Townley Engineering & Manufacturing is a company that’s dedicated to innovation, especially when it comes to the manufacturing process regarding their replacement impellers. Impellers are important pieces when dealing with the mining industry, and they’ve taken it upon themselves to make sure that these parts are as efficient as possible (they’ve even gone as far as reverse engineering them). Even though reverse engineering them in order to make a sturdy product is foolproof it takes a lot of time, and in the end of it all while you’re in the manufacturing industry you’ve got to worry about time. The amount of time it takes to manufacture an impeller isn’t exactly ideal, which is why 3D printing is looked at as being the next logical step for this company. Impellers are so complex that you need to have the proper diagram and design in order to be successful, and when you’re trying to create one using the traditional route it can be time-consuming. The amount of inaccurate hand measurements that could be made is quite large, and not only that there’s still the fact that most impellers need to be reworked and such before they can actually be used.
Townley has to deal with pump moulds that are facing wear and tear, which obviously means that there’s going to have to be an alternative method of manufacturing the impellers. They also have many different parts they need to reverse engineer, which is ultimately going to take away from the amount of time being spent on the impellers production. EMS was the solution to all of these problems, as Townley saw that 3D printing was going to be the answer to absolutely everything, and they took it upon themselves to implement it as such. The ZCorp ZScanner 800 was used in order to develop a 3D scan of the original impellers, and from there al that was needed to be done was the actual printing of the product. RapidForm XOR software was used in order to create solid base models of the equipment, and from there the entire process of manufacturing them has been made easier than ever! If Townley ever wants to make changes to the designs they’ve got the ability to do so, which really shows you how much they’re trying to improve upon themselves.
A company that’s willing to innovate is one that’s going to be successful no matter what, we’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again! This ring especially true when we’re talking about 3D printing, a lot of people forget about the fact that 3D printing has more than one use. People use the process to create more than just art, they use it to create everyday objects that can be used for many different things. Not only that, but the process also has the ability to create industry-level equipment that’s going to make a real difference in the working industry. It’s not important to most, but when you realize the impact it has you’ll truly understand.
