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Production

Pilot plant

Together with several partners from the manufacturing industry, we participated in a joint pilot factory for 3D metal printing under the name AddLab at Stijp-S in Eindhoven. In three years, this place has grown into a hotspot of industrial additive manufacturing that competes with the world's best. The more than 20 engineers of the 9 participating companies have gained extensive knowledge and experience with designs for 3D printing, material research, the 3D printing process itself and of course the finishing and testing of printed parts. During that period, an important foundation was laid for the application of this new digital production technology for the Dutch manufacturing industry.

First printer

At the end of the AddLab program, parent company Kaak Group (now Royal Kaak) purchased one of the first MetalFAB1 metal printers in September 2016 from Additive Industries.This metal printer was purchased with the aim of manufacturing parts for the bread baking lines in stainless steel and tool steel. Kaak liked the collaboration in Eindhoven, in which knowledge, experiences and skills were shared and time and money were invested, that the new metal printer was once again exploited as part of a collaboration. exploited.

Kaak decided to share the machine capacity with a number of other industrial leaders in the east of the Netherlands, such as Royal Eijkelkamp, Goma, Copal Handling Systems, Hittech Bihca, Bronkhorst Hightech and Van Raam. And within a short period the machine was upgraded from 2 to 4 lasers to keep up with the increasing demand.

Privatization

During the second half of 2017, due to Kaak's great ambitions in the field of 3D metal printing, it was decided to privatize the 3D metal print production and to house it in a fully owned subsidiary K3D. To implement the distributed manufacturing vision, K3D is building a network of local K3D Printing Technology Centers. If successful, we will further roll-out our technology to abroad.

Brainport Campus

We continued our collaboration with KMWE, NTS and Machinefabriek de Valk in a slimmed-down variant during 2016, 2017 and 2018 under the name AddFab.

K3D decided to start a new branche in Eindhoven in addition to the successful print center in Terborg. This resulted in a renewed collaboration with NTS, KMWE, Additive Industries and Machinefabriek de Valk called K3D-AddFab. Mid 2020 K3D-AddFab was live and open on the Brainport Industries Campus at the heart of the manufacturing industry.

K3D is now one of the market leaders in 3D metal printing in the Netherlands. Together with partners, educational institutions and (local) governments, we are working on creating a knowledge exchange network and a chain of companies that are experts with this new technology and roll it out for BV Nederland.