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EAC moves up market with additive manufacturing
Europe Accessoires Concept has renewed its range of products by adopting both 3D polymer and metal printing and now delivers parts that cannot be created with conventional processes to the luxury industry. Read about their adventure in Cetim Infos No. 242 of June 2018.
Europe Accessoires Concept (EAC) has made a drastic shift in its operations. In under two years, the company has expanded from a conventional subcontractor into a fledgling luxury Start-up. The SME, based in Rhône-Alpes (France), has additive manufacturing to thank for this success.
Discover, test, validate
It all began in 2016, when Patrick Chouvet, the owner of the company which manufactures metal ornaments for the luxury industry including metal parts for perfumes, leather goods, clothing and packaging, decided to assess the possibilities to be harnessed from metal additive manufacturing. “Our goal was to offer our customers new solutions and original creations within extremely short deadlines. We were already familiar with 3D plastic printing as we had invested in a small 3D printer in order to rapidly make prototype parts for our customers. However, we wanted to take this a step further and use 3D printing to directly carry out series production”, explains Patrick Chouvet.
As part of an initial Regional Collective Initiative (ACR), the company leader explored, tested and validated his choices with demonstrators, before integrating Cetim’s shared “3D Metal Printing” (MI-3D) platform within a second ACR. This platform is based on the Metal Binder Jetting additive manufacturing technology developed by the Swedish Company Digital Metal, and contains considerable benefits for the production of small-sized parts.
“EAC is now able to make 3D parts on this platform that it would not have been able to make with another process. We aim to demonstrate to our customers just how much we can accomplish with this technology”, stated Patrick Chouvet.
A radical transformation
Since its adoption of additive manufacturing, EAC has made great technical strides and has operated fundamental changes. For example, it has hired four additional employees in the Design Office, including a designer with a graduate degree to create digitised models. This has proved worthwhile as the company delivers unprecedented solutions to its customers and has recorded double digit growth in turn-over.
Watch the details of this adventure on a video available on the Cetim France Youtube channel.
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