Addition Design is a Sheffield-based design firm, specialising in the development of products, components and devices across multiple sectors including aerospace and pharmaceutical, offering their customers design to production solutions.
As new advancements and challenges continue to present themselves within manufacturing, Addition Design were quick to realise they needed to upgrade their technology and discover more advanced options.
Addition Design recognised the potential of the Stratasys F370 3D printing technology; supplied, installed and serviced by SYS Systems, to help alleviate some of these challenges.
Project Brief:
Addition Design were aware of the growing demand for robust parts within the aerospace and pharmaceutical sectors. However, their previous SLS machine could not deliver the quality they required.
“The existing 3D print systems at Addition are very good for volume and precision work but the change parts tend to be large, robust components on low volume,” explained Tom Fripps, Director and Co-Founder of Addition Design.
“A lot of our customers, particularly in the pharmaceutical, packaging and automated manufacturing markets tend to want larger, stronger parts that tend to be pretty big and thick components.
“That’s why we decided to invest in the Stratasys F 370 CR from SYS Systems.”
The Solution:
The F370 CR, a best-in-class FDM printer, allows for faster printing, faster material changeovers, access to new and stronger composite materials, as well as unlocking better quality for prototype to production-grade parts.
“We looked at bringing in the carbon fibre reinforced nylon, and it’s a good match,” said Tom. “Reinforced carbon offers that much needed durability to parts. That’s something we just couldn’t do before and it opens up markets first and helps our customers just see that much more value in what we can give them.”
“The range of materials that are open to you by using the Stratasys FDM type systems is much broader, you get a lot more performance, it’s a lot faster to change those materials over. With a lesser machine, it can take a day to change materials. Whereas with the FDM, it can only take a few minutes.” [Tom]
The Benefits:
Before the F370 machine had even arrived on sight, Addition Design had scheduled work and they have already seen the benefit. The F370 has allowed Addition Design to reduce lead times, saving time and money for them and their customers.
“This innovative new 3D printer is a welcome addition to our business. The investment will improve the quality of change parts and format parts that we are able to produce,” said Tom.
“We have already had parts out the door which our customers are paying for. It’s already starting to generate value for us.”
The F370 is better designed for the application of large, robust components of low volume and allows Addition Design to print carbon fibre reinforced components which hugely increases the performance of components they can produce.
“It will open up new opportunities for us to be able to deliver higher performance parts with reduced lead times. Customers will also benefit from the unique combination of Addition Design’s additive design capabilities with very high performing materials,” said Tom.
“We like to pride ourselves on our quick lead time; you’ll go from six to eight weeks to six to eight days”
Why SYS Systems and Stratasys?
SYS Systems have enabled Addition Design to not only expand their design and product development capabilities, but do so with a reduced timeframe and lesser costs to them and their customers.
“I would recommend SYS UK when you’re looking to purchase an industrial system,” said Tom. “I think Stratasys has a good range of products. I would certainly say SYS UK are who you should be speaking to.”
