Case Study: VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland achieves a 76% lighter, leak‑resistant hydraulic valve with Materialise

VTT Presents an Organic, Lightweight Hydraulic Valve

The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland needed a strong, lightweight hydraulic valve with minimal leakage risk—an outcome not achievable with traditional machining. To pursue a bionic, optimized design for their customer Nurmi Cylinders, VTT used Altair OptiStruct for topology optimization and turned to Materialise, leveraging Materialise 3-matic to process and prepare the optimized geometry for 3D printing.

Materialise helped VTT clean and smooth the rough topology data in hours (instead of days), refine the STL in Materialise 3-matic, create supports in Materialise Magics, and send the part to SLM metal printing via the SLM Build Processor. The result: a printed valve weighing 600 g versus the original 2.5 kg (a 76% weight reduction), smoother internal channels for improved fluid flow, greatly reduced leakage risk by avoiding auxiliary drillings, and significant time savings by eliminating a laborious CAD redesign step.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland