The global construction firm Caterpillar has opened three new innovation spaces for 3D printing in their global research centre in Illinois. Through the use of 3D printing in production they hope to reduce production costs for their machines.
Caterpillar is one of the world’s leading manufacturer of construction equipment and provides a high range of products and parts worldwide. With this fact in mind its the next step for them to develop new technologies to save money in the production process. For this purpose they have opened three facilities in Illinois.
In one of the new suites they want to boost creative ideas and creative thinking. Therefor its build like a typical maker space and also has some meetings rooms. In the second laboratory are different 3D printers, up to high-end printers. There they can test printing with different materials and which grade of detail is possible. The third laboratory is called “Cat MicroFoundry” and is used to 3D print casting sand focusing specially on very small parts. With this technique costs for production of castings could be drastically reduced.
With the new laboratories Caterpillar hopes to produce parts faster and cheaper. Moreover the possibilities for 3D printing should be developed and then used for the production of their own parts.
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