Founded in 1969, US-based Goetsch’s Welding and Machine is a full service steel manufacturer with an ever expanding list of services including laser cutting, fabrication, welding, machining and finishing.
When large chunks were torn from a heavy-duty conveyor belt at the factory, Stratasys engineers were asked to step in to help find a solution.
Goetsch Business Development Manager Lydell Kluck says that ongoing production was threatened when it was unable to source replacement parts for its conveyor belt and it was faced with procuring a new belt costing in excess of $10,000. The company took a model of the required parts to Stratasys engineers in the hope of finding a fix.
The team was faced with a number of challenges. The conveyor belt moved huge pieces of heavy steel plate so it needed to withstand the harshest of conditions and have high tolerance for impact and wear and tear. It also required providing 75 parts in total of three differently sized links to exact specifications for pin holes to line up exactly and clip the links into place.
Stratasys application engineers realised that the H350 would be a great fit for a job and application engineer Alec Logeman took scans to reverse engineer the parts. The scan resulted in accurate and consistent parts with a perfectly lined up vertical holes that were the exact fit for the pins to slot into the damaged portions of the conveyor belt.
Made from sustainable High Yield PA11 using SAF technology, the parts are impact-resistant and durable enough to outlast the original links on the belt.
The in-house cost of the build is approximately $3.10 per part for 75 parts, representing a 97% saving as compared to in excess of $10.000 to replace the entire belt. The scans are available to print replacement parts should the conveyor belt be damaged in the future, available within a few days as compared to a number of weeks using traditional methods. The replacement parts will be identical and repeatable, from build to build on any H350 3D printer.
