Materialise to expand biz in Indian automotive 3D printing market

Materialise Software’s 3D Printing solutions are being used now in India by automotive players like Tata Motors.

Sharing details with Automotive Lead, Yang, Hae Jung,Marketing Strategist – APAC, Materialise Software, said, “We empower our customers to transition towards a digital manufacturing process and to launch innovations that have the potential to forever change the face of their industry.”

According to the case studyshared by Materialise, Indian auto giant Tata Motors has ventured to intensively apply 3D Printing as a new technology for their prototype development, using both Laser Sintering and Stereolithography machines.
Producing prototypes was one of the first applications of 3D printing technology and the automotive industry pioneered this development.

3D Printing allows businesses to produce parts faster than with conventional methods.
Today, the technology is cost-efficient and offers highly accurate parts and a wide range of high-quality finishing options, leading to an incredible resemblance to reality, the case study said. The benefits are obvious. How about the challenges? Tata Motors, Engineering Research CentreP r o t o t y p e manufacturing (ERC), experienced that a large part of their prototype volume was caused by support structures. Finding the optimal configuration for the supports required trial runs.

Materialise said its 3D printing software suite could help them to a d d r e s s t h e i r requirements.

Benefits of Smart Software

Currently Tata Motors ERC uses MaterialiseMagics for their data preparation. They use it to convert CAD files to STL, fix all errors and cut, merge, hollow, label, and rescale parts – and much more. For their Laser Sintering production, they use the Magics Sinter module to automatically nest all parts at the nesting density and height of their choice. This software module speeds up data preparation, reduces powder consumption and offers many ways to control the LaserSintering process.

For their Stereolithography production, ERC uses Materialise e-Stage, a software program which automatically generates support structures. This automation wipes out human errors and only places support where it is indispensable. The toothed connection points make support removal a lot easier, resulting in a higher surface quality. In case texturing is needed, Materialise 3-matic software helps to create aesthetic and functional textures, patterns and perforations.

YeoleHemkant, Senior Manager – ERC Prototype Manufacturing, T a t a M o t o r s , s a i d , “MaterialiseMagics, which is a part of the MaterialiseMagics 3D Print Suite, is very helpful software in that it provides advanced STL repair tools for fixing our files. It also gives us more confidence to 3D print parts without any defects or deviations, leading to innovative, highquality products for our customers.”

Backed by Materialise software, Tata Motors ERC-Prototype Manufacturing now produces 3D-printed prototypes that consume less material and are of higher quality. The support structures occupy around 30 percent of a part’s weight, whereas they weighed double or even triple before. Headquartered in Belgium, with branches worldwide, Materialise combines the largest group of software developers in the industry with one of the largest 3D printing facilities in the world.