Lab22 – Australia’s Centre for Additive Innovation

Lab 22 is Australia’s centre for innovation in metallic additive manufacturing. A comprehensive array of equipment and technologies are accessible by industry for production purposes.

This reduces businesses’ capital investment risk and provides them the opportunity to pursue business in this field now. It is a low risk, hands-on experience at an affordable price. CSIRO’s objective is to accelerate the growth rate of metallic additive manufacturing for Australia.

Our equipment

Arcam electron beam metal 3D printer

Our Arcam electron beam facility provides an excellent opportunity to have metal parts 3D printed at reasonably high rates of productivity in a range of materials.

LaserCUSING metal 3D printer from Concept Laser

Concept Laser’s LaserCUSING® is a powder bed selective laser melting (SLM) process which produces high-precision metallic components from high-grade steel alloys, tool steels, aluminium alloys, titanium alloys, cobalt-chromium alloys and nickel-based superalloys.

Optomoec LENS MR-7 multi-material metal 3D printer

This unique additive manufacturing technology may be used for the fabrication and repair of high performance single or multi-material metal components in materials such as titanium, stainless steel, and Inconel®.

Voxeljet sand 3D printer

The CSIRO Voxeljet VX1000 is capable of printing a variety of sand and binder systems to produce moulds for foundry castings, but also art and architectural displays.

Cold spray

Cold spray is a technique for depositing powder particles in the solid state by accelerating them towards a surface within a supersonic gas flow. Cold spray can be used to coat a variety of materials (metals, glass, ceramics, polymers), for repair of worn or damaged metal components, and to build large components layer-by-layer.

Laser/plasma transferred arc cladding

High power laser and plasma transferred arc (PTA) systems provide fast and reliable wear resistant overlay suitable for mining, mineral & food processing, power generation.

Thermally assisted machining

Thermally assisted machining is a high speed machining method for difficult to machine materials including titanium and nickel base alloys.

Wear and erosion tests

Our durability laboratory for wear and erosion testing is unique in Australia. The equipment are used in the development of the next generation of hard-facing alloys and for testing of materials to determine their fitness-for-purpose.

Powder manipulation technology

CSIRO has developed a low cost powder manipulation (PM) technology to directly modify titanium/titanium alloy sponge without the need for expensive hydride-de-hydride (HDH) or Gas Atomisation (GA) process for manufacturing powders for Additive Manufacturing (AM) applications.

For more information contact:

Stefan Gulizia