LayerWise wins GE’s global competition for 3D printing of metal parts4 June 2014 GE has chosen LayerWise as the winner of its worldwide open innovation challenge, the 3D Printing Production Quest, to produce complex medical imaging device parts with high precision. As part of GE’s global 3D Printing Production Quest, LayerWise produced a complex high-precision part using a refractory metal. LayerWise and two other winners were selected by GE based on analysis of their dimensional capabilities as well as material related and other qualitative aspects of their entries. Participants representing research teams from academia, start-ups and established businesses worldwide competed in the Quest in effort to explore new uses for 3D printing technologies in the healthcare sector. As the worldwide medical imaging market is expected to reach €25 billion ($35 billion) by 2019, GE envisions additive manufacturing enabling new component designs that greatly simplify manufacturing and reduce cost, while improving image quality and diagnostic capability. Refractory metals have high density allowing them to very effectively block x-rays without the environmental and health hazards associated with lead. 3D printing of refractory metals is particularly challenging because such metals also have very high melting temperatures, up to 3,400°C (6,000°F). They are used in x-ray systems to control the path of x-rays from the source through the patient’s body and some components such as x-ray source tubes that take advantage of the high melting temperature. Peter Mercelis, Managing Director of LayerWise: “Through many years of experience and by acquiring full control over the layered manufacturing technology, LayerWise really masters the powder-to-solid transformation. Winning the quest reconfirms that LayerWise is a world leader in 3D printing high-tech metal materials. This is one of the reasons LayerWise collaborates with renowned medical, industrial and aerospace manufacturers in Europe, USA and beyond. “In-depth research on new materials and additive manufacturing technology is essential in delivering and validating high-end series production. Serving both as a technology developer and as a technology user, we are able to directly test new developments on real applications. This makes our technology progress both very applicable as effective.” Steve Liguori, Executive Director of Global Innovation at GE said: “Harnessing the power of the crowd is essential to disrupting current processes and accelerating the pace of innovation. GE’s Quest program taps into the world’s greatest minds to create products that bring new values to our customers and speed the time from mind to market.”
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