Yinchuan, Xinhua News Agency, February 23 (Reporter Ren Wei) In the Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon, walking into the spacious and bright factory building of shared intelligent equipment in Yinchuan City, Ningxia, workers are doing the final debugging and assembly for the casting 3D printing equipment that is about to leave the factory. The finished equipment that has been packaged is neatly arranged and will be sold at home and abroad by car and ship.
In the sharing of intelligent equipment, workers are debugging and assembling 3D printing equipment. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ren Wei.
During the Spring Festival, we took the technical service team to do the debugging of the new machine, and then went to Austria to upgrade the software and hardware for the old customers, and also negotiated some new projects. Bai Ming, deputy general manager of shared intelligent equipment and director of the global operation and maintenance center, said that his first feeling on this business trip was "very proud", because the foundry 3D printing equipment developed and produced by the company is becoming more and more recognized in overseas markets.
Workers are testing the accuracy of the parts of the casting 3D printing equipment. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ren Wei.
Time goes back more than ten years ago, and Zhou Zhijun, R&D director and deputy general manager of shared intelligent equipment, encountered a different situation. At that time, the company spent a huge amount of money to purchase 3D printing equipment from abroad, but the operating cost of the equipment was too high to carry out industrial application promotion. The core technology is controlled by others, and when the fault cannot be solved, it can only contact foreign technical personnel to deal with it.
In order to localize the casting 3D printing technology and take the lead in realizing the industrial application, Zhou Zhijun led the R&D team to officially launch the casting 3D printing technology research and development project in 2015. After successively overcoming the problems of printing materials, processes, software, equipment and key technologies, the large-size and high-efficiency industrial-grade casting 3D printing equipment was officially released.
The successful research and development of this equipment marks the first domestic initiative in the industrial application of foundry 3D printing. Zhou Zhijun said that in recent years, the company has developed more than 10 types of casting 3D printing equipment.
Casting 3D printing equipment produces high-end equipment, key components and cultural and creative products. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ren Wei.
Nowadays, in the foundry 3D printing smart factory, there is no crane, no model, no heavy physical strength, no temperature difference, no waste sand and dust emission, instead of a three-dimensional model of the casting designed by the computer, which is transmitted to the production workshop through the network, and the worker only needs to touch the button on the operation screen of the 3D printer, and the printing box will automatically print the product.
In the traditional mode, it takes more than a month for a new casting to go from drawing to finished product, while it usually takes only one week with casting 3D printing technology, and the quality and accuracy of the product produced are also significantly improved. Zhou Zhijun said.
The changes that occur in the foundry workshop are the intuitive embodiment of the transformation and upgrading of the traditional foundry industry promoted by the new quality productivity. At present, 7 foundry intelligent factories based on 3D printing technology have been built in the country. The smart factory with technologies such as 3D printing, A** transfer, robot automatic sand removal and core assembly, and three-dimensional warehouse storage can realize the digitization of the whole process of casting production, and the production efficiency can reach more than 3 times that of traditional casting of the same scale.
At the 21st China International Foundry Expo held in 2023, the shared intelligent equipment *** handed over the "innovative answer sheet" - the self-developed "4M super sand 3D printing equipment" and "binder jet metal 3D printing equipment" were officially released.
Our goal is to further reduce costs and improve efficiency, so that more foundry enterprises can use and afford casting 3D printing equipment. The R&D team will also continue to explore and innovate in new areas of printable materials such as ceramics, metals, and graphite. Zhou Zhijun said.