BMW Group announced in April 2019 that it and 11 other German organizations were working together to make additive manufacturing an accepted method for mass-producing metal parts for the automotive industry.
The automaker serves as the coordinator of the project, called IDAM (Industrialization and Digitization of Additive Manufacturing), sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
The modular, automated lines cover the entire AM process, from design to production to postprocessing.
The IDAM program has been successfully implemented at the BMW Group Additive Manufacturing Campus in Oberschleißheim, Germany, the company reported in May of this year. Another line has been installed at GKN Powder Metallurgy in Bonn, Germany.
Driverless transportation systems, which began as sketches in 2019, now move mobile construction rooms housing 3D printers between units of IDAM’s production lines. The machines are organized by a central console, where all production data from individual lines are collected and analyzed to help ensure maximum productivity and quality, BMW reports.