Lund University is the new lighthouse for 3D metal printing in southern Sweden

With two new 3D metal printers from PLM Group, Lund University will spearhead the adoption of Additive Manufacturing among companies in the Southern Swedish region.

Companies in the southern Swedish region get a unique opportunity to get acquainted with Additive Manufacturing using 3D metal printing. Lund University has acquired two highly advanced 3D Systems 3D metal printers from PLM Group for its Demo Lab for 3D printing. The companies in the region get the possibility to work with the printers and the experts in the lab in a hands on environment where they can experience the benefits Additive Manufacturing can bring to their businesses.

“We are providing companies with an experimental playground where they can test their tasks out and see if it makes sense for them to embrace Additive Manufacturing,” explains Professor of Product Development Olaf Diegel who is heading the Demo Lab:

“There are hundreds of companies in the region with a keen interest in Additive Manufacturing but they are not sure about how to use the technology and how to apply it in their company context. On top of that the industrial machines are quite expensive and the companies hesitate to invest in advanced machinery where they don’t possess the skills to fully harvest the benefits from the new technology. My vision is that the Demo Lab can contribute actively to the adoption of Additive Manufacturing among the companies in the region.”

The Demo Lab will especially focus its efforts on teaching cost effective design for Additive Manufacturing supplemented with toolmaking with 3D metal printing where the main focus will be tools in areas such as injection molding, sheet metal machining and extrusion.

“We are also going to manufacture a lot of really cool parts to showcase the benefits of Additive Manufacturing compared to using conventional machining technologies,” says Olaf Diegel.

The University chose the printers from PLM Group / 3D Systems because of their advanced industrial strength capabilities combined with the fact that the offer comprised two machines instead of just one. Olaf Diegel says:

”We were offered a combination of a large ProX DMP 300 and a small ProX DMP 100 printer. As we will do a lot of research using different materials it is a huge advantage to have a small machine with a lower consumption of the quite expensive materials combined with a large machine to print bigger parts. This means that we can do our research experiments on one machine while printing ready parts on the other.”

Olaf Diegel expects that the new printers will be in full operation in the Demo Lab at Lund University in the beginning of November.