Our company, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Machine Tool Co., Ltd. (MAT), together with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI), joined the Technology Research Association for Future Additive Manufacturing (TRAFAM) in 2014, which was established by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry as a national project. Since then, the two companies have worked on the development of a metal-based additive manufacturing system with directed energy deposition technology. The system that MAT has developed is a hybrid system with an additive manufacturing function and a machining function, and it enables high-efficiency, high-precision additive manufacturing by applying the function of process monitoring during manufacturing and a powder feed nozzle with an increased shielding performance. At present, jointly with industrial users from various fields, we are promoting the development of an additive manufacturing method that can be put into practical use.
