Last year BMW announced that over the previous decade it had produced 1m additively manufactured parts for prototyping, tooling and in-vehicle part applications in both polymer and metal materials, with one fifth of that total over just the previous 12 months. The OEM’s commitment to the use of additive techniques is confirmed by Dr Jens Ertel, head of the company’s Additive Manufacturing Centre in Munich.

“The additive manufacturing team at the BMW Group Research and Innovation Centre now processes annually almost 30,000 prototype orders and delivers over 200,000 components to BMW Group internal customers,” he states. “We still see and expect a strong growth in prototype applications for functional testing due to more qualified materials and larger build volumes.

Production projects are increasing but they are still in small series applications, though we expect more to come in the future. Our goal is to transfer additive manufacturing into an industrialised and highly automated series process.” 

As Dr Ertel also makes clear, BMW’s explorations of additive techniques are highly variegated…