Baltic3D Company. eu manufactures 3D parts for the needs of the Latvian Railway (LDZ). The cooperation was started last year with the LDZ Ritosa sastava serviss (RSS, a subsidiary of LDZ). According to the LDZ, 8 kinds of locomotive parts have already been manufactured using a 3D printer. LDz begins their testing on locomotives, testing the suitability, endurance, strength and other parameters. The RSS laboratory began to try its hand at 3D part printing at the end of 2016, when it acquired the 3D printer Pharaoh ED40, which was released in Latvia, allowing to produce details up to 40 cm in diameter. Basically, on a three-dimensional printer, parts are created, often failing or breaking, for example, the switching lever of the locomotive's direction of movement, the lock of the ALSN coil, various connectors and other relatively simple parts. Cooperation with Baltic3D. eu started in August last year. Then Даугавпилсский the center of repair of locomotives has suggested to make 8 details, including the fan, a protective casing of a drive of brushes of a cleaner of a windscreen, the indicator lamp, the diffuser of an air line. Initial calculations show that a significant cost advantage when using a 3D printer is expected, for example, in the production of an indicator lamp: the lamps used up to now often fail and are non-separable, so when the diode burns out, the whole lamp needs to be replaced. And its purchase costs 90 euros. At the same time, the manufacture of a lamp suitable for the same purposes with a three-dimensional printer can cost five times less - up to 17 euros, and this technology allows you to save time, since twenty-one such lamps can be produced per day. Equally successful was the printout of the air duct diffuser, which is no longer produced in factories and is difficult to manufacture. On a 3D printer this metal part can be produced in 25 hours.

Original article: In Latvia, parts for locomotives are printed on a 3D printer.