The official opening of its new Advanced Additive Manufacturing Centre in Pinerolo, Italy, has been announced by 3D Systems in recent days. Over the past fifteen months, the company undertook a multimillion-dollar expansion to more than double the manufacturing capacity and increase breadth of capabilities to meet increasing customer demand.

3D Systems On Demand is a renowned industry leader in rapid prototyping, low-volume parts production and appearance models. Its customers represent a broad range of industries including automotive, consumer products and aerospace who rely on the additive and subtractive manufacturing expertise of its engineers to bring their designs to reality. In order to provide these capabilities to a larger segment of the market, 3D Systems purchased an adjacent building to its current ISO-9001 certified production facility to create a new advanced additive manufacturing campus. The new state-of the art facility adds to the company’s existing On Demand network within Europe that includes locations in The Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Germany.

“The intent of bringing all SLA and SLS activity in a new centre of excellence is to not only expand capacity for additive manufacturing and prototyping, but to increase the speed of delivery and the quality of the service due to our enhanced process automation”, said Marco Maio, general manager, 3D Systems On Demand, Pinerolo. “Through this expansion, we are also making a significant, positive impact on the local economy. A necessity for delivering on the increased demand is to ensure we have the right talent on board to deliver. This has necessitated significant investment in hiring a skilled workforce to operate these machines, and meet our customers’ needs”.

3D Systems On Demand’s facility in Pinerolo is part of a global network of industry-leading facilities supported by nearly four decades of experience in 3D printing and advanced manufacturing solutions. These facilities deliver a full portfolio of conventional and additive manufacturing services that empower designers and engineers with the tools to design, iterate, and produce quality parts. The result is reduced time spent on production and product development with high-quality 3D printed, and injection moulded parts.

With the addition of the Advanced Additive Manufacturing Centre, the Pinerolo facility is now home to a broad range of additive and subtractive manufacturing technologies including a suite of over 30 plastic 3D printers in a range of  technologies, including SLS, SLA and digital light printing (DLP) represented by the company’s patented Figure 4 technology. These additive solutions are complemented by traditional manufacturing technologies like machines for vacuum casting, 5-axis CNC processing, injection molding and spark/wire EDM. “The breadth of our technologies render our  facility in Italy, an end-to-end solution for prototyping and low-volume manufacturing of industrial parts and products, including post-processing like surface treatment and painting”, said Maio.

With the opening of this facility, 3D Systems On Demand is well-equipped to support demanding, high-volume production industries - such as automotive, consumer products and aerospace - that have stringent quality and regulatory requirements. “Through the expansion of this facility and our capabilities, we are strongly positioned to keep pace with technological innovations and support the growth of our customers”, said Ziad Abou, SVP and general manager, 3D Systems On Demand. “Take, for example, the automotive industry. 3D Systems On Demand has several automotive customers for whom we create a wide variety of high quality prototypes for both interior and exterior automobile parts to help accelerate the product development process”.

“Through this expanded facility, we are offering creative solutions to our customers’ product development challenges which are bolstered by a breadth of leading edge technologies and deep applications expertise”, said Phil Schultz, EVP, operations, 3D Systems. “We are excited that our new Advanced Additive Manufacturing Centre of Excellence here in Pinerolo will enable us to offer our customers the fastest production available to meet their challenges, and support competitive advantage”.