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BMW Group: Laying the foundations for the application of metal Additive Manufacturing in the automotive industry The very existence of BMW Group's state-of-the-art Additive Manufacturing Campus, located close to Munich, speaks volumes about the potential of AM technology in the automotive industry. In April, Metal AM magazine's Technical Consultant, Martin McMahon, and Managing Editor, Nick Williams, had the opportunity to visit the campus. As is revealed here, they discovered an operation that not only functions as an application development centre and centralised location for the BMW Group's AM expertise, but also operates as a model AM factory built around the concepts of productivity and automation.
For many years, automotive applications have been considered a somewhat out-of-reach target for the Additive Manufacturing industry. Suppliers, researchers and many in the wider investment community have been continually looking for the signs of success which signal the ‘coming of age’ of the AM industry. This is because production for the automotive industry is, by and large, on a scale equated with high-volume consumer products – so, if the technology is good enough for the manufacturing of automotive parts, it should follow that it would be good enough for a wide range of consumer-driven markets. However, many are unaware that automotive companies have been the drivers of much of the core development behind the Additive Manufacturing technologies we have today – especially those used in polymer AM. Some of the early success in the use of polymers was naturally followed by interest in metal AM, and one company in particular that has been taking the lead in this respect is BMW.
BMW has been actively exploring Additive Manufacturing for more than three decades, but, in recent years, there has been a surge in activity to grow and develop the use of metal AM. This culminated with the official opening of its Additive Manufacturing
Campus in Oberschleissheim, on the outskirts of Munich, in June 2020. The campus, on which development started in April 2018, was the result of an initial €15 million investment and had the stated aim of enabling the BMW Group to develop its posi-
Fig. 1 The Rolls-Royce Ghost features numerous metal AM structural components that are manufactured at BMW's AM campus and its external suppliers (Courtesy Rolls-Royce Motor Cars)
Vol. 10 No. 2 © 2024 Inovar Communications Ltd
Metal Additive Manufacturing | Summer 2024
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Additive Manufacturing at BMW
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