In September 2015, Michelin, the world's leading tire manufacturer, and Fives, a well-known French industrial engineering group, established a joint venture, AddUp Solutions, and announced its official entry into the field of metal 3D printing. Now the Antarctic Bear learned that the joint venture was developing a series of new metal 3D printers, and announced that it would use 3D printing molds to develop tyres with better performance.

"With the help of 3D printing technology, we will be able to produce more complex molds," explained Pierre Robert, director of the French Ladoux R&D Center in Michelin, "This mold will give the tire a more wear-resistant surface pattern, and this pattern can provide extremely strong grip even when the depth is only 1.6 mm, the legal minimum."

In order to complete this plan, AddUp developed special molds through 3D printing technology, and the equipment used is their only mature model at present - FormUp 350. This machine has actually been shown at CES 2016. It uses direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) technology. The printing size is 350mm x 350mm x 350mm. It is equipped with 500W ytterbium fiber laser (1 or 2). The maximum printing accuracy is 35 μ m. Minimum layer thickness 20 μ m。

It is worth mentioning that according to the information disclosed by AddUp, other models of the FormUp series will also appear in 2017.