In-port 3D printing of marine parts comes a step nearer

MAY 26, 2017 — Wilh. Wilhelmsen Holding ASA is collaborating with an additive-manufacturing specialist, Ivaldi Group, to explore in-port 3D printing opportunities for marine products and spare parts

“With an ambition to shape the maritime industry, exploring new technologies and business models are key,” says Thomas Wilhelmsen, group CEO at Wilhelmsen. “We are one of the largest suppliers of spare parts, and we believe that sending files and printing instructions digitally instead of spare parts can enable us to deliver faster, cheaper and more specialized products to our customers.”

“We see the future of supply as being on-demand, locally distributed and fully digitized,” says Espen Sivertsen, CEO of Ivaldi Group. “Wilhelmsen’s long history of innovation in the maritime industry, combined with our own expertise in additive manufacturing, represents a significant move towards a vision in which we can offer a solution that can deliver and print files and not part. By partnering to explore this space with us, Wilhelmsen just made that future a bit more real.”

“The technology is not new, but we have yet to see this put into a larger, commercialized setting in the maritime industry. Through a partnership with Ivaldi Group, we can soon offer a completely new way of suppling parts to our customers world-wide,” says Mr. Wilhelmsen. “Rapid design changes and the ability to quickly bring new solutions to our customers makes 3D printing an attractive solution and the technology opens up several new possibilities.”

“Our research shows that we should be able to reduce delivery time from three-four weeks to as little as 24 hours,” says Mr. Sivertsen.”Printing on-demand will also reduce costs associated with minimum order quantities, storage, transportation and possible delays due to import.”