Page 45 - ETP-April-May2020

ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING

Exploring limitless possibilities

Additive Manufacturing has moved from being used only in prototypes to be a part
of every company’s manufacturing plans, says Sridhar Balaram, Founder & MD of
Intech Additive Solutions.

By Niranjan Mudholkar

What was your motivation to start technologies, increased ap-
Intech Additive Solutions in 2012? plications, larger and high-
In 2011, when we were recovering ly productive machines,
from the after math of the Lehmann newer alloys and software
Brothers, I developed a hunger for which drives the hardware,
innovation and started thinking out costs are decreasing, mak-
of the box. While I was researching ing the process more pro-
out on Laser Induction Hardening, ductive, hence driving the
I hit upon Laser Sintering. The tech- industrialisation of AM.
nology was so exciting with limit- While India has been a bit
less possibilities and many applica- behind the curve and has
tion ideas poured in. I had sleepless some catching up to do,
nights for more than a week. The there has been a lot of work
fact that this technology was novel, off late happening in India
and in line with my line of work and and it is a question of time
interest motivated me to initiate a was envisioned in 2018 and is going before this technology will reach the
start-up in 2012. to be a reality very soon in 2020. same levels as in the industrialised
Right after coming into the ex- countries
istence, we started off as service pro- Which has been your remarkable
vider in metal 3D printing with our project so far? Tell us more about the different
first machine in 2014 with a great Well, we have not been an equip- types of this technology?
urge to achieve novel heights and to ment manufacturer in the entire Additive manufacturing (AM) can
be a first of a kind service provider. As journey of our manufacturing av- be described as a technique of blend-
we made our journey in this technol- enues. The development of iFusion ing materials by either fusion, bind-
ogy we realised that there were gaps series of 3D printers has been the ing, or solidifying materials such as
to be filled in this technology. To fill most interesting project that we have liquid resin and powders. It builds
the gaps, we started working on our taken up and have been successful part in a layer-by-layer fashion us-
first Software, AMOptoMet, which with the launch of the printer. This ing 3D CAD modelling. The termi-
provides right parameters with bet- project has provided us to unveil the nologies such as 3D printing (3DP),
ter surface finish thereby reducing strengths that a country like India is rapid prototyping (RP), direct digi-
the time on Design of Experiments capable off. iFusion series of printers tal manufacturing (DDM), rapid
(DOE) and R&D for building 3D is completely designed, developed manufacturing (RM), and solid free-
parts “Right First time”. and manufactured by young engi- form fabrication (SFF) can be used
A strong urge under Make in neers of India at our Bangalore facil- to describe AM processes.
India concept fuelled us to start the ity at Intech. Some of the most common types
manufacturing of our own 3D print- of 3D printing technologies in use
ing machines in 2017 and after three What is your take on the evolu- today and to name a few such as Ste-
years of R&D, we launched the first tion of the additive manufacturing reolithography (SLA), Digital Light The Economic Times POLYMERS | April-May 2020
commercial grade Metal 3D printer industry? Processing (DLP), Fused deposition
“iFusion” designed, developed and Additive Manufacturing is at the Modelling (FDM), Selective Laser
manufactured by us. cusp of industrialisation globally. It Sintering (SLS), Selective Laser Melt-
During the process of building has moved from being used only in ing (SLM), Electronic Beam Melting
the printer, we saw the need of sim- Prototypes to be a part of every com- (EBM), Laminated Object Manufac-
ple and easy software to for the preb- pany’s manufacturing plans. As AM turing (LOM), Binder Jetting (BJ) &
uild process and thus AMBuilder matures with newer manufacturing Material Jetting (MJ) are a few.

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