Case Study: VTT (Technical Research Centre of Finland) achieves a lightweight, optimised metal AM valve block with Altair

Metal AM in Finland VTT optimises industrial valve block for Additive Manufacturing

VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland in Espoo, set out to optimise a hydraulic valve block for additive manufacturing to reduce size and weight, improve internal fluid channels and meet strict stress and machining constraints for their industrial partner Nurmi Cylinders. To tackle the challenge VTT relied on Altair’s HyperWorks CAE suite—most notably OptiStruct for topology optimisation and OSSmooth for shape refinement—and accessed Materialise’s 3-maticsSTL through the Altair Partner Alliance to prepare printable geometry for SLM.

Using Altair tools, VTT generated topology-optimised, organic designs with re-meshing and smoothing workflows and adjusted internal channel geometry to avoid internal supports for SLM. The result was a dramatically smaller, lighter and fully qualified component: weight dropped from over 2.5 kg to under 600 g (a 76% reduction), improved fluid flow, reduced material waste, and validated stress performance—demonstrating Altair’s role in delivering a manufacturable, high-performance AM solution.

VTT

Erin Komi

Research scientist