Partly funded and owned by steel giant Sandvick, BEAMIT – especially after the acquisition of 3T’s metal AM business in the UK – is the largest metal AM service provider in the world according to the Metal AM market report published by 3dpbm in 2021. A new deal with Leonardo Aircraft is now expected to consolidate this leadership through the additive production of several new parts over the next 5 years.
While BEAMIT does not seem to value specialized media attention – or its own international media image, the company’s achievements tend to speak for themselves. Major communications such as this one are often limited to social media posts that are “lost in translation”, from Italian to English (which is curious, considering the company’s major presence in the UK). The BEAMIT group is nevertheless a powerhouse in the world of additive manufacturing, as demonstrated by this latest AM production deal with the Italian aerospace giant.
With revenues of €14 billion, Leonardo is the largest Italian aerospace company and one of the largest n the world. Like BEAMIT and many Italian companies, Leonardo is not very open to speaking about its additive manufacturing activities with specialized media. The company has occasionally revealed details relative to AM implementation, including a past deal with Aidro for the Leonardo Helicopters division. The deal between Leonardo Aircraft and BEAMIT follows a collaboration that started in 2017 to develop and qualify the AM process by defining all the necessary steps for the standardization of part production.
To date, BEAMIT has already produced over 100 different parts and components using additive manufacturing technology for Leonardo Aircraft. The parts are installed on various models including the M345 trainer aircraft, the M346 light combat aircraft and C27J Spartan military transport aircraft. Based in Fornovo, a small town near Parma, in Italy, BEAMIT was one of the very first companies to believe in metal AM for aerospace parts production, rapidly building one of the largest machine parks in the world.
The deal with Leonardo marks another major achievement for the company and for the AM industry in general, especially considering all the testing, risk analysis, process validation and standards that were performed and that are necessary for aerospace and defense industry manufacturers in order to provide safe components to their end customers.
