By choosing pre-shaped components from VBN Components you reduce the impact on the environment as follows:
- Less material needs to be processed.
- Energy consuming processes like forging, rolling, sawing, turning, milling, drilling, etc. are avoided.
- The use of cutting fluids are drastically reduced.
Example: Heavy material saves on gear cutting hobs
Below is a comparison between traditional hob manufacturing from a steel bar and the VBN 3D-printed Near-Net-Shape technology with data from a large number of real manufacturing tests. The result is that the VBN technology saves 87 % material!
| Yield traditional manufacturing | Yield VBN Additive Manufacturing | |
| Manufacturing of steel bar | ~70 % | – |
| Manufacturing of hob blank | ~50 % | ~98 % |
| Total material yield manufacturing | ~35 % | ~98 % |
| Traditional manufacturing | VBN Additive manufacturing | |
| Yield manufacturing | 35 % | 98 % |
| Performance (feed) | 100 % | 200 % |
| Weight hob | 15.3 kg | 11.2 kg |
| Number of produced gears/gear hob | 7150 pcs | 14300 pcs |
| Hob material consumption per produced gear HMCPPG* | 6.1 g | 0.80 g |
- The first grinding removes more material for the 3D-printed part, but the following grindings are the same.
- The material savings on fewer coatings are not included.
- The calculation is based on a traditional manufacturing where the steel bar is very close to the wanted diameter, which is not always the case.