Bharat Fritz Werner Ltd. (BFW), India’s largest machine tool builder, and m2nxt, a wholly owned subsidiary of BFW, announced the launch of the PHOTON 4000G Laser-DED machine, the company’s first Made-in-India AM system.
With over 50,000 machines and systems installed worldwide, BFW specializes in cutting-edge advanced manufacturing technology platforms. In the Laser-Powder & Laser-Wire Directed Energy Deposition (DED) segment, BFW identified an industry need and opportunity for cost-effective and large format metal additive manufacturing. The development of the PHOTON 400G will be led by a focused technology-driven global team.
BFW’s 60-year expertise in machine tools enables it to develop and manufacture the world’s largest, fastest, and lowest-cost Laser-DED machine to exact specifications and reliability. BFW also takes pride in its ability, commitment, and track record of providing world-class customer support for installation, commissioning, training, and expert consultancy to any customer anywhere in the world.
PHOTON 4000G Laser-DED Machine
The PHOTON 4000G, BFW’s first system, will be available in January 2023. Some of the key benefits of this system are:
- A hermetically sealed argon chamber 36 cubic meters in volume (33 percent larger than any other commercial AM system).
- Part build envelope of 4 cubic meters (200 percent larger than any other inert chamber commercial AM system).
- Dual-deposition heads on a dual-ram gantry for Powder and Wire deposition (an industry first).
- An industry-first standard spec 6KW fibre laser with a beam splitter to direct variable power to both heads.
Some of its standard features include a 3mx3mx4m argon chamber with a stainless steel interior, multiple laser safe viewports & glove ports, full-size front & rear doors, motorized parts table, heavy-duty tilt/rotate the table, real-time process monitoring via pyrometry/thermography/machine vision, full 5-axis control/build software, ID cladding head with 2m length, and much more, a game-changer in the DED industry
BFW has announced a starting MSRP of Euro 1,990,000, which translates to Euro 190,000 per cubic meter of part build volume, which is 2.5x to 20x less than the starting MSRP of other Laser-DED machine manufacturers.
Printing large parts in the Photon 4000G will be orders of magnitude more cost effective than other Laser-DED argon chamber machines. Such compelling economic business cases provide potential users with game-changing opportunities, competitive advantages, and technical capability for printing large metal alloy components. freeform fabrication, hybrid manufacturing, and repair applications for the aerospace, defence, oil and gas, power, mining, and heavy industries.
BFW intends to install Photon 4000G machines for contract manufacturing in its Dr. Abdul Kalam Centre of Excellence in Bangalore, as well as effectively market and support the machine in India and globally.
“I have applied and marketed the most premium DED equipment in the industry over the past 20 years. I talked to hundreds of potential & existing industrial users and identified a large global opportunity to satisfy a glaring unmet need – _the significant gap between demand and availability of truly industrial-grade yet affordable L-DED systems and the practical experience required to ensure good results and economic viability. I have contract-printed parts priced at more than $250,000, and the BFW Photon 4000G can print similar parts at less than half that cost once amortization and operational costs are considered. It is also evident that the new wave of metal AM industrial manufacturing will be driven by Laser-DED.”
– Ashok H. Varma, a DED industry veteran and EVP & Global Leader, Additive Manufacturing at BFW
Ashok Varma added, “Most currently installed systems are in laboratories or light industrial applications, many are “Do It Yourself systems”, many are underpowered, undersized, or overpriced systems, many are idle or under-utilised, with few suppliers and users having the practical experience to optimally utilise this technology and reduce ‘time to value’. We believe we at BFW will be instrumental in closing the gap between supply and demand of large, very large, and huge 3D printed parts using laser-powder and laser-wire metal deposition, for free form fabrication and fine/heavy cladding/repairs.”
“BFW and m2nxt have introduced market disruptive high technology products for the last six decades. Photon 4000G is one more such product which will not only bring technology differentiators but would be the First IoT enabled Smart AM machine.”
– Ravi Raghavan, MD BFW
The fact that this world-leading metal AM machine is being manufactured entirely in India demonstrates the Indian Government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative, and it will address significant, critical, and strategic applications in the Defence, Space, Aerospace, and Heavy Industries segments.
BFW will soon announce the availability of several other Photon machine models, including the Photon 2500 and Photon 1000 series, both with gantry and robot, as well as mobile systems for in-situ repair & manufacturing and hybrid AM configurations.
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