We had the opportunity to talk to the designers who work of Design Department of Technogym, the wellness giant. They explains us how large format 3D printing accelerate the company’s ability to innovate.
With yearly revenues above € 650 million in 2018, Cesena, Italy, based Technogym is one of the largest global operators in the wellness segment. Since it was founded in 1983 by Nerio Alessandri, the company has focused on key values such as environmental sustainability and innovation, which are clearly reflected in its state of the art Technogym Village headquarter. Here you will find its T-Factory and T-Research and Development Department, where over 130 engineers and designers have produced over 140 international patents and more than 93 trademarks.
The Research and Development Department plays a central role in the innovation process at Technogym, along with the Design Centre, which is responsible for the state-of-the-art product design and ergonomics. In the past few years, many of these innovations have been prototyped using a Delta WASP 4070 INDUSTRIAL 4.0 3D printer.
Conceptualizing innovation
Technogym decided to work with one of the world’s leading manufacturers of Delta architecture 3D printers and brought a 3D printer into their design department. “Our primary objective was to visualize and accurately represent our ideas, intended as the shapes of the parts we design as well as test how we are going to use these parts on our machines”.
In Technogym, he is in charge of conceptualizing technical tools and design the products that will arrive on the market. Needless to say, 3D printing has become a central part of workflow, drastically reducing errors during the product development phase and reducing lead time, especially for large size parts.
“In both the conceptualization phase and in the project assistance phase we need to be certain that what we model in CAD on a computer gives us the same answers in real physics as well. We need a component or product to convince us in real life, and not just on a monitor. At this time, this is a specific demand of the design department. Of course, the production teams are also always looking for a way to reduce the number of iterations in the production phase.”
Why Technogym has chosen WASP technology
At the beginning the company was already using a small filament based system for prototyping in ABS, using a closed materials system. The choice to turn to WASP was dictated by the need to have a system that was easier and more intuitive to use, with lower maintenance costs and – in particular – that could produce very large parts without using support material that would need to be removed using environmentally toxic products.
The choice fell on the Delta WASP 4070 INDUSTRIAL 4.0, which is now located inside a modeling center with sufficient space and tools to manage the full 3D printing workflow. A single system enables to company to produce between 15 and 20 parts, measuring as much as 30 cm in height, each month. The team use it mainly for 3D printing style models or to verify shapes, ergonomics and design elements. For this, they use mainly PLA-based materials, which are ideal for concept models and do not release toxic fumes during extrusion and deposition.
Larger, faster, better
“We chose the Delta WASP 4070 INDUSTRIAL 4.0 system for a number of reasons”. “One is certainly its large print volume, which enables us to print much larger parts than an average 3D printer. We also appreciated its printing speed and the much lower cost of supported materials, which allows us to buy more material spools and conduct more tests. Since it uses an open materials system, we can also decide to change the type of filament anytime, as our needs change over time. In addition, while it may seem like a trivial issue, the ability to select a filament’s color is actually very important for us. It allows us to save the time it would take to paint the part or, if we do need to paint it in a light color, we can just print in white so that the colors can stand out without requiring a base layer of white paint. The Delta WASP 4070 INDUSTRIAL 4.0 was also very easy to install and quite affordable for a system this large. Last but not least, it ensures a very high and repeatable quality standard of all the parts we print.”
Integration and innovation
Technogym’s development center makes intensive use of a number of machines to produce its functional prototypes. The company also often turns to external providers that can deliver mock-ups and prototypes on demand. 3D printing allowed the company to accelerate this process by ensuring that a part is error free even before the final prototype is completed and the actual final parts go into production.
“It is extremely important to have this kind of ability when you work on developing innovative concepts that have never been done, or even tried, before”. “This ability to rapidly innovate has made Technogym a global and technological leader in the wellness segment. Successfully integrating large format 3D printing into our workflow is going to continue to represent a key advantage for us going forward.”
