BEING ‘AMAC’INGLY INNOVATIVE

amace, a part of the largest machine tool conglomerate in India the AceMicromatic Group (AMG), is revolutionizing the manufacturing industry with additive manufacturing that has the potential to achieve new levels of customization, efficiency, and sustainability.

amace solutions pvt ltd was formed in the year 2018 with a firm belief in the potential of additive manufacturing and a vision to promote the advanced technology and make it more accessible. The company has a legacy of over four decades in machine building and is now well-poised to be one of the first indigenous manufacturers of metal-based additive manufacturing machines.

“amace came out as a part of the technological diversification initiative by the parent companies Ace Designers Ltd and Ace Manufacturing Systems Ltd. It was started as an R&D project in one of the Group companies, and when it was realized that the project had enough potential to be spun off as an independent company, amace was established,” shares Shreesha CV, Product Specialist – Additive Manufacturing, AceMicromatic Group.

AceMicromatic Group has always been customer-focused and developed products suiting the needs of customers. In this case too, when it was seen that some of the early adopter customers started showing interest in this technology, it became necessary for the Group to widen the product and technology offerings to its customers with additive manufacturing.

“Since amace is a venture started by AMS and Ace (Designers), parts of both the companies’ names were used to form amace. Also, the Group itself is mostly referred to as ‘Ace’ in short, and when we were introducing Additive Manufacturing (AM) from the Group, AM from Ace sounded like the perfect name for it. The name is also inspired by the word ‘amaze’, which is what the technology and its applications do to people,” he notes, explaining the idea behind the name of the company.

Garnering favorable response

When asked to elaborate on the company’s journey and the current juncture it has reached, Shreesha says, “amace started as an additive manufacturing service bureau to understand and learn suitable applications for the technology. This was a very curial stage for amace as this enabled us to better understand the process and its limitations and essentially put us in the shoes of our future customers. Equipped with the learnings from the service bureau stage, our focus moved towards productionizing using AM, understanding materials, and qualifying new materials to suit the needs of the market, all of which contributed toward the creation of our own indigenously developed, high-productivity metal 3D printer.”

“Since its introduction in July 2021, it has garnered immense interest from multiple market segments. Today, with multiple installations of the machines in the country and many more in the pipeline, we are happy with the way the market has received our offering,” he adds.

With India becoming more and more self-reliant, there is growing scope for R&D and indigenous development, because of which, shares Shreesha, there is a good adoption of additive manufacturing, as options such as faster product development, ease of complex geometry generation, and light-weighting can be hugely beneficial. “Also, with the increase of machine presence in the market, there is a growing interest among manufacturers to adopt this advanced technology.”

Today, the Bangalore-based amace has over 15,000 hours of metal printing experience and the parts produced are for diverse applications. “We have customers not only in India, but also in Singapore, the UK, the US, Israel, and France. The continuous endeavor for developing new materials and processes goes on. We have tested and proven over 12 different metal alloys suiting a wide variety of applications and many more materials under development. What we offer to our customers along with our state-of-the-art machine is our expertise in the field,” he informs.

The company’s major domestic and international clients include Auto OEMs and Ancillaries, Die and Mould Manufacturers, Aerospace companies, and Oil & Gas component manufacturers.

Changing the game

The amace STLR 400 is the company’s new offering that was launched in 2021 and showcased at a public event for the first time at IMTEX 2023 & Tooltech 2023 and Digital Manufacturing 2023. It is expected to bring in a paradigm shift in the adoption of additive manufacturing in India.

“The amace STLR 400 is a large-format, high-productivity, industrial-grade metal 3D printer. It employs the most advanced and technologically mature process in metal 3D printing, called Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF). Our machine has been designed and developed with a vision to elevate the outlook of additive manufacturing from a prototyping technology to a production technology,” he elaborates.

Additive manufacturing has for the longest time been viewed as an expensive and low-productivity technology that has impacted the global adoption rate. amace solutions, with its roots in one of the most cost-sensitive markets in the world, India, has successfully created a product that challenges this status quo, launching a machine that is not only cost-effective but also offers a host of productivity features. The company is sure that the printer is sure to help in the faster adoption of the technology globally.

AM benefits galore

amace solutions’ other accomplishment is its work with Orxa Energies. It has provided 70 percent 3D printed components of the electric bike manufactured by Orxa Energies. The work has culminated in a two-fold impact. “One: 3D printing can immensely reduce the product development cycle by producing functional end-use parts that can be taken for real-world testing. We were able to optimize, print, and dispatch these parts for assembly within a week,” shares Shreesha.

“Two: 3D printed parts can be just as durable (if not better) than conventionally manufactured parts, which was showcased when Orxa took the bike on an over 14,000 km ride,” he adds. This case study is a testament to what can be achieved when auto OEMs work closely with additive manufacturing companies right from the design phase, enabling them to take full advantage of the capabilities and possibilities of what the technology can offer.

Awards and acknowledgments

Due to its awe-inspiring work in the field of additive manufacturing, amace solutions was recently recognized as a Winner of the National Startup Awards 2022 in the Industry 4.0 and 3D Printing category by the Government of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and DPIIT. Out of 2,610 applicants, amace was one of the very few winners of this prestigious award. The jury panel included key members from the Government, industry experts, and investors who evaluated each participant over multiple rounds. This National recognition is an acknowledgment of the effort put in by the entire team in making amace to what it is today.

The Government of India has been consistently trying to encourage and promote entrepreneurship with its various schemes and initiatives. The recent Union Budget too has many measures for boosting startups in the country. Sharing his views on it, Shreesha says, “We believe that the proposed changes in the 2023 Union budget will have a significant impact on the Indian Startup ecosystem, more so for companies in the initial few years of their incorporation. Being a startup ourselves, we cannot begin to emphasize how much of a respite the three-year extension in the carry forward and set off period for losses could potentially bring. This move will allow startups to reduce taxable income and tax liability, providing them with more capital to reinvest in their business, and plan their finances more effectively, giving startups the stability they need to grow and succeed.”

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