- Markforged X7 3D printer deployed by Konica Minolta
AMPC collaborated with Konica Minolta and Markforged in a world-first trial of a 3D printing service model. The trial aimed to help red meat processors across Australia benefit from printing equipment parts and revolutionising equipment maintenance to help ensure continuous supply of meat products. The collaboration involves a three-year, multifaceted program so that these benefits can be realised at meat processing plants across Australia.
The program involves two mobile non-metal Markforged X7 carbon fibre industrial 3D printers being shipped to Australian processing plants. Processing staff are trained to use the printers so they can assess whether buying a permanent unit would be a good investment. The units remain onsite for up to eight weeks before rotating to another plant. These units can create premetal prototypes for assessment as well as produce non-metal parts for end use. Konica Minolta provides onsite support to help meat processors understand and leverage the technology.
As part of this program, The Casino Food Co-op was identified as a facility that may benefit from some of the applications 3D printing had to offer and received the Markforged X7 3D printer to trial. Since 1933, The Casino Food Co-op has been Australia’s largest farmer-owned, world-class meat processing co-operative. It has established itself as an industry leader in paddock-to-plate meat processing using state-of-the-art facilities. Located in Casino, in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, the company processes 1,200 head of cattle per day and employs more than 1,000 people from the surrounding area.
There were three areas that needed to be addressed within the Casino Food Co-op facility. The first was the hinges on the hundreds of label printers used to produce thousands of labels a day at the processing plant.
Brian Armstrong, draftsperson and project support officer, The Casino Food Co-op, said, “The plastic hinge deforms and breaks after many years of use. With the part discontinued by the manufacturer, the only option would have been to replace all of the label machines, which would have been extremely costly.”
The next area was the leather tannery drum, which removes hair and fat before the leather is dyed. A gear in the tannery failed, which resulted in leather production stopping until the replacement part could be manufactured.
Brian Armstrong said, “The impact of stalled production was significant, with tens of thousands of dollars of product output on the tannery a day.”
The final area was the fan blades on the evaporators that optimise the temperature in the cooling rooms. If one blade becomes unstable, the whole evaporator breaks apart and the cool room can’t perform at optimal levels. With the original equipment manufacturer for the evaporators no longer in operation, the cost of manufacturing new blades was significant.
Brian Armstrong said, “Without all cool rooms at full use, The Casino Food Co-op was also potentially at risk of not being able to deliver product at full capacity, which would impact our commitment to our partners.”
