Gloucestershire's hi-tech engineering group Renishaw, together with HP and Leitat, have become founding members of a Barcelona based hub to accelerate the adoption and development of additive manufacturing (AM) and 3D printing technologies.

With an estimated investment of up to 28 million euros from the Government of Catalonia in Spain and with the expert knowledge of the associated companies as both manufacturer and user of the technologies, the hub will provide SMEs expert advice and the latest innovative technologies.

The new Global 3D Printing Hub will focus on three key aspects that are designed to gain confidence in AM and assess manufacturing capabilities - experimenting and testing (to gain confidence in, and validate AM technologies); end-to-end solutions (AM value chain design, validation and implementation); business and mentoring (business model assessment and help to accelerate adoption).

Renishaw Ibérica´s Managing Director, Víctor Escobar, said: "We are extremely pleased to form part of this project and, along with HP and Leitat, our aim is to drive the adoption of AM and put Barcelona on the world map as a reference point for additive technologies.

"AM is an evolutionary technology designed to form part of an overall manufacturing process. It has been successfully integrated into sectors such as medical and aerospace as it achieves results that are impossible to obtain from conventional manufacturing methods, such as machining".

Picture: Renishaw