Shipbuilders’ flirtation with 3D printing continues to mount. Australian metal additive manufacturing company, Titomic has entered into a MoU with Fincantieri Australia.
The MoU, Titomic’s first for the marine sector, will last for 12 months. The MoU will enable Titomic to work with Fincantieri to evaluate the potential for the company’s additive manufacturing process, Titomic Kinetic Fusion, to be used in Fincantieri’s manufacturing activities.
The Fincantieri news follows hot on the heels of New York-listed 3D Systems signing a collaboration pact last week with US company Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding division to qualify metal additive manufacturing technologies to build naval warships.
Jeff Lang, CEO and CTO of Titomic said, “This agreement with Fincantieri marks a significant milestone for future shipbuilding and industrial scale additive manufacturing. Titomic’s signing with Fincantieri to evaluate our Titomic Kinetic Fusion process will not only add value to existing manufacturing and repair activities, it will lead to the creation of next generation high tech vessels.”
Dario Deste, chairman of Fincantieri Australia said, “We are pleased to partner with Titomic, an innovative advanced manufacturing company, to pursue new technological development, continuous improvement and value creation for all our stakeholders. The significance of this partnership examines how we can introduce new manufacturing technologies to make Australia sovereign in advanced naval technology and improve our solutions on the world-wide market.”
Titomic claims to have developed the world’s largest and fastest metal 3D printer. With an output size of 9m x 3m x 1.5m, the patented Titomic Kinetic Fusion is nearly five times the size of the previous benchmark at GE — which can print metal objects up to a cubic metre.
