Machine shop's journey into hybrid manufacturing

Editor's Note: The following report was contributed by Wesley J. Hart.

Metal additive manufacturing has yet to fully break into mainstream manufacturing operations. While the market is growing significantly, it’s still rare to find metal 3D-printing capabilities outside large corporations or advanced research institutions. It’s particularly rare to find the capability married with advanced multiple-axis CNC machining capabilities. Imperial Machine & Tool Co., Columbia, N.J., is an advanced manufacturing company that has done just that.

Imperial Machine & Tool Co. is a multigenerational company that provides engineering and manufacturing services to leading technology companies, research institutions and the U.S. government. Founded in 1943, the manufacturer developed a reputation for tackling challenging projects and employing the state-of-the-art equipment.

As such, they are always looking to stay at the forefront of new and developing technologies. This desire to “lead the charge” combined with an entrepreneurial spirit and a healthy appetite for risk led the company to explore additive techniques many years ago.

“In 2012, my son Christian and I were discussing capital equipment needs over lunch one day and the topic turned to metal additive manufacturing.” said Chris Joest, president of Imperial Machine & Tool Co. “We had been using polymer based AM for quite some time so I was familiar with the technology, but frankly metal additive wasn’t even on my radar. I had been thinking along the lines of additional 5-axis machining centers or a large horizontal machining center. Christian pointed out some of the very interesting things that were going on in additive at the time and that certainly piqued my interest. Upon further study I got our team together and said, ‘We should get out in front of this metal 3D-printing technology. It has current benefits for us and our customers and clearly is the wave of the future for manufacturing.”

Joest and the team at Imperial dove in head first, buying an SLM 280 HL in 2013. “I told my team we might lose our shirts for the first couple of years (and we did), but I had no doubt that over time the investment would pay off.”

He said the initial learning curve was very steep both internally and with customers. “In-house we had to decide how best to marry the new capability into our operations. With our customers, we found we had to start the conversation at a much different point than a typical machine shop conversation, beginning with what metal AM is really capable of. On the whole though, there was excitement and frankly wonder at what we could now create.”

While it took a couple of years the metal additive department was soon getting busier and busier, and in 2015 Imperial purchased a second SLM 280 HL “Twin-Laser” to keep up with their growing additive workload. The company intends to continue investing in additive and is shopping for new and larger tools and capacities.

“We’ve really hit our stride in the last couple of years. In particular we’ve been able to separate ourselves by offering comprehensive hybrid manufacturing services that marry additive and subtractive techniques effectively," Joest said. "Having extensive machining, welding and fabricating experience provides significant advantages since almost all metal additively manufactured items require some level of machining after they are 'printed.' Many additive shops and organizations simply can’t do this because they don’t have the robust machining background we have. Hybrid manufacturing is what’s unlocking the most innovative designs, not just additive on its own.”

(Editor’s note: Hybrid manufacturing refers to performing precision machining work on intricate additively manufactured components. Hybrid manufacturing captures the design freedom of AM and the precision of CNC machine tools.)