simulation resulting from a greater understanding of the physics involved will lead to a reduction of scrap rates, which is of vital importance to companies using metal AM in high-end engineering applications such as in the aerospace, medical and automotive industries. In fact, the new partnership is focused on contributing to the latter industry in particular.
“Together with Altair, we are collaborating on customer-focused productivity projects, particularly in the automotive sector, which will lead to significant improvement in part volumes and lower costs per part,” said Stephen Anderson, AM business development manager of Renishaw Inc.
Renishaw, being a manufacturer of multi-laser powder bed fusion systems such as the RenAM 500Q, is interested in simulation of multiple laser systems, and Altair is more than happy to approach the task.
“With Renishaw’s help, we are learning about how to best generate and simulate products for multiple laser systems and are actively thinking about laser assignment strategies within our simulation models,” said Coates.
You can read more about Altair HyperWorks and how it can help with your AM simulation needs over at this link.
Or if you'd like to attend one of the aforementioned joint workshops, you won't have to wait too long, as there is one coming to Renishaw's HQ in Chicago this 7th-9th November.
You can register for the event over at this link.