Felix Bauer shares more insight into the Launcher combustion chamber application and benefits of design for additive manufacturing with customized large scale precision metal 3D printing.

Transcript

– Hi, this is Adam Penna, I’m here at Formnext and the AMCM booth, and I’m sitting here with Felix Bauer. Felix, how are you today?

– [Felix] Doing great, Adam. Awesome.

– [Adam] Doing great, so, AMCM explain what that is to us?

– [Felix] Well, it’s little bit like Mercedes-Benz has AMG, UAZ has AMCM. That’s us. So we– we take what’s their and screw it a little bit. We customize it to what you want it to be.

– [Felix] Yes, so in that customization, that is AMCM that’s Additive Manufacturing Custom Machines.

– [Felix] Exactly, there we go.

– [Adam] There it is. That’s the AMCM right there. So you work with metal parts correct?

– [Felix] Correct. So we– we work mostly with metal parts, so that’s all we do right now. We won’t say no to a polymer systems, but I feel like there’s a larger interest in customizing metal stuff. Go bigger, have more power. So all that kind of things. We don’t see that yet coming up off polymers that much actually.

– [Adam] Yeah so, very importantly the applications and what we have behind here is one of the most amazing applications out there.

– [Felix] Absolutely yeah.

– [Adam] So talk a little bit more about this Bauer here and what we’re seeing here?

– [Felix] Well what we see here is a combustion chamber of a rocket right– that’s a rocket engine literally. And we’ve been approached by a company called Launcher. Now they’re located at the west coast.

– [Adam] Yep, Launcher.

– [Felix] Launcher, absolutely yeah. And these guys we–were asking us, Is it possible to take an M4-H4 and make it bigger? A really larger C-Axis, we need just a little bigger like a meter.

– [Adam] Yeah.

– [Felix] So a little bigger. And we went in that project and started developing the machine, our iterations and finally ended up with what we call the M4K. That’s a machine with 450 by 450 by a meter built envelope.

– [Adam] Right.

– [Felix] And there we can go for these parts. That’s just beautiful.

– [Adam] Beautiful part, but talk about that material cause I know there’s something special about the materials.

– [Felix] Absolutely– for those, for us rocket engines you have like two or three materials and one of those Inconel, that’s what we know in the industry for quite a while.

– [Adam] Yeah.

– [Felix] But here, the interesting thing is copper crowns the conium, or I think the state is more GR-Cup-42. And so we had to let do little tweaks on the machine to be able to run the copper parts and even copper parts are for just like small

– [Adam] Yeah.

– [Felix] like really big ones and be able to do that So that’s one meter part and copper.

– [Adam] I remember seeing the part when it was about eight inches

– [Felix] Yeah, that’s how it started

– [Adam] max, how it’s actually brought me that file originally. So I remember when they started. It’s beautiful to see it, where it is now, also what is happening inside of that metal? There’s something special going on there called the cooling channel.

– [Felix] Absolutely yes.

– [Adam] And what we can’t see underneath the layer are channels where liquid flows to cool the heat coming from the thruster. Talk a little bit more about that and how that actually improves the industry.

– [Felix] Okay, I think you have those perfect showcases for additive manufacturing. This is exactly it. Like you said, there’s internal channels that cool down that thing, even more than it would be conventional possible, cooling it more, the more power it can generate, the more thrust, the easier you can stuff up, up in– up in space, Right? So I think for these guys, it’s not just a question to use additive, it’s crystal clear. It’s the only go to technology you want to use for that that’s additive.

– [Adam] Right?

– [Felix] So that’s just from my, my, what I’ve seen so far, the perfect example where all that comes together, innovative customers, innovative industries using all technology. That’s just perfect.

– [Adam] It is just perfect, beautiful part, amazing company, what AMCM is doing what the industry is pushing it forward. So thanks for everything you do. And thanks for joining us here today, Felix.

– [Felix] Thanks Adam.

– [Adam] All right, we’re here at the Formnext booth at AMCM, thank you for joining us.