DEMM Engineering & Manufacturing
Home brewing kit maker orders a triple and gets a happy customer
Waikato Institute of Technology ( Wintec) has New Zealand’s first ultra high definition, mass production, liquid resin 3D printer.
Wintec’s research programmes manager, Dr Henk Roodt, says his industrial design team is “disrupting” customers’ design processes with its 3D Systems Projet 6000MP machine, “but in a good way”.
“We are working with companies to radically change, for the better, the way they think about and perform industrial design,” he says.
“For instance, by using a 3D printer, a company no longer designs individual components of a part, produces each small component and then assembles it. Instead, we design and print the entire part all at once – internal working components and all.”
The institute’s printer operates at room temperature using high-strength, high temperature liquid resins.
Dr Roodt says in less than 24 hours he can take a customer’s prototype drawing, translate it into a computer model, print it and deliver it.
Stainless Design, a winner of the Stafford Engineering Manufacturing Excellence award, used the institute’s printer to develop a component for a home brewing kit.
Company director, John Cook, says access to the printer “revolutionised” the company’s previous design processes. It also saved the company thousands of dollars and up to six weeks’ manufacturing time.
“There was one part of the machine where we hadn’t completely resolved the final design with our client,” says Cook. “Working with Wintec, we were able to create a 3D model to send to the customer and get their final approval.”
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