The Austrian steel company VoestAlpine wants to 3D print parts with metal in the future. In Düsseldorf a new research center will be build and in Austria / Kapfenberg they want to create the needed metal powder.
11. April 2016 – For printing metal the metal powder is very important. Out of this reason they decided to produce their metal powder in Kapfenberg (Austria / Styria). The company invests around 70 Million Euro each year in their facilities in Styria and research is very important for them. Therefore they work together with some colleges: Graz, Kapfenberg and Leoben.
Now a research center for the voest Special Steel Division is built in Düsseldorf. There they will use the metal powder that’s produced in Kapfenberg. For this purpose they bought even new high-tech equipment that creates metal powder out of liquid metal.
The VoestAlpine has around 9,100 employees in Styria. In the fiscal year 2014 / 2015 employees generated around 3.6 billion Euros of sales. The export quote was around 65 percent.
15. September 2016 Update – The research center in Düsseldorf is official opened
Meanwhile the research center in Düsseldorf (Germany) was finished and was officially opened on the 14th September 2016. With the new research center the Voestalpine wants to be ready for a future full of additive manufacturing. For example they want to already produce small series or complex parts, that could not be manufactured any other way, for the car racing industry, aerospace industry or for different medical applications. The next step for the Voestalpine will be to start similar projects in North America and / or in China.
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