TRUMPF and Siemens Partner on Metal AM Technology

TRUMPF GmbH + Co. KG (Ditzingen, Germany) and engineering technology leader Siemens AG (Munich, Germany) have announced a new partnership to help industrialize laser metal fusion (LMF) technology and make the additive manufacturing (AM) process for metal parts an integral part of the production process.

The two companies – who announced their partnership at the Formnext Trade Fair in Frankfurt – are pooling their strengths and working together to develop a software solution for the design and preparation of 3D printed metal parts. The aim is to integrate and streamline the entire powder-bed-based LMF process for TRUMPF printing machines into Siemens NX™ software. The comprehensive offering will address part design and engineering for AM, as well as 3D print preparation with integrated TRUMPF build processor technology.

“Our combined solution will offer customers a high degree of process reliability thanks to its use of smart product models through all phases of the process,” stated Tony Hemmelgarn, the chief executive officer and president of Siemens PLM Software. “There will be no need for data conversion because the tools for design, simulation, 3D printing and NC programming of metal parts are integrated into one system.”

“These are decisive factors in making AM a realistic proposition for industrial applications,” stated Peter Leibinger, the head of the TRUMPF Laser Technology/Electronics Division. “Our partnership will result in an optimum interaction between machine and software so customers can move forward with designs optimized for AM.”

The solution will integrate the recently announced NX software technology for AM with the TRUMPF build processor and be sold with TruPrint LMF printers. The new software offers a standardized user interface across the end-to-end AM process. It addresses the entire digital process chain in a single, integrated associative software environment, eliminating the need to use separate standalone applications for part design and data preparation. This new software package, TruTops Print with NX, brings all the necessary functions together into one new solution for the AM of laser metal fusion parts with TRUMPF printing machines.

www.trumpf.com, www.siemens.com