At Italy-based Weerg Srl, digitisation is the premise on which the company was founded back in 2015. Today, Weerg is Europe’s largest E-commerce job shop. It does 100% of its production in-house, has a strict quality control system, offers quick delivery times and low production costs.
The company started as a platform for CNC components that allowed customers to select the base material, the machining operation, the product tolerances, and to obtain a price and firm delivery date in real time. Matteo Rigamotti and a small team of experts grew this into an ultramodern CNC operation that ensures quick production and excellent quality of the ordered components.
By 2017, the team at Weerg had become convinced of the future of additive manufacturing. That year it made its first investments in the necessary equipment, starting with an MJF system from HP before expanding to FDM and MSLA printing systems. At the same time, the company, located in Scorzé, Venetia also started developing high performance materials, including a PA12 grade with a glass fibre content of up to 40%. The company supplies customers from industries such as automotive, machinery building, food processing, architecture, and medical engineering with prototypes printed from various different plastic materials.
Early on, the order processing and manufacturing of the 3D printed components could be successfully managed digitally early-on. However, numerous post processing operations still had to be done manually, which required time and personnel while producing inconsistent results.
The company first conducted an extensive market study to determine the best approach to optimise these processes. This led to the decision to invest in new equipment from AM Solutions – 3D post processing technology, a Rösler Group brand. These included an automatic unpacking station that was jointly developed by HP and AM Solutions and an S1 plug-and-play system that is used for the automatic cleaning and surface finishing of the components.
Compared to manual unpacking methods, the automatic unpacking system enabled Weerg not only to increase its productivity, but to also raise the powder reclaim rate with a minimum of labour input. The S1 system reduced the time required for cleaning and surface finishing of a printing job from 60 to 20 minutes. As well, it enabled a higher throughput of components: the percentage of components that could now be cleaned and finished mechanically increased from 60 to 90%. Moreover, using the system means that only one instead of two people are needed to do the same job.
The success of the S1 led in November 2022 to the decision to invest in an S2 system, as well. The S2, the first of its kind in the world, is used for the automatic cleaning and surface finishing of plastic components printed with powder-bed based printing technologies. Designed for 24/7 operation, the S2 handles the output of several printers, while the built-in blast media recycling and cleaning system and the automatic monitoring of the shot blast process yield consistent results in short cycle times, even for delicate, complex components.
Weerg has also purchased a C1 system from AM Solutions – 3D post processing technology, to automate the post processing of MSLA components. The process — controlled by sophisticated software — is based on chemical, thermal, and mechanical effects enabling removal of support material and resin from difficult-to-reach surface areas, even in the case of extremely complex work pieces.