Hirtenberger Engineered Surfaces and CADS Additive Start Digital Innovation Partnership for Metallic 3D Printing

Hirtenberger Engineered Surfaces (HES), the leading specialist for the chemical/electro-chemical post-processing for the de-supporting and levelling of additively-manufactured metallic components and CADS Additive, specialising in the development of support geometry algorithms and path generation (slicing/hatching) libraries for additive manufacturing, combine their know-how for the purpose of process optimisation for metallic additive manufacturing.

During the course of the cooperation, both companies want to optimise and coordinate the essential cornerstones for the purposes of manufacturing orientation, support geometry and path generation for large-scale, industrially-efficient usage. CADS Additive offers the in-house algorithms for the definition of innovative support geometries and path optimisation which fulfils the highest standards in manufacturing precision and cycle time. The “Hirtisation®” electro-chemical de-supporting method that was developed by HES has been integrated as a design rule into the data preparation and is supposed to substantially increase the precision of the a-priori path generation and manufacturing planning.
Working jointly, CADS Additive and HES will raise the industrialisation of the Hirtisation® process to a new level. In addition, it is also being envisaged to develop a process-specific data preparation software which enables the customer to have a complete preparation process – including Hirtisation® – for established AM machine models in a joint software solution.
“Through the combining of our exceedingly high-performing services for the generation of complex support geometry and laser path data – Additive.Support and Additive.Core – with the process-relevant know-how and design rules of Hirtisation®, we will obtain the possibility of raising this cutting-edge technology to a new level with regards to first-time right and productivity”, stated Wolfgang Höller, CEO of CADS Additive GmbH.

The cooperation with CADS Additive will enable us to sustainably integrate our Hirtisation® post-processing approach into the process chain of additive manufacturing and to decisively implement large-scale industrial usage. For the first time, we will already be able to coordinate the entire process chain – additive design and printing, handling and Hirtisation® – from the component planning stage and also be able to optimise it with regards to time- and cost-efficiency considerations, stated Wolfgang Hansal, Managing Director, Hirtenberger Engineered Surfaces GmbH.