Additive manufacturing – a love story
There’s this girl. Her name is Xin and she is one of a kind. Actually, if you ask Tong Wu from Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of China, she is the most amazing person he’s ever met. This summer, he had booked a restaurant in Shenzhen to propose to her. He had a very special ring in mind.
Tong works as Digital Business Manager at Kanthal and wanted to surprise his fiancée with a special ring.To produce this ring, he turned to the additive manufacturing team at Kanthal. All he had was a napkin with a rough design drawing of the ring. As Tong works as Digital Business Manager at Kanthal, he knew where to turn with his napkin. Not everyone would know that yet as the customization service Kanthal® Additive Manufacturing was launched only eight months ago.
Additive manufacturing allows for greater innovations
Since the launch, we’ve supported customers with lighter, stronger and more complex structures than one can even dream of with traditional manufacturing. Our Kanthal® AM100 material is an advanced heat-resistant ferritic iron-chromium-aluminum alloy (FeCrAl), specially developed for additive manufacturing. This material is perfect when you want to create customized geometries that are difficult to produce with traditional manufacturing methods. Burner nozzles, protective shells, fittings, manifolds and tailored heating elements, are examples of such applications. And in this case, a very special ring.
Perfection was the only option
As with all our customers, Tong wanted his creation to be perfect. Together with the AM team, he finetuned his design and discussed material and time plan. For him, the deadline was non-negotiable as he had already booked the restaurant, so the lead time had to be short.
In the beginning of August, Tong proposed to his girlfriend with the special ring. She said yes and the wedding will be held at the end of this year.
The Kanthal® Additive Manufacturing team seldom produces customized rings like Tong’s. They are however used to other, often less romantic, requests and love the process of improving design ideas together with customers, discussing material and support them all the way from idea to printed product and beyond.
