Renishaw Supplies Metal Additive Manufacturing Equipment to Knust-Godwin

Renishaw has supplied four RenAM 500Q metal additive manufacturing machines to Knust-Godwin, a precision machining company located in Katy, TX. The high-productivity machine, designed for serialized industrial manufacturing, helps Knust-Godwin to reduce lead times for its customers.

Knust-Godwin has history of machining large, complex parts for oilfield instrumentation. The company first introduced additive manufacturing as a new technology to help improve the efficiency and productivity of tools in the oil and gas industry. The company chose to expand its additive manufacturing (AM) capacity to handle serial production, purchasing four RenAM 500Q machines.

“Additive manufacturing started as a prototyping technology, but it is now moving into serialised production,” explains Mike Corliss, VP of Technology at Knust-Godwin. “Because we are designing components specifically for AM, we have been able to reduce customers’ lead times. A project that previously required a 24 month wait from concept to commercialization can now be reduced to eight months. The cyclical nature of the oil and gas industry means that providing parts quickly is extremely important.

“Knust-Godwin has not only benefitted from the huge productivity gains of the machines, but also from tremendous support from Renishaw,” adds Corliss. “We see AM playing a large role in our company’s future and we are expecting to see a 40% compound growth year on year in the oil and gas industry and 20% compound growth in aerospace. We are even looking at purchasing additional RenAM 500Q machines for different metal alloys.”

“The RenAM 500Q offers productivity and efficiency gains over traditional single laser machines,” added Robin Weston, marketing manager of Renishaw Additive Manufacturing. “The benefits offered by AM means that more and more industries are turning to the technology as a way of producing high-quality, efficient parts.”

The RenAM 500Q offers four lasers in the most commonly used platform size.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.