The Vaal University of Technology today launched the Advanced Manufacturing Precinct. This facility will enable VUT to play a leading role in additive manufacturing development in South Africa and on the African Continent.

Professor Deon de Beer, Executive Director of Technology Transfer and Innovation at VUT says that, “Today’s launch celebrates the realization of a dream to become one of the foremost Centres for Advanced Manufacturing. Currently, more than R60 million worth of infrastructure has been commissioned to form part of a sectoral industrial support strategy driven by the VUT's TTI Directorate. The AMP will also make a significant contribution to the development of scarce skills, research, innovation and technology transfer. Many of the technology platforms commissioned are the only ones on the African continent, and international original equipment manufacturers, which now became industrial partners in this venture, are seeing the VUT's Technology Demonstration Centre as a gateway to the rest of South Africa and Africa.”  

During 2013, a substantial grant was made by the National Research Foundation’s Research Infrastructure Support Grants to co-fund, with VUT, Voxeljet technology platforms to support the foundry industry.

The Voxeljet platforms supplement similar equipment platforms (all used in additive manufacturing and tooling, previously termed rapid prototyping or 3-D printing) to create the VUT's Advanced Manufacturing Precinct, now ready and available as part of the VUT Southern Gauteng Science Park to render a one-stop/turnkey product development service to a wide array of industries. The VUT has become one of the leading universities involved in additive manufacturing in South Africa, and is already assisting some of its equipment suppliers and OEMs to bridge into the rest of the continent.

“This is the only technology of its kind on the continent, and will enable the VUT's TTI and Technology Station, in collaboration with the Metallurgical Engineering Department, to support the foundry industry - both locally and nationally, to engage in innovative and cost-effective product development,” concluded Professor de Beer.