Heineken invests in 3D printing for some conveying parts
3D printing technology provider Ultimaker is helping Heineken Spain create 3D printed functional parts and tooling for use on the manufacturing line.
Using a set of Ultimaker S5 printers, engineers at Heineken now design and print safety devices, tools and parts on-demand rather than outsourcing the job to external vendors, increasing production uptime and saving around 80% in production costs on the parts they 3D print.
The team was able to replace various redesigned parts with an optimised design. For example, a metal part used with the quality sensor on the conveyor belt would often knock bottles over, creating a blockage, or eject good bottles onto the ground. The redesigned 3D printed part prevents this, saving bottles, cost, and time.
“We’re still in the first stages of 3D printing, but we’ve already seen a reduction of costs in the applications that we found by 70-90% and also a decrease of delivery time of these applications of 70-90%,” said Isabelle Haenen, Global Supply Chain Procurement at Heineken.
