John Crane’s Fortus 450mc 3D printer, located at the company’s Slough site.

John Crane
Transforms
Tooling andMetal Part
Replacementwith Additive
Manufacturing

Case Study

Founded more than 100 years ago, John Craneis a global leader in rotating equipment solutions.
The company designs and manufactures avariety of products including mechanical seals
and systems, couplings, filtration systems andpredictive digital monitoring technologies. At
one of the company’s European developmentalsites in in Slough, United Kingdom, the teamis responsible for activities including productmanufacturing, testing, service and repair.

The internal shape and flow
distribution are difficult andexpensive to achieve withconventional machining.
However, the single
3D-printed piece replaced
an assembly of 22 machined
metal components and isabout 98% less expensive tomanufacture.”
Liam Johnston

Program Manager, Advanced Manufacturing,John Crane, Global Operations

2 2
In November 2018, a new Advanced
Manufacturing team was created at the Sloughsite due to the increased importance of additive
manufacturing in the company’s service offering.
This team 3D prints tooling for shop floor
personnel to aid with production operations, aswell as low-cost, customized jigs and fixtures thatenable R&D teams to rapidly test new designconcepts and manufacturing processes.

“We invested in the Fortus 450mc as we foundit to be the best alternative to CNC machining
expensive metal parts,” said Liam Johnston,
Program Manager, Advanced Manufacturing,John Crane, Global Operations. “The addedcapabilities have made an immediate impact on
our production process. Using FDM Nylon 12CF,
we’re able to 3D print parts that perform similar
to CNC-produced alternatives.”

Overcoming Traditional Manufacturing
Challenges With FDM Additive
Manufacturing“This not only saves us significant time and costcompared to conventional production methods
but having these applications in the field hasgiven end-users the confidence in the materials’
and printer’s capabilities. It has also raised
awareness within our operations teams who are
now actively coming to our team with new 3D
printing requests.”

The team was tasked with overcoming
the challenges of producing traditionally
manufactured components and parts toevaluate time and expenditure savings. Having
tested a number of technologies, the company
approached Stratasys’ local partner, SYS
Systems, to purchase a Stratasys Fortus
450mc™ 3D printer. Key to the decision was therange of engineering-grade materials available,specifically FDM® Nylon 12CF – an advanced
3D printed composite material comprising
35% chopped carbon fiber. Not only did thematerial properties enable the team to meetthe high-performance demands of traditionally
manufactured parts, it also allowed John Crane
to expand its 3D printing production capability
into new applications as part of its daily
operations.

These benefits were shown by the Additive
Manufacturing team in the design and productionof an impeller casing for a spin test rig. The rig
uses gas flow to spin seal components at highspeeds to validate their capability to endure thehigh forces experienced during service. However,certain components required higher speeds thanthe current rig’s capabilities. As a result, they had
to be shipped to subcontractors for spin testing,adding cost and increasing lead times.
The team overcame these drawbacks bydesigning and 3D printing a new casing. It
improved the air flow around the impeller,
enabling higher speeds on the in-house rig.
According to Johnston, two design iterations
were created, manufactured, and tested overa one-week period, significantly less timecompared to subcontracting.

Document
Case
StudyTitle HereJohnston explained, “The internal shape and flow
distribution are difficult and expensive to achievewith conventional machining. However, the single
3D printed piece replaced an assembly of 22
machined metal components and is about 98%
cheaper to manufacture. The upgraded rig can
now be used for testing all seal components,
which reduces test costs by 65% and lead timeby three weeks compared to subcontractor spin
testing. This is a huge result for our business.”

3 3

One of the 3D printed impeller casing design iterations, produced using the Fortus 450mc.

Document
CaseStudyTitle Here

Furthermore, additive manufacturing supports
the company’s commitment to a positive healthand safety culture. The team 3D printed replicasof carbon seal components that are used totrain employees in seal assembly. These pieces
are much lighter and safer to handle as theyeliminate the risk of carbon splintering if a pieceis damaged. Along with custom guards forequipment and tooling, they have allowed John
Crane to rapidly address a number of potential
safety hazards.
Machining jaw accessories are another exampleof significant time and cost savings provided by
3D printing. As John Crane tends to produce
a range of products in small batches, setup
operations comprise significant downtime
within its CNC machining centers. This involves
swapping out metal clamping jaws to matchthe diameter of the part being machined. Thesemetal jaws and other CNC tooling can take up

valuable storage space and are not always instock, requiring extra time for ordering, deliveringand machining new tools to the required profile.
To solve these issues, the team created newdesigns of standard chuck jaws supported byinterchangeable 3D printed clamping inserts
and alignment sleeves using FDM Nylon 12CF.
Several jaw accessory designs can now be
printed before the start of each shift to match theprofiles and sizes of the parts to be machined.
“These new printed work holdings can reduceaverage machine setup time by up to 80% andfree up additional CNC capacity that would be
used for machining metal jaws. Those typicallyunseen costs and delays associated with raisingand shipping orders for new jaw types are now
eliminated. For most of our tooling applications,
Nylon 12CF provides the best combination ofstrength, cost and surface finish,” said Johnston.

4

A 3D printed jaw accessory produced in FDM Nylon 12CF – these parts save up to 80% of machine setup time.

Looking Ahead to the Future
As the appreciation of additive manufacturing’s
benefits continues to grow within John Crane,Johnston sees the move to using 3D printing toproduce end-use parts as a natural next step.

Case Study“Having used our Fortus 450mc for much of
our production work has enabled us to better
understand the significant potential of additive
manufacturing for the replacement of production
parts and tooling,” said Johnston. “Having anindustrial-grade FDM machine on our shop floor
has enabled us to demonstrate the capabilitiesof the technology to shop floor personnel andmanagers, educating all of our teams in theprocess. This has naturally led us to explore
how we optimize this technology even furtherfor end-use part production where we see realpotential for a range of low volume manufacturing
applications.”

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