Fonon Corporation‘s Bulk-To-Shape (BTS) additive manufacturing technology, currently in the development phase, is designed to streamline sectors of the rail transportation industry that often suffer from supply chain issues.
Leading rail transportation companies are already using additive manufacturing techniques to produce spare parts and increase operational efficiency. The use of 3D printing in production has proven to be cost-effective as it reduces labor and the need to source, transport, store and assemble parts. In addition, train downtime is reduced when spare parts can be produced quickly and on site. With metal 3D printing, physical inventories can be replaced with digital inventories, allowing new components and parts to be produced on demand and directly on site.
Continuous investment in technologies such as BTS opens up numerous opportunities for manufacturers to operate more sustainably. Faster development, shorter delivery times, more resource-efficient production and highly reusable materials help to reduce waste and minimize the carbon footprint. This not only supports innovation in the area of sustainable design, production and distribution, but also helps manufacturers to achieve their sustainability goals. Additive manufacturing is key to enabling a circular economy by reusing materials and products along the entire production line.
In addition, additive manufacturing reduces the cost of producing prototypes, complex geometries and customization. Fonon’s BTS systems, which are currently under development, will enable users to optimize existing component designs and improve their performance and reliability once they are launched. BTS is an example of Fonon’s growing portfolio of enabling technologies backed by patents, licenses, next-generation hardware and proprietary metal processing techniques. This family of specialized 3D metal printing systems for industrial and manufacturing applications represents the fastest path to production readiness.
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