In our most up-to-date cowl interview, Nikon SLM Options CEO Sam O’Leary recalled the second Nikon’s $622 million acquisition deal of the German metallic additive manufacturing (AM) firm happened. It was previous midnight, O’Leary was sat at his desk and sipping a well-earned drink, and on the opposite finish of a video name, digicam tactically turned off, was Nikon Superior Manufacturing (Nikon AM) CEO Hamid Zarringhalam.
Zarringhalam’s model is slightly completely different.
“I had Covid,” he tells TCT. “I get this name from Sam and we begin speaking concerning the chance. So possibly he was having a glass of wine – I used to be simply actually making an attempt exhausting to not cough in that dialog!”
Covid fever dream or not, Zarringhalam is definite that AM is an area Nikon must be in.
Since 2019, the Japanese optics expertise large’s digital manufacturing enterprise has acquired a California AM service supplier, now re-purposed and branded as Nikon AM Synergy, in addition to constructed and inaugurated the state-of-the-art ultra-secure Nikon AM Expertise Heart in Lengthy Seaside, CA, opened its AM Expertise Heart in Gyoda, Japan, amongst different investments, and launched a Direct Power Deposition (DED) printer and 3D scanner duo for turbine blade restore purposes.
“Nikon’s identify is synonymous with belief. And that belief is earned over many, many, a few years. After we say one thing, it means we’ll do it.”
Nikon’s curiosity in metallic AM started to formulate round 10 years in the past, beginning with skunkworks initiatives that have been targeted on DED. At TCT Japan in 2018, the corporate teased its AM capabilities within the type of an Optical Processing Machine, which supplied laser marking, welding, etching and laser deposition in a single system. Whereas there have been no plans to announce or launch this specific machine to the broader world, a yr later, Nikon took the choice to start scaling its digital manufacturing enterprise. Metallic AM, notably laser powder mattress fusion, appeared like a pure match.
