Tooling & Equipment International has installed a second voxeljet AG VX4000 printer at its Livonia, MI, plant to increase 3D-printing capacity for sand molds and cores, for prototype and production-scale casting.
TEI designs and manufactures prototypes, production tooling, aluminum castings, and machined and inspected parts. “At our facility we cover the full workflow, from printing to casting to heat-treatment and machining,” according to Oliver Johnson, president. “With the second VX4000 in house, we are able to further capitalize on the advantages 3D sand-printing has to offer to metalcasting.”
The voxeljet VX4000 is a binder-jet printer with a build envelope of 4x2x1 meters, meaning it is one of the world's largest 3D sand printers for metalcasting. It can be used to produce individual, very large sand molds or multiple smaller molds with production quality.
“By eliminating the need for tooling and thanks to the large build volume of the 3D printer we can reduce delivery times drastically, which in turn greatly benefits our customers, whether it’s the automotive or aerospace industry,” according to Johnson. “In addition to that, we can produce parts that cannot be made conventionally, such as lightweight components and topology optimized parts.”