Katsutoshi Matsuura, President of Matsuura Machinery Corporation and Gerhard Knienieder, Managing Director of the Emuge-Franken group, announced at a common press conference at the EMO in Hannover, that they will collaborate initially for 3 years with the development of tooling solutions for the Hybrid Additive Manufacturing market. To offer tangible benefits for the customer in Additive Manufacturing Matsuura utilises a combination of traditional subtractive machining with powder bed additive manufacturing in one machine, as is offered on the LUMEX Hybrid Additive Manufacturing machine platform. This creates new demands on the tooling used and requires new geometries, tool materials or coatings. “Emuge-Franken has a track record of providing such solutions”, said Mr. Matsuura. A new range of tools for Hybrid AM has already being released in 2018, further releases are planned. Mr. Knienieder said, “With MATSUURA we have gained a premium machine partner with whom we want to open up the fast growing future market for additively manufactured workpieces”.
Hybrid Additive Manufacturing is a process in which selective laser melting in the powder bed is combined with subtractive 3-axis high-speed milling in a single machine. On the one hand, this achieves significantly higher accuracies and surface qualities than are possible with conventional laser melting in the powder bed. On the other hand, zero point definition through machine-integrated spindle coordinate systems makes it possible to generate high-precision reference and clamping surfaces for the downstream process chain. This results in a minimization of the downstream process chain, especially for tool and mold making, rapid prototyping or small series production, as well as completely new possibilities in terms of design, structures or material properties.
For over a decade Matsuura has been developing the LUMEX Avance-25 - the world’s first Hybrid Metal Powder Bed Additive Manufacturing machine tool – a truly innovative platform in Net Shape Form and Additive Manufacturing – with the integration of a proven Matsuura high speed milling spindle for subtractive machining processes. The Matsuura range of LUMEX hybrid AM machines manufacture components that cannot be made by conventional methods – the combination of powder bed laser additive technology with Matsuura’s proven track record in high speed milling is unique within the industry. The FRANKEN end mill tool range for Hybrid Additive Manufacturing was specially developed for this type of manufacturing process and comprises ball-nose end mills and radius end mills from the FRANKEN Expert program with a special neck design, cutting edge contour and coating.
