Zare Is Betting on the SLM 280 2.0 for Additive Manufacturing in the Aerospace Industry

Zare, a leading Italian company in precision engineering, trusts the reliable and high-precision technology from SLM Solutions for manufacturing in the aerospace industry. The company from Boretto is expanding its machinery with an SLM 280 2.0. Zare S.r.l. is a company with headquarters in northern Italy and more than 50 years of experience and expertise in precision engineering. Since 2009, Zare has been an independent service provider in rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing. The company has rapidly expanded its expertise in this field and steadily expanded its range of machinery since then. The company reached a new milestone in 2011 with the expansion of its service offer in the areas of post-processing, finishing of prototypes, and preparing dental technical and medical models. The offer is rounded off with special surface finishing and reverse engineering, among other things. Zare is characterized by a high level of diligence and reliability and is therefore well prepared for cultivating new international markets. In the past few weeks, the first SLM 280 2.0 was delivered to Boretto and put into operation embedded in Zare’s own machinery. It provides a wide range of machines for additive manufacturing and focuses on researching and testing individual materials. The SLM 280 2.0, which is particularly suitable for processing high-performance materials and consequently the ideal machine for manufacturing in the aerospace industry, is currently being operated by Zare with the material AlSi7Mg0.6 (A357). The correct setting of the machine is the prerequisite for producing high-quality parts that require little post-processing.

In addition, the company also uses the exclusive alloy Scalmalloy®, which was developed by Airbus APWorks. Zare tests and defines processes in accordance with the standard UNI EN 9100:2009 to take full advantage of the construction chamber height of the SLM 280 2.0 with this high-performance alloy.

The SLM 280 2.0 has a construction space with the size of 280 x 280 x 365 mm³. Specialists from the industry maintain that the greater the Z-axis, the greater the quality. The designers at Zare were convinced by the substantial construction chamber height of the SLM 280 2.0. "If you have a larger vertical expansion available, then that component in the machine can be aligned better and the number of necessary support elements reduced, which also reduces unwanted tension inside the component," according to Andrea Pasquali, co-owner of Zare.

Additive manufacturing has certainly overcome the phase in which it only seemed useful for the production of prototypes. Metal-based 3D printing is advancing innovation further and is a cutting-edge technology that enables the production of functional components with unique properties.