General Motors announced the opening of its 15,000-square-foot Additive Industrialization Center (AIC), a facility exclusively dedicated to productionizing 3D-printing technology in the automotive industry. The AIC is the capstone of GM’s increased investment in 3D printing over the last several years. The facility in Warren, Mich., includes 24 3D printers that create polymer and metal solutions. GM’s additive design and manufacturing team leverages a number of processes at the AIC, including selective laser sintering, selective laser melting, multi-jet fusion and fused deposition modeling.
The AIC is intended to validate additive technologies and applications, with frequent pivots to evolving additive machinery and equipment. GM Ventures and GM R&D are collaborative partners with the AIC, which allows GM to make its 3D-printing capability more sophisticated and responsive across its global manufacturing facilities.
“GM is increasingly applying the benefits of 3D printing, from prototype development to manufacturing tooling and production vehicles,” said Ron Daul, GM director of additive manufacturing and polymer centers. “With the opening of the AIC, we’ll continue to accelerate adoption of this technology across the organization.”