Renishaw partners with Infosys to deliver product-development service for metal additive manufacturing
Laser additive-manufacturing equipment maker Renishaw (Wotton-under-Edge, England) will be collaborating with IT and business consulting firm Infosys (Bengaluru, India) to develop an end-to-end product development service using metal additive manufacturing (AM) technology. Renishaw's laser AM systems use metal-powder-bed fusion technology to create complex components from digital CAD files; Renishaw also produces the software and metal powder needed for AM systems.
In the partnership, Infosys will apply its engineering and design processes to manage product-development projects from concept through launch. Renishaw will support Infosys through its global network of AM centers, which provide access to Renishaw laser metal AM technology and provide application-engineering expertise, post-processing capability, and metrology.
AM enables products that are lighter and more efficient in their use of resources (see figure), that have high heat transfer, are integrated with fewer joints for greater reliability, or that are customized to adapt to a specific application. AM is becoming a mainstream manufacturing technology used in series production of high-performance parts for aerospace, medical, automotive, oil and gas, mold and die, and consumer products.
Infosys is currently focusing on AM as part of its "Industry 4.0" journey. Renishaw's AM centers, termed "Solutions Centres," have what the company calls "Incubator Cells," which are private development facilities containing an AM machine and the ancillary equipment needed to set up, build, and refine a new product design. If needed, Renishaw provides preproduction capacity where the productivity and capability of the AM process can be established; support is provided in the form of operators and applications engineers and access to machining, finishing, treatment, and metrology processes.
The two companies are currently working together on projects for customers located in Europe, Asia, and North America.
For more info, see www.renishaw.com.
John Wallace | Senior Technical Editor (1998-2022)
John Wallace was with Laser Focus World for nearly 25 years, retiring in late June 2022. He obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and physics at Rutgers University and a master's in optical engineering at the University of Rochester. Before becoming an editor, John worked as an engineer at RCA, Exxon, Eastman Kodak, and GCA Corporation.