China's Yizumi branches into additive manufacturing

China's Guangdong Yizumi Precision Machinery Co. Ltd. is bringing a 3D printing technology to K 2019 that it says is ready for small and medium production runs, not just the prototyping that additive manufacturing has historically targeted.

The Foshan, China-based firm is one of that country's largest makers of injection molding machines, but it's been branching into 3D printing and making other investments in technology, like starting construction on a new innovation center in China this month.

Yizumi said its 3D printing system, which it calls SpaceA, uses as its base the melt deposition modeling technology originally developed by the Institute for Polymer Processing/IKV (Hall 14/C16) in Aachen, Germany.

SpaceA is based in Aachen, and the head of the Yizumi subsidiary, Nicolai Lammert, is a former IKV research engineer who developed the technology. The company is exhibiting a SpaceA machine at the IKV booth.

Yizumi Chief Strategy Officer Hans Wobbe said the system uses standard polymers and filled and fiber-reinforced plastics such as nylon with 30 percent carbon fiber, which helps to speed up the additive manufacturing process.

"Our machine can process more or less standard grades of polymers," Wobbe said.

He claimed Yizumi's design "gains tremendous advantages in productivity" compared with other additive manufacturing processes.

"Due to this reason, the SpaceA is not only a machine to produce prototypes, it is the first 3D printer for profitable production," Wobbe said. "The main focus is profitable production in competition to injection molding of small and medium lots."

Yizumi debuted the SpaceA robotic 3D printing system last year at both Germany's Fakuma plastics show and the Formnext additive manufacturing show in Frankfurt.

It said the robotic system it uses is flexible and can be combined with other operations such as inserts and traditional subtractive manufacturing technologies.

The robot moves the extrusion nozzle, Lammert said.

"We just put the extruder on a robot, but what is our approach here is more to handle it like a machine and promote it to the customer not as an automation system but as a process change," Lammert said.

Yizumi said the technology is applicable to automotive, home appliance and construction manufacturing, among other markets.

The company, which is publicly traded on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, said in an Oct. 13 news release that over the last three years it invested half of its net profits, or about 260 million Chinese yuan (33.3 million euros) into research and development.

Yizumi said it had started construction of a 100 million yuan (12.8 million euros) innovation center at its Foshan headquarters.

The company said it would focus on new materials and processes, as well as providing joint development and testing, mold trials and small batch production and technical training for customers.

It also announced in July it had bought 268 acres in an industrial park in the Shunde district of Foshan for further expansion. It said that is the largest single piece of land the company has bought and will help it further develop complete manufacturing systems.

Wobbe said when he joined Yizumi five years ago after a career in the European plastics machinery industry, the Chinese company developed a strategy to separate itself from other Chinese plastics machinery companies, which produce more standard, off-the-shelf kind of machines.

It wants to pursue a more innovation-based model, he said.

"The strategy is to go away from standard machines and also to go into technology," Wobbe said.