Vacuum cleaners help with 3D printing of museum exhibits

Customer:	Dilba Kunststoffbau
Extracted material:	GRP residues
Industry:	Plastic processing
Vacuum cleaner:	DS 1750 GAS-Ex

Dilba Kunststoffbau GmbH in Neumünster develops and manufactures GRP components for RVs, yachts and the interiors of railway vehicles, among other products. The company is extremely flexible, and also 3D prints individual components based on prototypes. These are first scanned in, then replicated. The company owner has also tapped into another business field by producing museum exhibits.

Problem

One day, Andreas Dilba came up with the idea to use GRP individual manufacturing – scanning prototypes and production via 3D printing – to construct true-to-life museum exhibits. The first objects the company scanned included a real, life-sized mammoth for a natural history museum. Just as when producing “normal” GRP components, this produced dust that had to be vacuumed up, since the base material starts off in powder form. This is true not only of the moulding process, but of downstream processes as well.

Solution

Dilba Kunststoffbau uses a Ruwac vacuum cleaner that is perfectly adapted to the requirements of GRP processing. The filter in the modular vacuum cleaner fulfils dust class M, meaning it achieves a maximum penetration rate of 0.1%, so that only one in every thousand particles passes through the filter. At least 99.9% of the GRP particles end up in large waste containers, which can be emptied dust-free. And the very generously-sized filters allow long operating periods between dedusting.

This makes the robust Ruwac vacuum a real "work horse” thanks to its powerful three-phase drive as well, providing excellent support for the GRP specialists in Neumünster.