Bharat Fritz Werner Group Launches First Made in India Laser-DED Machine – PHOTON 4000G

Bangalore, India – Bharat Fritz Werner Ltd (BFW) and m2nxt (a BFW subsidiary), India’s leading CNC and Industry 4.0 machine and solutions companies, announce the release of the PHOTON 4000G Laser-Directed-Energy-Deposition (L-DED) machine, which is Made in India and available worldwide. With over 50,000 machines and systems installed worldwide, BFW specializes in cutting-edge, advanced manufacturing technology platforms. In the Laser-Powder & Laser-Wire Directed Energy Deposition (DED) segment, BFW identified an industry need and opportunity for cost-effective and large-format metal additive manufacturing. It entered the DED metal AM industry in September 2021, with a highly technologically focused global team leading the charge.

With 60 years of machine tool experience, BFW has the capability and infrastructure to design and manufacture the world’s largest, fastest, and most affordable L-DED machine to exact specifications and reliability. BFW also takes pride in its capability, commitment, and track record of providing world-class customer support for installation, commissioning, training, and expert consultancy to any customer anywhere in the world.

The PHOTON 4000G, BFW’s first system, will be available in January 2023. Among the many benefits of this system are the following:

36 cubic m hermetically sealed Argon Chamber (33 percent larger than any other commercial AM system)
4 cubic m part build envelope (200 percent larger than any other inert chamber commercial AM system)
First-in-industry dual-deposition heads on a dual-ram gantry – for Powder and Wire deposition
Industry-first standard specification 6KW fiber laser with a beam splitter that allows variable power to be directed to both heads
Standard features include a 3mx3mx4m argon chamber with a stainless steel interior, multiple laser safe viewports and glove ports, full-size front and rear doors, motorized parts table, heavy-duty tilt/rotate the table, real-time process monitoring via pyrometry/thermography/machine vision, full 5-axis control/build software, ID cladding head with 2m length, and much more, a game-changer in the DED industry.

BFW has announced a starting MSRP of €1,990,000, which translates to €190,000 per cubic meter of part build volume, which is 2.5x to 20x less than the starting MSRP of other L-DED machine manufacturers.

Printing large/huge parts in the Photon 4000G will be orders of magnitude more cost effective than other L-DED argon chamber machines. Such compelling economic business cases provide game-changing opportunities, competitive advantages, and technical capability to potential users for printing large/very large metal alloy components for the aerospace, defense, oil and gas, power, mining, and heavy industries, specializing in freeform fabrication, hybrid manufacturing, and repair applications.

BFW intends to install Photon 4000G machines for contract manufacturing in its Dr Abdul Kalam Centre of Excellence in Bangalore, as well as effectively market and support the machines in India and globally. It will soon announce the availability of several other Photon machine models, including the Photon 2500 and Photon 1000 series, both with gantry and robot, as well as mobile systems for in-situ repair/manufacturing and hybrid AM configurations.

The fact that this world-leading metal AM machine is being manufactured entirely in India demonstrates the Indian Government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative, and it will address significant, critical, and strategic applications in the Defense/Space/Aerospace/Heavy Industries segment.

Ashok H Varma, EVP & Global Leader, Additive Manufacturing, BFW and a DED industry veteran, commented, “I have applied and marketed the most premium DED equipment in the industry over the past 20 years. I talked to hundreds of potential and existing industrial users and identified a large global opportunity to satisfy a glaring unmet need – the significant gap between demand and availability of truly industrial-grade yet affordable L-DED systems and the practical experience required to ensure good results and economic viability. I have contract-printed parts priced at more than US$ 250,000, and the BFW Photon 4000G can print similar parts at less than half that cost once amortization and operational costs are considered. It is also evident that the new wave of metal AM industrial manufacturing will be driven by Laser-DED.”

He further added, “Most currently installed systems are in laboratories or light industrial applications, many are ‘Do It Yourself systems’, many are underpowered, undersized, or overpriced systems, many are idle or under-utilized, with few suppliers and users having the practical experience to optimally utilize this technology and reduce ‘time to value’. We believe we at BFW will be instrumental in closing the gap between supply and demand of large, very large, and huge 3D printed parts using laser-powder and laser-wire metal deposition, for free form fabrication and fine/heavy cladding/repairs.”

Ravi Raghavan, MD, BFW, said, “BFW and m2nxt have introduced market-disruptive high technology products for the last six decades. Photon 4000G is one more such product which will not only bring technology differentiators but would be the First IoT enabled Smart AM machine.”

Image Source: BHARAT FRITZ WERNER Group