How Knust-Godwin is Expanding Manufacturing Capabilities with Sapphire XC

June 28, 2022

Knust-Godwin is a precision contract manufacturer operating out of Katy, Texas. For more than 50 years, we’ve made it our mission to help companies across a wide range of industries bring their most important manufacturing projects to completion. To achieve this, we’ve leveraged the most state-of-the-art manufacturing solutions available, and I’m thrilled to say we’re continuing that trend with our purchase of a Velo3D Sapphire XC.

With the Sapphire XC, Knust-Godwin becomes the first precision contract manufacturer to offer Velo3D’s newest Sapphire metal 3D printing model to customers, and the new model will go a long way in helping us to expand our already robust metal additive manufacturing (AM) capabilities.

With the XC, we can help customers achieve high-volume production and lower costs for their most critical parts. Our Sapphire XC is calibrated for Inconel® 718 and is fully compatible with our other Sapphire Inconel® 718 printers.

The Velo3D Sapphire XC is truly an impressive metal 3D printing solution that is capable of producing prints that are 600 mm in diameter and 500 mm in height, making it one of the largest metal laser powder bed fusion AM solutions on the market. As customers scale up production, they can take advantage of the Sapphire XC’s benefits, specifically its larger build capabilities.

The system uses eight 1-kilowatt lasers to produce parts, and its protrusion-tolerant, non-contact recoater is faster than that of the original Sapphire system. These capabilities increase the throughput of the Sapphire XC by more than 400%, greatly reducing the cost of parts produced.

For customers who may not yet require the extra capacity of the Sapphire XC, we also operate six Velo3D Sapphire systems. The good news is that as production needs increase, customers can easily scale up from the standard Sapphire to the Sapphire XC, taking advantage of the scalability and cost savings the XC provides in the process.

We pride ourselves on the services we offer and the relationships we’ve built with some of the most innovative organizations in the world, and we like to think of ourselves as more than just a machine shop—we see ourselves as a part of our customers’ manufacturing solution.

Our company has spent decades serving customers in the aerospace, defense, oil and gas, and semi-conductor industries, and we view additive manufacturing as a huge complement to our precision manufacturing offering.

By adding a Sapphire XC to our manufacturing floor, we’re excited to better serve our customers and help them utilize additive manufacturing in new ways, as well as differentiate our additive manufacturing offering from our competitors.

Want to learn how you can build the parts you need at lower cost and 4X better productivity? Connect with a Velo3D expert today.  

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About the Author

Brenden Roche

Director of Digital Marketing