A wholly-owned subsidiary of the University of Huddersfield, 3M BIC facilitates business growth. The new technology will enable businesses to evaluate additive manufacturing and print in metals, such as titanium and stainless steel, as well as check for inaccuracies in products.
Renishaw has supplied its RenAM 400 and RenAM 500M selective laser melting systems; the former will print in stainless steel (316L), the latter in titanium. The RenAM 500M is also fitted with advanced in-process monitoring abilities, making it possible to view and analyse a build for consistency or anomalies in real time. Both systems will accept a reduced build volume, permitting builds of smaller parts in other metals such as aluminium, nickel, Inconel or other alloys.
The two metal AM printers will complement the centre’s existing 3D printing technologies, which use nylon selective laser sintering (SLS), stereolithography (SLA) with photosensitive resins and filament deposition (FDM), and will allow businesses to perfect their product in less costly polymers before committing to printing in metal.
In addition to the Renishaw AM equipment, there is a new Zeiss Imaging Suite. Equipment includes a LSM880 laser confocal microscope system with Airyscan and the Axio Observer.Z1 inverted microscope for biological studies; SmartZoom 5 and SmartProof 5 microscopes for materials and part investigations such as surface roughness and topography characterisation; the EVO conventional scanning electron microscope (SEM) and the Nikon XCT225, which uses X-Rays for the precision measurement of internal and external features of a component to ensure correct dimensions are present and anomalies such as stress cracks are not present.
The 3M Buckley Innovation Centre (3M BIC), set up five years ago, is part-financed by the European Regional Development Fund Programme 2007 to 2013 and Kirklees Council.
This latest investment in equipment is supported through the Huddersfield Innovation and Incubation Project (HIIP), a £2.9m grant from the Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP) Growth Deal (a £1bn package of government investment to accelerate growth and create jobs across Leeds City Region).
