TCT EU 28.5 by TCT Magazine

3D PRINTING & ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING INTELLIGENCE

MAG EUROPE EDITION VOLUME 28 ISSUE 5 www.tctmagazine.com

DYEMANSION AND THE GREEN DEAL RECOVERY

automotive + rail Lightweight design and spare parts innovation.

sustainability AM leaders weigh in on the industry's hottest topic.

professional machinery Spotlight on the growth of the professional AM market.

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VOLUME 28 ISSUE 5 ISSN 1751-0333

EDITORIAL

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FROM THE EDITOR SAM DAVIES

They don’t always mean fine birds, but, 18 months ago in Shanghai, a pretty decent effort at a 3D printed feather spoke accurately to the current state of the additive manufacturing industry. It was laid out on a table inside Lubrizol’s TCT Asia stand, frayed in parts, jagged in others, but it was a feather, produced on a HP Jet Fusion machine in Lubrizol’s ESTANE 3D TPU M95A material and an example of the freedom of design conventional manufacturing technologies don’t afford. The material, at the time, had not yet been certified for use, the post-processing was lacking, and Lubrizol’s higher ups were unsure whether it should be exhibited in place of some more refined sample parts. But the company’s 3D Printing Marketing Manager, Dave Pasqual, reckoned that would create ‘false expectations’ – “Look,” he said, “we can make a feather, and it needs to be improved, fair enough. It’s not coloured, it’s not sanded, so it’s not perfect, but that’s where we are today in TPUs. This is a learning curve.” In this issue of TCT Magazine, in addition to our annual automotive focus (this year supplemented by the latest in the rail industry too!), and education, professional AM machinery and consumer product features, we have a four-page sustainability special. It is here - as businesses far and wide work to reduce the usage of non-renewable energy, and reuse and recycle materials - that additive manufacturing companies

believe they have a huge role to play. On pages 23 and 25, an array of industry executives outline how that can happen. But can is the key word. As referenced by DyeMansion CEO Felix Ewald in the cover story, the sustainability gains of 3D printing are largely potential; as stressed in our interview with industry consultant Dr Phil Reeves on page 19, there’s a whole host of considerations that need to be made throughout the lifecycle of each part to achieve true sustainability; and as noted by Sherry Handel of the Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association on page 21, more research is required as a result. There are considerations aplenty for vendors and users of additive manufacturing to achieve sustainable production processes, but as Reeves explains, an important factor in doing so lies within one of AM’s strongest attributes. Throughout this magazine, there are examples of such efforts: in the lightweighting of car parts at Briggs Automotive Company and Bugatti, in the advancement of spare rail parts engineered by Siemens, in the development of unibody bike frames by Arevo and even in a rough-around-the-edges trade show sample part. It’s the design capabilities of AM which makes it a potentially sustainable technology, but as with Lubrizol’s imperfect feather, there must be an awareness and acknowledgement that the industry is still on a learning curve.

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VOLUME 28 ISSUE 5

COVER STORY

08. GREEN SHOOTS

AM post-processing specialist DyeMansion on being one of the first companies on board Europe's mission to become the first climate-neutral continent.

Automotive & Rail

11. A 3D PRINTED OBJET D’ART Bugatti and APWORKS discuss the design and additive manufacture of exhaust components for the Bugatti Chiron models.

13. STRIPPED BAC

How Briggs Automotive Company reengineered a supercar with generative design and 3D printing.

15. THE RIGHT TRACK

James Brown, Data and Performance Engineer at Angel Trains, pens a column on compliance standards for 3D printed parts in the rail sector.

16. ADDITIVE IS A LIGHTHOUSE

Assistant Editor Sam Davies explores how Siemens Mobility’s spare parts innovation programme is enabling its street cars customers to 3D print replacement rail parts.

Sustainability Sponsored by

19. SUSTAINABILITY SPECIAL

Leaders in AM discuss the challenges and realities around 3D printing’s sustainability claims, plus a column from the AMGTA’s Executive Director Sherry Handel.

CONSUMER

28 Executive Q&A 28. ON TOP FORM

Our executive interview series continues with Formlabs Co-founder and CEO Max Lobovsky sharing details on the company’s new largeformat dental 3D printer.

27. AREVO’S FRAMEWORK

Sam talks to Arevo CEO Sonny Vu about the composite 3D printing technology behind a new crowdfunded e-bike series.

31 PROFESSIONAL MACHINERY

31. LEAVE IT TO THE PROS

A look at how the Professional AM machinery market has prevailed amidst a global pandemic.

SKILLS & EDUCATION

34. RE-DESIGNING EDUCATION

Peter Gough at PrintCity, Manchester Metropolitan University talks about the university’s fresh approach to admissions for its Industrial Digitalisation course.

GREEN SHO DyeMansion and the Green Deal Recovery

he role of the European Innovation Council (EIC) is to ensure that the European Union has suitable economic growth and for that to be led by organisations with sustainability at their core. The EIC launched its Green Deal call this year and one of the 64 selected "game-changing" startups and SMEs is DyeMansion – the disruptive post-processing organisation. The startups & SMEs will obtain over 307 million EUR to kickstart the European economy with a particular focus on innovative technologies. DyeMansion’s Powerfuse S system ticks many boxes that the EIC sees as essential in its aim to make the European Union climate-neutral by 2050. The vapour polishing system delivering sealed surfaces beyond aesthetics was designed to eliminate some of the probably carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic substances that have been associated with previous chemical smoothing processes, many of which may be classified by the EU as ‘substances of very high concern’ in the future. “Being selected as one of the very first companies to work at the forefront of Europe's mission to become the first climate-neutral continent is a great honour for us. This underlines not only the sustainability potential of 3D printing but also the innovative "green" approach that we bring to the manufacturing industry with our Powerfuse S. We take this job seriously and see sustainability as a key obligation to all our activities,” said Felix Ewald, CEO & Co-Founder of DyeMansion. The advanced hardware architecture of the Powerfuse S system runs with DyeMansion’s proprietary VaporFuse EcoFluid solvent, which is harmless and safe for both the operator and the environment. It can safely be used for the processing of plastics intended to come into contact with food according to regulation (EU) 10/2011. The solvent is circulated continuously in a closed loop and automatically recovered by the system. This enables a sustainable

08 / www.tctmagazine.com / 28.5

SHOWN: DYEMANSION'S POWERFUSE S SYSTEM IS INDUSTRY 4.0 READY

contact-free process without chemical waste. The results of this industrial process are improved part properties and sealed 3D printed surfaces with an injection moulding level finish. The beauty is not restricted to external surfaces, VaporFuse Surfacing can deliver a reduced surface roughness of Ra less than 2 - even inside of complex tubes. Parts treated with VaporFuse show enhanced pressuretightness and repel water, oil or other liquids. A possible bacterial growth on the surface can also be reduced to a minimum. “I am very proud of our team at DyeMansion for developing a system that will set new standards in the industry and impressively proves that our company is able to offer solutions at the highest industrial level,” said Felix during the machine’s launch at Formnext 2019. The EIC validation of DyeMansion’s technology is a further shot in the arm for the fast-growing Munich-based company,

“Being selected as one of the very first companies to work at the forefront of Europe's mission to become the first climateneutral continent is a great honour for us.” who only last month announced a funding round of 14 million USD, taking the total amount the additive manufacturing postprocessing company has raised to 24m USD. The additional funding has been generated by Nordic Alpha Partners (NAP) and a number of existing investors, including AM Ventures, UVC Partners, btov Partners and KGAL. DyeMansion is set to use this recent investment to develop automated and fully integrated process chains, while also helping the company to establish an increased global presence via demonstration facilities, regional application consultants and commercial business infrastructures.

IF THE GLOVE FITS

DyeMansion is pushing the envelope when it comes to post-processing technologies.

COVER STORY

OOTS

When combined with DyeMansion's Print-to-Product workflow, 3D printing can be used to produce high-value, end-use products, regardless of production volume. This offers a significant advantage over conventional production methods such as injection moulding, which only makes sense above a certain quantity. This allows a more sustainable production. “We use the SLS technology combined with the DyeMansion Print-to-Product workflow for serial production and ramp up. We are a young company with a young product portfolio and we have ongoing changes. In the manufacturing process, it gives us the freedom to change products fast without having to keep an eye on the production volume,” said Konstantin Brunnbauer, VP of Production, ProGlove

6 BELOW:

A MARKFORGED FFF PART BEFORE AND AFTER PROCESS IN THE POWERFUSE S SYSTEM

ROOTED IN SUSTAINABILITY

Its complete product portfolio is designed with the intention of being Industry 4.0 ready and one company taking enormous strides thanks to DyeMansion’s technology is ProGlove. ProGlove builds the lightest, smallest, and toughest barcode scanners in the world, connecting workers to actionable information. More than 500 renowned organisations in manufacturing, production, logistics, and retail use these smarter workforce solutions. ProGlove was founded in December 2014 after winning the Intel “Make it Wearable” Challenge in Silicon Valley and is backed by growth-focused investors Summit Partners, DICP, and Bayern Capital. The company employs 200 people from over 40 countries with offices in Munich, Chicago, and Belgrade.

5 ABOVE:

PROGLOVE IS A SOLUTION FOR ACCELERATING LOGISTICS - ITS PRODUCTS ARE FINISHED WITH DYEMANSION TECHNOLOGY

During the COVID-19 crisis, the company reacted quickly and integrated a function into the existing app that sends a signal if two devices, and thus their carriers, are too close together, ensuring social distancing. The demand for ProGlove technology is evergrowing, and 3D printing offers many benefits. In addition to the ability to accurately plan production volumes and avoid overproduction, the product portfolio can be quickly adapted and expanded.

As well as being part of the EIC’s Green Deal call, DyeMansion is also part of Start Global’s ROSE (Return On Society and the Environment) project, which was developed in cooperation with the University of St. Gallen and is supported by DyeMansion’s investor, btov. ROSE empowers and guides entrepreneurs and investors to contribute to more positive impacts. The framework provides a better understanding of both risks and opportunities and it also emphasises the responsibility of entrepreneurs as a key player for the development of our society.

Lukas Erdt, Powerfuse S Product Manager and initiator of the sustainability council at DyeMansion, commented: “In the face of the climate crisis, limited resources and global inequalities, it is obvious that companies have to rethink their way of operating. It’s one thing to acknowledge the need and to commit to more sustainability, but the actual implementation is hard work. This realisation made us establish an internal sustainability committee to work on these topics and appointed resources and authority to it.” DyeMansion continues to push boundaries of what is possible with additive manufacturing and, by implementing sustainability at its core, has built an incredibly promising eco-system that points towards a brighter future, and not just with its wide-range of colours…

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AUTOMOTIVE

A 3D PRINTED OBJET D’ART

Bugatti Body Development Construction Engineer Jens Wenge [JW] & APWORKS Head of Project Engineering AM Sebastian Lepa [SL] discuss the design & additive manufacture (AM) of exhaust components for the Bugatti Chiron models. Bugatti has a renowned relationship with SLM Solutions, so why has the company teamed with APWORKS’ to 3D print Chiron exhaust parts?

JW: APWORKS came into play when I attended a workshop with EOS and CSI group, another important engineering supplier for Bugatti. Within this workshop we identified the taillight trim cover as a potential part for 3D printing. We realised the chance to implement not only an incredibly stylish object but also to reduce weight in one step. Because of the good experiences CSI had with APWORKS and the relationship between APWORKS and EOS, we decided to do this project with them.

We first heard of the Bugatti and APWORKS partnership after the Chiron derivative broke the 300mph barrier in 2019, while equipped with metal 3D printed exhaust finishers. How were these parts designed and why was 3D printing suitable?

JW: The advantage of 3D printed parts is that we are able to focus on the part's function. The shape is optimised for the exhaust mass flow and we can ignore conventional restrictions that lie in the manufacturing process. The second important fact is that we only needed one prototype for the Super Sport 300+ world record car. SL: AM allows for innovative geometric shapes that contribute to the extraordinary performance of hyper sports cars. JW: The team around the world record did a great job, working with members from each engineering department of Bugatti. The aerodynamic team,

for example, spent hours simulating the airstream and tested it many more hours in the wind tunnel at Dallara. They performed various CFD analysis to investigate aerodynamic phenomena occurring in the wake zone behind the vehicle and they calculated in their simulations exactly how much of the exhaust flow has to be directed into the rear diffuser, depending on the height of the vehicle and speed, so that the optimum downforce was achieved on the rear axle and that the exhaust fumes support the air roller at the rear.

Soon after, the 3D printed exhaust tailpipe for the Chiron Pur Sport was unveiled – what were the design considerations for this part and what changed from the traditionally engineered exhaust components?

JW: Really important in the first place was the realisation of an outstanding exhaust tailpipe: an 'objet d’art.' But bringing the exhaust tailpipe wasn’t a one-shot solution.

SL: The design of the trim brings AM to its limits. A lot of optimisations have been applied on the part design to reduce the part’s weight, but also enable a perfect and reliable manufacturing process. The numbers of the part speak

for itself: Down to 0.4mm wall thickness; approximately 22cm long, 48cm wide and 13cm high; weighing just 1.85kg including grille and bracket. Due to the requirements and the dimensions of the part, the material of choice is titanium and the system is an EOS M400-4. Printing huge titanium parts including walls down to 0.4mm means overcoming thermal stress in order to avoid component distortions. JW: Our engineers therefore worked in close collaboration with APWORKS’ applications team. Regular exchange, design iterations and printing tests finally led to the impressive part design and low weight. SL: We integrated lattice structures to stabilise walls while keeping the part’s weight low and added honeycomb structures to support walls with only 0.4mm thickness. In addition, we developed a completely new way of support geometries for thin walled parts from a geometry and laser parameter perspective. JW: There is no way to transfer a stylish design to the real part in a conventional production process. The degrees of freedom of AM allow you to realise the vision from our designers, to optimise mass flow, to implement a thermal isolating function and, in this case, reduce the part's weight by 45%. The exhaust tailpipe is only what it is thanks to this new and innovative technology.

SHOWN: BUGATTI CHIRON PUR SPORT EXHAUST TAILPIPE PRODUCED WITH METAL AM

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AUTOMOTIVE

STRIPPED BAC WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS

arked next to Liverpool’s rain-soaked docks under the watchful eye of the Liver Birds, the Briggs Automotive Company (BAC) Mono looks like it could have been driven straight out of a Gotham City panel – not a Speke industrial park just shy of 10 miles up the road. Just like that unconventional, distinctively Northern English backdrop, which blends effortlessly with the Mono’s black and silver aesthetic, this single seater supercar is uninterested in the mundane functionality of your typical set of wheels. Building on design DNA first seen in last year’s Mono R, the new Mono is lighter and boasts a higher performance figure of 332bhp thanks to a 2.3-litre fourcylinder turbocharged engine and over 400Nm of torque. With a design brief to make the car “visually lighter, cleaner and more simplistic,” each body panel, all reengineered to reduce visual mass, features graphene-enhanced carbon fibre to decrease weight and enhance strength. The subject of weight has been the focus of a partnership between BAC and Autodesk since 2014, recently demonstrated in the Mono’s alloy wheels, which have been generatively designed to speed up the iteration process and reduce weight. The team worked with Autodesk Research to determine how generative

design in Fusion 360 could be applied to quickly explore wheel design outcomes, taking into account performance criteria, standards testing data, manufacturing methods and materials, and BAC’s aesthetics.

“We could straight away, within a matter of hours, see the most optimised version of that wheel,” BAC Co-founder and Director of Product Development Ian Briggs told TCT. “We could kind of come back to it rather than work from the other direction where, you start off, you're always making steps towards little improvements each time and then just deciding how long you keep going through that process.” Starting with key performance needs and manufacturing constraints in mind, this technique almost allows engineers to work backwards compared to an extensive iteration process to reach the optimum result. Andy Harris at Autodesk Research explained: “Where we normally would look at the performance, the mass and the cost, which generative design as a product gives us, we wanted to also explore aesthetics as a fourth dimension. So, with a lot of guidance from BAC on brand identity and the kind of aesthetics the final design had to have, we were able to basically direct generative design in a way that it generated a large cluster of designs that all were very similar in aesthetic look.” CNC milling in aluminium was identified as the best method with the team going from 3-axis to 5-axis milling at Autodesk’s UK Technology Centre.

The result was a redesigned 2.2kg wheel alloy finished in BAC’s signature ‘gunmetal grey’ that’s 35% lighter and compliant with stringent European structural regulations. The total wheel weight is now 4.7kg for the front and 4.9 kgs for the rear, including both the alloy and carbon rim. Briggs recalls demonstrating the new design to a customer who was left stunned upon realising they could pick it up as easily as a glass of water. The Mono’s total 570kg weight is also owed to enhancements in 3D printing. In addition to prototyping, the Mono has around 40 3D printed end-use parts installed, printed with HP Multi Jet Fusion and an Ultimaker S5, including front and rear light surrounds, mirror arms and housing, front hatch hinges, and engine inlet components. Adam Mughal, Lead 3D Designer at BAC recently described how the cost of the car’s wing mirrors went from 60 GPB to just 10 GBP by 3D printing them in two parts. Briggs says the team has a roadmap in mind for how the car may look in future and while generative design is only a small part of the Mono’s style today, that might not be the case for long. “There are a lot of revolutions coming in the car industry, and with generative design, to change how cars are designed, engineered, built and look. It's a super exciting time in the car industry […] it’s a challenging one but I think it's super exciting.”

SHOWN: THE NEW BAC MONO PARKED ON LIVERPOOL'S WATERFRONT

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RAIL

THE RIGHT TRACK

Angel Trains Data and Performance Engineer James Brown details the stringent compliance standards 3D printed parts must meet before installation within the rail sector.

o one is more trusted than a transport engineer; every minute, millions of people (at least in pre-pandemic times) turn their car’s ignition, fasten their aircraft seatbelt or board their train, putting their faith in the underlying engineering to see them safe to their destination. This trust is partly why when things do go wrong, it can be so shocking, yet it is the learning from such disasters, codified in countless standards and regulations, that makes the transport industry so safe and so trusted. The railway industry, as the oldest transportation industry, has the longest history of safety incidents to learn from. However, this means it also tends to have the most comprehensive compliance requirements, which can be a barrier to new technologies, such as additive manufacturing. Railway fire standards are the most stringent of all transport sectors; exceeding even those of aviation, driven by the rationale that even in case of a train fire the safest option is still to keep passengers onboard, moving carriages away from the fire. Hence trains are designed for very long fire survivability. These requirements are codified in the standard EN45545-2. Frustratingly for suppliers, the tests specified by EN45545-2 are bespoke, making it difficult to read across results from fire tests used in other industries. As a rule of thumb, 3D printed materials rated V-0 should meet EN45545-2 requirement set R24 – which allows parts of up to 500g. Currently, we have only managed to get two materials, ULTEM 9085 (black) and Antero 800NA, to meet all railway requirements allowing them to be used without constraint. The railways are also a high vibration environment, and this is

compounded by the very high duty cycles of our vehicles, with many of our trains running 20 hours a day for over 40 years. Hence fatigue performance of any structurally loaded part is critical. The load cases for design of rail vehicles in the UK are given in standard GM/RT2100. Meeting these are a challenge given the lack of fatigue data for most 3D printed materials. For parts fitted to the exterior of a vehicle, a further requirement is impact resistance due to the exterior of rail vehicles regularly being struck at high speed by rocks bouncing up from the track. The high duty cycle of rail vehicles also poses longevity challenges for 3D printed parts. Trains can see incredibly high passenger densities from the rush hour commute, to rowdy football fans travelling to a match. To survive this, 3D printed parts must be incredibly hard wearing and easy to clean, yet the post-processing and coating of 3D printed parts can be their Achilles heel, and this is the area we have struggled the most with in getting parts approved. For UK rail vehicles we require coatings with sufficient adhesion to meet a crosscut test with a score of 0 or 1 as specified by BS EN ISO 2409:2013.

SHOWN:

PEKK TESTED TO ISO 5658-2: 2006 SPREAD OF FLAME

have now taken a number of materials and parts through the process and are seeing numerous parts from train armrests to toilet components being rolled out across our train fleets. For new suppliers looking to enter the market we are always open to new materials that are cheaper or better than those we use currently, and with our partners in the trade body Mobility Goes Additive we can assist in getting new materials approved. However, we do expect those companies marketing “Industrial” solutions to have at least done some research and testing into compliance issues prior to approaching industrial customers.

While the above compliance requirements do seem onerous, they can be overcome. At Angel Trains we

SHOWN:

IMPACT TESTING OF COATED PEKK AT 82MPH

28.5 / www.tctmagazine.com / 015

WORDS: sam davies

ften based along dangerous coastlines or nearby safe passages to land, the lighthouse is at once a structure to aid maritime navigation and a metaphor for risk, guidance and direction. In their evolution from hilltop fires to constructed towers with electric light, perhaps we can add improvement in function and performance to that list too. Siemens Mobility, in its application of additive manufacturing (AM) for the rail industry, can relate to many of those characteristics. It was 2013 when the company started to pull together six project leaders, all with engineering expertise; five support staff, with responsibilities ranging from application management and logistics; and six manufacturing engineers, to additively manufacture what would become more than 13,000 spare parts for the sector in seven years. Many of its street cars customers were then gathered to take in a presentation, where Siemens would make its pitch. In this meeting, where the potential to shorten the turnaround times for replacing components that are several decades old and often hard to procure was discussed, a representative from SWU Verkehr outlined how they wanted to alter the design and functionality of their tram drivers' armrests. They asked whether it would be possible to 3D print such a component. It was. And it became the first of 1,300 designs that would not only meet the necessity to replace components but align with Siemens Mobility’s idea to advance parts at the same time. Siemens’ Sparovation – a portmanteau of ‘spare’ and ‘innovation’ – programme was born. “If you touch a part which is 30 to 60 years old, and we change the production method and sometimes also the material, you have to do the complete approval by the newest standards regulations,” explains Michael Kuczmik, Siemens Mobility Head of Additive Manufacturing. “If our designers have to do the engineering and consider the new standards and regulations, then we said, okay, we [might as well] improve the part.”

THE GROUNDWORK

Siemens would come to learn how, as a general rule, the certification of ‘first of its kind’ replacement components would require more time – sometimes the best part of a year – for certification to be granted. There have been other instances, however, where extensive research and development hasn’t been required and newly certified spare parts have been delivered within just nine days. Of course, these lead times are one-

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offs – once certification is granted, a spare part that required months of engineering work and then spent months in the certification process can be continually delivered in the time it takes to manufacture, finish and ship. And the less time the better, for Siemens has some customers who are losing thousands of Euros a day on idle vehicles at the depot. For some companies, like SWU Verkehr, those thousands a day mean much more than compared to some of Siemens’ larger clients like Deutsche Bahn. SWU operates fleets of ten Siemens Combino NGT UL trams and twelve Siemens Avenio M NGT 6 UL trams in the cities of Ulm and Neu-Ulm, meaning one idle vehicle represents around 5% of its fleet and 5% of its revenue within its tram service offering. Per the company’s Head of Rail Vehicles Jürgen Späth, SWU 'simply cannot afford' to shut down a vehicle because a replacement part is missing. But while the urgency of installing spare parts and getting trams back on the rails is paramount, there’s an understanding how improving the parts as they’re replaced makes sense in the long run. The company, who has been working with Siemens since 2003, started out on its implementation of 3D printed parts with the updated driver’s armrest raised in the initial meeting, which would go on to feature three additional operational controls, channels for cables to run through, an increased stiffness to guard against future damages, assembly aids for long screws, more stable wiring harness routing, integrated cable fixation, and part and serial numbers for part identification and traceability. All were implemented after an assessment of the traditional part, with Siemens leaning on judgements from its customers and its rail design and maintenance departments. It is a key part of the process. “[Our six project leaders] look into the conventional design and try to understand what the reason for the failures was – what can be improved?” says Kuczmik. “With additive manufacturing, there’s a really high freedom of design. And my team is in contact with Siemens’ designers of new vehicles, they have a close exchange to really understand the newest standards and regulations with the experience we have at Siemens. And in the end, there’s a product which is definitely better than a part which is 30 to 60 years old. This is the advantage of Siemens as a designer, maintainer and spare parts supplier.”

MAKING PROGRESS

Another instance in which SWU leveraged that experience was to make improvements to the exterior of a tram vehicle. Since SWU’s trams navigate through

RAIL

busy cities alongside bustling road traffic, there are, on occasion, collisions between tram and car. A quick and easy improvement to the tram’s front skirt, SWU posited, was a day running light which would help to make the vehicle more visible to other road users.

6 BELOW:

SUSPENSION BRACKET OF A DT4 BRAKE CALIPER UNIT CREDIT: SIEMENS MOBILITY

“AM is a big improvement for our industry.”

“’Yes, we can do that,’” Kuczmik remembers telling his colleagues at SWU, “’but maybe we can change something else.’ “We called [SWU] for a co-creation process and they said the typical accident is a car from the right side at the front, because it’s turning to the left. They [typically] change the complete front skirt instead of only the small, damaged part. So, we split the front skirt into three pieces, with a lot of small fixtures added for the cable of the day running light, and so now the customer only has to change one third of the complete front skirt [in the event of a collision].” Both of these applications have been additively manufactured using Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) technology: the armrest with a ‘low-cost’ polymer and the front skirt components with a high-performance polymer boasting the ‘highest level of fire retardancy’, ‘more mechanical properties’ and the ability to endure ‘very high wind loads.’ Siemens hasn’t just limited its adoption of 3D printing for rail spare parts to polymer or FDM, however. The company has also invested in metal powder bed fusion technology and is producing spare parts in aluminium and stainless-steel materials. “There’s

no limit in respect of safety, if we do everything in terms of approval, material properties, qualification and so on, in the right way,” says Kuczmik, also noting how because of the company’s deep expertise and experiences in the rail space, Siemens obtains immediate trust from most companies. Such trust was evident at Hamburger Hochbahn last year when a suspension bracket of a DT4 brake calliper was replaced with an additively manufactured version that received approval by the component manufacturer, rail operators and corresponding certification bodies. Functioning in a similar way to the conventional component with an adequate level of safety, the stainlesssteel suspension bracket has been designed to deflect the braking forces away from the brake calliper unit into the bogie frame, meaning it must withstand a braking force equivalent to several tons. During testing, it was exposed to a strain of more than 25 tons and demonstrated a lifespan of 45 years, with Siemens now in the process of suggesting the part to Deutsche Bahn and, later, customers in Austria, Switzerland and France. Having taken the calculated risk to invest in AM for this endeavour back in 2013, Siemens Mobility, through the additive manufacture of 13,000 spare parts from 1,300 certified designs, continues to guide and direct its customers to significant cost savings via quicker turnaround times. Along the way, and thousands of times since they embarked, parts have not just been replaced but they’ve been improved. For Siemens Mobility, the impact AM is having in the rail sector is palpable. “I think there’s a lot of expectations on these technologies because additive manufacturing seems to be something of a lighthouse in our industry," Kuczmik finishes. "We have a lot of vehicles, a lot of different designs, a lot of problems on obsolescence: the parts can’t be delivered anymore. And with very low quantities, additive manufacturing seems to be a tool to solve this issue. It’s a big improvement for our industry.”

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SUSTAINABILITY

SUSTAINABILITY SPECIAL Sponsored by

The hottest topic in AM right now, covered by the people who know most.

et’s put aside the political debates surrounding climate change and say that we should all do our bit. I, for instance, feel a great sense of achievement when I remember to wash and take a reusable cup to my local hipster coffee establishment. That was until I read a piece in Anthropocene Magazine by Pierre-Oliver Roy, which states: "It would take between 20 and 100 uses for a reusable cup to make up for the greenhouse gas emissions of a single-use cup. For ecosystem quality indicators, it could take more than 1,000 uses.” Those paper cups, which we’ve come to know as the devil incarnate, only make up 5% of the total carbon footprint in a cup of coffee when you take into consideration plantation, oil jet fuel, energy to roast beans, energy to make the coffee, etc. There’s a comparison here to perceptions of additive manufacturing (AM) and sustainability. While the prospect of utilising less raw materials to manufacture a part seems, on the surface, to make complete carbon sense, the whole lifecycle of an additive manufactured part needs to be considered. How much electricity does an AM machine use for instance? “26 is the magic number,” says Dr Phil Reeves, who in 2013 conducted a study on the very subject alongside the manufacturing trade association, GTMA. “A Selective Laser Melting machine uses 26 times more electricity to process one kilo of titanium than a CNC machine would use to machine.” Dr Reeves’ in-depth research, which focuses primarily on metal powder-bed fusion technology throws up so many questions that need to be asked before proclaiming additive manufacturing is in any way, shape or form sustainable; even down to the location of manufacture. The report uses an aerospace bracket as an example: to produce it in Norway, where 99% of the electricity they produce is from renewable sources, you can say that there is no CO2 attributed to the manufacture. In India, where 81% of electricity is made from fossil fuels and with their low grid efficiency, you can attribute 35 kilos of CO2 to the manufacture.

“If we can design better, more efficient products it will typically manifest itself as saving energy.” “This idea of reshoring manufacturing with AM because it’s good for the environment, is all very well in practice, but actually the efficiency of your local power generation is more important than the efficiency of distribution,” explains Dr Reeves. “Although everyone has a bee in their bonnet about the contribution to global warming of shipping, if you look at it on a weight of goods moved by emissions per mile basis, it’s by far the most environmentally friendly mode of transport.” If this all seems a little on the negative side, fear not, the findings clearly show some incredible upsides to AM’s potential impact on the environment. Particularly when it comes to utilising titanium and aluminium powders for topologically optimised aerospace components. The report takes into consideration the following elements for carbon footprint

analysis: raw materials, manufacture, distribution, use and disposal; it takes those aspects and compares an aluminium alloy component manufactured on a CNC, an additive manufactured latticed part and a topologically optimised AM part. The results are staggering, particularly when you take into account the weight saving benefits on fuel consumption in aviation. The lifecycle CO2 emissions for the latticed AM part equalled 16,260 kg, almost three times less when compared to the 43,886 kg from the CNC machined part. “There’s another environmental benefit of AM, which is design functionality and improved performance,” says Dr Reeves. “A processing plant project I worked on a couple years ago managed to improve the efficiency of a heat exchanger by 5%, which saved a couple of million pounds a year mainly from lowering electricity consumption. If we can design better, more efficient products it will typically manifest itself as saving energy.”

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EOS: partner of choice for digital, distributed production and responsible manufacturing The world is currently under the impact of a global pandemic. At the same time, we are seeing a transition towards a more planet-centric view, with conscious acting, purpose and sustainability becoming driving principles for everything we do – as a business, as an industry and as individuals. For more than 30 years now, the sustainable and groundbreaking nature of the EOS additive manufacturing technology has been helping customers to drive innovation, introduce design and manufacturing digitization and to make their supply chains more resilient. As such, the technology not only is stimulating growth but also has a strong ecological and social impact. Adapting the concepts of nature, additive manufacturing enables parts that are “grown” by adding material instead of removing it, making it a low waste production process. Additively manufactured parts facilitate powder material savings in production as well as strong yet lightweight structures, resulting in substantial weight, CO2 and cost reductions. Materials can be reused or recycled. At the same time, the technology enables a more distributed production where it is needed, as such reducing logistic costs and making global supply chains more flexible. Simultaneously, industrial production is undergoing a fundamental change.

3D printed medical nasal and throat swab ready as part of a COVID-19 test kit (Source: 3D Printing Studio, EOS)

Maturing towards series production, industrial 3D printing is one of the key drivers towards the digitalized factory of the future. Together with partners and customers we now want to take our approach to the next level. In order to further expand the positive effects of the technology, a head of sustainability function has been recently established to develop a Groupwide sustainability strategy and drive implementation projects. This takes into consideration a sustainable business, responsible resources handling, the company’s responsibility towards their

EOS headquarter in Krailling, Germany (Source: EOS).

employees, the integration of bottom-up initiatives started by the engaged EOS employees as well as corporate social responsibility, including the support for social projects globally. Apart from helping our customers to achieve their sustainability goals, EOS itself is constantly improving its production solutions with view to the resource efficiency of its systems, materials and processes. Energy consumption, material use and recycling capabilities of individual components as well as the constant design optimization of AM systems are key in this approach. Powder is one key driver in this context. EOS together with partners and suppliers continues to improve, e.g. also looking into facilitating circular economy concepts for polymer powders and developing bio-based and biodegradable materials. In Germany, EOS is offering a disposal scheme for customers, as such offering recycling of polymer powder materials together with a partner. EOS intends to expand this offer beyond Germany. Industrial 3D printing pioneer and leader EOS, the Langer founding family and especially Marie Langer, the second generation CEO of EOS, are dedicated to help making the world a better place with the help of technology innovation.

SUSTAINABILITY Sponsored by

PROMOTING THE SUSTAINABILITY BENEFITS OF AM THROUGH RESEARCH WORDS: Sherry Handel, Executive Director AMGTA

to publish our research findings and share them with our members, the AM industry, and the public at large.

AMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first sustainability focused trade association on their plans to enhance AMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s environmental impact.

hile the economic and technical superiority of additive manufacturing (AM) is wellknown within key industries, its sustainability benefits are often less wellunderstood. For this reason, the Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association (AMGTA) was launched last year at Formnext, with a mission to promote the environmental benefits of AM over traditional manufacturing. The AMGTA is a global and unaffiliated nonprofit organisation, open to any additive manufacturer or industry stakeholder that meets certain criteria relating to sustainability of production or process. There are several positive environmental benefits of the additive manufacturing process when compared to traditional manufacturing; most notably there is considerably less waste in AM. Existing research on sustainability in AM tends to focus either on material waste, energy use, or machine emissions to manufacture a part. However, there is limited published research

that considers life-cycle assessment (LCA) - a comparative study of the environmental impact a part or product has throughout the stages of its life from cradle to grave. The AMGTA is hoping to address this lack of real research by commissioning studies that include LCAs, which will analyse a part at each phase of its life from raw material extraction, processing, manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal. This research will determine at a granular level by what amount AM is an environmentally improved manufacturing process. Our first LCA will focus on traditional casting versus powder-bed fusion additive manufacturing. Sustainability cannot be achieved in a silo. For sustainability to transition from wishful thinking to impactful results, we will need to partner with industry players along the value chain and beyond. Company leadership needs to consider many stakeholders as they develop their sustainability goals and objectives, including employees, customers, vendors, suppliers, communities, government, non-profit organisations, certification entities, educational institutions, and other constituents. Through rigorous, independent, and ongoing research, the AMGTA serves as a key industry resource positioned to help our members rise to the challenge of sustainability in AM. The AMGTA plans

Sustainability in AM is gaining momentum as more companies strive to improve their eco-footprint. Visionary industry leaders are constantly challenging their employees to find new ways to reduce waste by repurposing or recycling used material, improving the manufacturing environment for their workforce, lessening the distance parts and products travel, finding innovative ways to use new materials including bio-renewables, and other creative solutions to becoming more sustainable. These important initiatives have led to an increase in value-added parts, products, and services. By commissioning and publishing rigorous new research in the field of sustainability and AM, the AMGTA intends to augment and facilitate these continued efforts by industry leaders. We all witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic how supply chain disruptions and logistical hurdles were countered with print-on-demand efficiencies, shared CAD files and other resources, as well as the leveraging of community relationships to provide critical PPE such as face shields, testing swabs, and medical equipment parts to hospitals and health care facilities locally and worldwide. Just as the AM industry harnessed the passion of its employees to tackle the challenges presented by the coronavirus to make a difference and save lives, we can also advance sustainability in AM to save our planet. This resilient industry has learned how to leverage AM in ways that we have never seen before. As the AM industry continues to grow, we will continue to iterate and evolve. We are well positioned to advance sustainability in the AM industry to improve our collective environmental impact globally.

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The Time is Now

As a Pittsburgh-based company, many of our employees, parents and grandparents grew up in The Steel City, and breathing smoky air. So we can say it with certainty: We’re long overdue in talking about the impact that metal manufacturing has on our environment. That said, the metal itself isn’t really to blame. Whether it’s steel or aluminum, metal is a strong, functional material that keeps us safe and delivers exceptional performance in airplanes, cars and a wide range of other consumer and industrial products. How we manufacture metal — well, that’s another story. Much of the negative impact of making metal products is caused by the traditional “subtractive” methods we use to create them. Around the world, fleets of big, strong machine tools remove, or subtract, metal from plates, rods and billets to sculpt millions of parts — creating tons of metal chips, toxic debris and pollution. For centuries, there simply hasn’t been a better way. But today, there is. Metal 3D printers flip this manufacturing story right side up, fabricating metal objects with little to no waste. We do this, quite simply, by adding together the material that’s actually needed. Research shows the form of metal 3D printing we pioneered in 1998, called binder jetting, delivers material efficiency up to 96%*. At the same time, our 3D printers enable all-new lightweight designs that cannot affordably be manufactured with traditional subtractive methods. In fact, metal parts redesigned and 3D printed with our technology save about 30-40% of their original weight — for more efficient shipping, flying or driving. Our technology can also consolidate two or more assembled parts into one, shortening and de-risking supply chains in significant energy-saving ways.

X1 160Pro™ metal 3D printer is ExOne’s 10th and largest binder jetting system, part of a full family that can take manufacturers from prototyping to serial production. Available today.

The very best part of this story: binder jet 3D printing can deliver these benefits in high-production volumes at an affordable cost. There are literally hundreds of thousands of metal parts — and manufacturing tools — that can and should be reimagined to save weight, money and deliver other efficiency benefits that help our planet. At ExOne, our vision for the future is sustainable manufacturing without limitations, and we believe the time is right to reinvent the future of metal part production. Together, we can modernize supply chains, solve the toughest problems and change the world — if not help save it.

#MakeMetalGreen™ * Mirzababaei, Saereh & Paul, Brian & Pasebani, Somayeh. (2020). Metal Powder Recyclability in Binder Jet Additive Manufacturing. JOM. 10.1007/s11837-020-04258-6.

SUSTAINABILITY

THOUGHTS FROM INDUSTRY LEADERS

Sponsored by

We’ve spoken to some of the industry’s leading lights and asked what sustainability means to them. ELLEN KULLMAN | CEO | CARBON The old adage of reduce, reuse, recycle is as relevant today as it was decades ago when it came up and hopefully we’re doing a better job at it today […]. With every print there is resin left over, so we reclaim as much of it as we can and we reuse in the next print. That was a change from the firstgeneration printer because we understand that’s not only an economic issue for our customers, it’s a sustainability issue for our customers as well.

DR AARON BENT | CEO | 6K

FRIED VANCRAEN | FOUNDER AND CEO | MATERIALISE We are proud that we defined, from the opening reception of Materialise, our mission statement that we wanted to use our knowhow in 3D printing for a better and a healthier world [...] We see this just as an extension of an evolution we have been in already for a long time because sustainability is now another word to define that better and healthier world. MARIE LANGER | CEO | EOS What is really important for me is to better communicate the advantages we have in this technology when it comes to conventional manufacturing. So many advancements like new resource efficiencies, lightweight design, longer product life, inventory waste reduction, a lot of things that we can offer with the technology in general. I want to make everyone more aware of the fact that it can be a green technology and then of course, there are a lot of things we look into either biodegradable materials [or] making sure that we reduce energy waste of our machines.

MAX LOBOVSKY | CO-FOUNDER AND CEO | FORMLABS I think the long-term impact that additive can make is around this idea of distributed manufacturing, a little bit of what we saw with some of this COVID production, where rather than centralised production in a couple of places and shipping things around the world, you can produce things locally on-site, reduce those transportation impacts on the environment and increase efficiency by having less waste.

Additive is known for being a more sustainable process than conventional manufacturing, however a deeper look into supply chain shows that significant improvements can be made. The most common method for producing metal powder is a highenergy, low-yield gas atomisation process which is bad for our planet. It has a poor environmental footprint and is burdened by 75% waste – due to only 25% of material being produced at a usable size for LPBF as an example. Seeing the potential for huge environmental improvements was a key driver for 6K in turning to the production of AM powders. In contrast to gas atomisation, 6K’s UniMelt microwave plasma process leverages a host of feedstock materials derived from sustainable sources such as certified scrap CNC turnings, over-sized GA and even AM supports or failed builds, that would otherwise find their way to landfill. Additionally, UniMelt uses significantly less gas, our yield is near 100% of the desired powder size and is tunable to match the different AM technologies. The combination of a better carbon footprint, extremely high-yield and use of sustainable sources has really caught the attention of large AM super-users across various industries as they recognise that 6K is helping to drive the circular economy.”

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Making Additive Manufacturing Sustainable: Ask the Right Question Additive Manufacturing provides companies with an instrument to manufacture in a more sustainable way – both socially and environmentally. As a result, many view AM as a positive force that helps companies to operate more sustainably. However, that’s simply not enough. Moving forward, the question is not whether AM is a sustainable manufacturing technology. The question becomes: what can we do to make AM more sustainable? Additive Manufacturing has established itself as a powerful and sustainable manufacturing solution. The technology empowers people locally through decentralized production, it improves people’s health and well-being through personalized care, and it enables higher quality jobs. At the same time it supports a manufacturing process with less waste, through mass-personalization and optimized distribution. But considering Additive Manufacturing a green technology simply because of the unique benefits that are inherent to the technology is, frankly, too easy. Similarly, manufacturers of electric cars can’t claim to be sustainable simply because electric cars are generally considered better for the environment than traditional gaspowered cars. That’s why a first step is for companies to organize themselves in a sustainable way, by considering the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. But in order to make truly significant contributions, companies need to

Materialise.com/mindware

invest in innovative technologies that help to advance their respective industries. For electric car manufacturers this may mean investing in a battery recycling network.

At the same time, we need to invest in optimizing the specific drivers that make it so unique, such as the ability to manufacture locally or the possibility to mass-customize products.

“The AM industry can and needs to do more,” says Fried Vancraen, founder and CEO of Materialise, “by developing new and innovative ways to reduce our impact on the societies we interact with and the environments we operate in. We recognize this and proudly develop innovative technologies to reduce our impact – from reducing scrap rates and increasing the usage of recycled powder to creating the workplaces of the future.”

We have spent the past three decades working out how to make Additive Manufacturing efficient, reliable, meaningful, and scalable. Discover how you can accelerate your business potential and positively contribute to our global sustainability challenges by uniting the power of 3D printing with your business through working with our experts.

At Materialise we believe that continued investment in innovative technologies is key to establish Additive Manufacturing as a truly sustainable manufacturing technology. New innovations will help to reduce the negative impact of the technology, including waste and energy consumption. By better understanding the process and increasing our ability to control it, we can make Additive Manufacturing more sustainable.

SUSTAINABILITY Sponsored by

VICKI HOLT | CEO | PROTOLABS I am passionate about sustainability. I believe that the answers to problems we've got around climate change are going to come from technologies and it's going to become from companies collaborating together to find these solutions. I’ve been very inspired by how companies have come together in this pandemic and it tells me we can solve problems around climate change and focus on sustainability.

XAVIER MARTÍNEZ FANECA | CEO | BCN3D The move from traditional manufacturing to additive manufacturing with the use of thermoplastics in FFF technology is a more sustainable way of producing as it eliminates the CO2 emissions associated with transporting plastic parts. At BCN3D we manufacture locally at our Barcelona headquarters, thus reducing the massive imports of parts from our 3D printers and we also produce our own parts on our machines at our own 3D Printing Farm. By manufacturing locally we can recycle and extend the life of products resulting in more efficient use of fuel and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and resource consumption. At BCN3D we like to talk about 3D printing giving productive use to different plastic filaments and obviously we manage the waste generated appropriately, but we advocate a circular recycling process so that a more rational use of these materials can be reverted to society.

DROR DANAI | CBO | XJET

DAN SAWYER | BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT OFFICER | NATUREWORKS 3D The same aspects that make AM so useful: distributed manufacturing, low volume production, and customized / complex designs with a wide and growing variety of materials make collection, re-use and recycling more challenging. Collaborating to use sustainably-sourced, renewable raw materials and creating after-use markets for recovered materials can drive us in the right direction.

It’s true that we often cite the environmental benefits of additive because its less wasteful than subtractive manufacturing and due to the ease of local production. However, we need to start looking at the whole picture, every stage of the process. Waste of material still happens, there are a lot of systems using support structures or in powderbased technology a lot of powder goes to waste. With some processes there’s a whole infrastructure required around the AM system itself, powder supply systems, de-powdering units, filtering and anti-static systems etc. – of course personal safety is an absolute must – but it all contributes to the environmental footprint.

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10.06.20 14:37

CONSUMER

AREVO'S FRAMEWORK

WORDS: SAM DAVIES

n a research and development lab in Milpitas, California, a composite electric moped circles the room it was thought up in, printed in, painted in, finished and fully assembled in, while a chair with a similar upbringing sits one of Arevo’s many engineers on the workshop’s outskirts. The moped, which went from concept to working vehicle in under four and a half weeks, and the chair, created in even less time, were produced with the additive manufacturing firm’s continuous carbon fibre 3D printing technology, but may never see the light of day.

One is merely the exploits of the freedom within Arevo to be inventive and imaginative and drew a disbelieving laugh from recently-appointed CEO Sonny Vu, while the other was a serious endeavour, before the company turned its attention to a more immediately attainable product. Arevo believes itself to be an entrepreneurial company that experiments with liberty, ‘takes chances’ and is full of people who ‘forego a comfortable life for one of exploration.’ It lives by the notion that, like a blind squirrel looking for nuts, amongst the many bad ideas it has, a good one will eventually be stumbled upon. A prime example of these efforts is the composite Superstrata e-bike and bicycle models, which generated more than 3 million USD worth of pre-orders in the first two weeks and over 6 million USD by midSeptember.

Both bikes are to be manufactured ondemand in their thousands – the money raised via Indiegogo would equate to more than 3,000 e-bikes or 4,000 standard bikes at early bird prices – and be shipped from December through to 2021. Each unibody bike frame is to be customised per the height, weight, shirt and trouser measurements of the user and produced at a rate of two per machine per day with Arevo’s composite 3D printing equipment.

“This is going to transform manufacturing.” Arevo’s patented approach sees a six-axis robot deposit a carbon fibrereinforced thermoplastic filament which has been heated through a laser source and compressed into substrate layers. This process is said to eliminate voids inside and between layers at any angle or direction. The decision to use thermoplastic material instead of thermoset material, like most other composite bike frame manufacturers, has been inspired by the aerospace industry’s switch to take advantage of the superior impact resistance, with Arevo less interested

in lightweighting the products as it is adding durability. In addition to the material’s properties, the unibody frame being manufactured in a single piece means there are no welding seams or bolts, while generative design software allows Arevo to produce a mesh of carbon fibre, implementing strength in all three dimensions, and optimise where the fibres are laid to apply strength properties only where it is needed. Not wanting to be profligate with its resources, Arevo has also moved away from using PEEK because, as Vu puts it, “you don’t need heat resistance for your bike – by the time it melts you were dead 300 degrees ago.” What has been deemed necessary, though, is the utmost care and precision. Within 500,000 variations, the bike frame is to be customised to the user’s clothing measurements, while also factoring in riding style and wheel choice, and each product is to be hand finished and put through a Finite Element Analysis process before shipping. That delivery phase will commence at the end of 2020 – three years after an initial concept was developed, two years after Arevo started working on an electric version and a year after prototypes of both had been completed and iterated. The speed at which the pre-orders of the Superstrata bikes came flooding in spoke to the popularity of the products, and proved to Vu and his colleagues that their trust in 3D printing and a freedom to innovate has been wellplaced. “Ninety-nine per cent of all ideas, including the ones we come up with, are bad. You only need one good one but imagine if you had to set up 100 different manufacturing lines just to find out. That’s the beauty of additive manufacturing,” Vu told TCT. “This is why I joined this company. I just thought this is going to completely transform manufacturing.”

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ON TOP FOR Formlabs Co-founder and CEO Max Lobovsky discusses the desktop SLA leader's growth, new dental platform and long-awaited Fuse 1.

ormlabs has come a long way from a Kickstarter success story to one of a handful of ‘unicorn’ AM companies. Can you talk about the biggest changes or shifts that you've seen in the industry in that time? Since we've been involved in the industry, we've seen a few different sort of waves of excitement and, dare I say, hype pass through the industry. When we got started, people were really excited about the idea of mass consumer 3D printing, of a printer in everyone's home. In fact, we were kind of mistaken for being a mass consumer focused product in the beginning, even though if you go back to our original Kickstarter, the first word on the page is “professional” - we've always been focused on professional users. But that wave kind of came and went and then I think the next big wave, which we're still sort of in the middle of, is metal printing and then high-volume production printing. I think interest in 3D printing has been kind of steady throughout that time but which part people are focusing on has changed.

Formlabs came of age during that first wave - how did you navigate that time to ensure that Formlabs was here for the long haul? Well, to be honest, we've almost intentionally ignored whatever was currently hyped up in 3D printing and stayed focused always on what is the most value we can deliver, get into actual customers' hands, get parts printed. That's where we're always putting the majority of our effort. I think that the reality is things have developed, in some ways, slower than people expected but also in different ways. A lot of what we spend time on, it's a little bit harder to explain upfront why it's exciting, but in the end, results in more printers in more people's hands than anything else, and that’s focusing on the accessibility and reliability. We put a lot of work into, 'can we make a printer that you can buy in a box, take out, get up and running and get good parts out within minutes?' and that's something that no one else is really doing quite as well but has resulted in us shipping more professional 3D printers than anyone else in the market.

028 / www.tctmagazine.com / 28.5

Has your customer base changed at all? Have any surprised you? It's definitely evolved. We were focused generally on professionals from the beginning but we did have some amount of hobbyist customers and we still have some today. I think if you went back actually and looked at the thousand customers on Kickstarter, you’ll probably find one of almost every type of customer we have today. One segment that grew quite a bit since then is dental, which has become a large chunk of our sales today, not the majority, but an important segment. That's something we knew was an important part of the market, especially for stereolithography type printers but we weren't ready to tackle in the early days because you need a higher level of reliability and service and feature completeness of the product to be relevant in that market. Since we built that out over the years, that's become an important segment. The other piece that's grown is various types of higher volume production. Some of that's in dental but recently we had this COVID example and a variety of other customers in different industries that are using our printer to make thousands, hundreds of thousands of parts per year.

You’ve just launched the latest iteration of your Form 3 technology and begun shipping the larger Form 3L – can you talk to us about this new large-format platform? A lot of the reason we developed Low Force Stereolithography is to be able to scale up these inverted type SLA systems that we build into larger areas. Typically, they're only used for smaller build areas and they don't compete with the kind of large-format, right side up type SLA systems and that's because more force is applied to the part and the larger the part gets, you have these large cross sectional areas that you need to deal with. So, we were able to really use the same technology that's in the Form 3, and

6 BELOW:

MAX LOBOVSKY, FORMLABS CEO

“If you went back and looked at the thousand customers on Kickstarter, you’ll probably find one of almost every type of customer we have today.”

EXECUTIVE INSPEXQ&A

in a pretty straightforward way, build it into a larger system. This is letting us do what we did to the smaller format SLA market to the larger format market, where today, you can't really get a large-format professional system for less than $100,000 to $200,000 range. We're introducing something for about $10,000 and that's a dramatically different price point that's going to make big high-resolution parts accessible to many more people.

This latest announcement includes a new dental focused system, the Form 3BL. Can you talk more about why dental has become such an important focus area? In the last few years, it became possible for even an individual dental practice to do the scanning, software and printing. For us to make that possible and to be successful in that market, we had to adapt a lot because in general, we're kind of oriented as a horizontal technology company where we make a piece of technology that can be applied to many different applications and we focus on doing our piece of the puzzle well, but in dental, customers expect much more of a kind of a complete system. They don't want a general-purpose tool, they want to do something very specific with it and they want a tool that's built to meet those needs and they want a company that can understand those applications and serve them well.

Are there any updates you can give us on the Fuse 1 SLS technology and maybe the challenges around bringing this type of industrial process to the desktop space?

TOP: 5

PARTS PRINTED ON FORMLABS' LARGEFORMAT SYSTEM

ABOVE: 5

DENTAL MODELS PRINTED ON THE FORM 3BL

What we set out to do with SLS, again, same thing we did to SLA, we wanted to make it far cheaper and far easier to use. SLS systems are some of the most powerful but most expensive and difficult to use systems out there. You typically find them in a dedicated facility with dedicated engineers or technicians operating them and that meant that total sales of SLS machines a couple years ago was like less than 1,000 per year [...]. Before that, an SLS installation started at around $200,000 for a full setup and we wanted to bring something to

market around $20,000. It has taken us a lot longer than we would like or we expected but we are very close and made a lot of progress since our first announcements. I think what we found is that SLS is an even more complex process; the machines fundamentally have more actuators and sensors, and tighter control required to get good parts out than you see with SLA. Combined with the fact that we couldn't start with a Form 1 again, we couldn't start with a Kickstarter, more experimental focused product, we needed to get to something that's really reliable and works out of the box. That also took us longer to refine but we're basically there now. We've got beta machines in the field that have been running for months, producing good parts for customers and we will be bringing that product to market soon.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW IN FULL: mytct.co/MaxFormlabs

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he COVID-19 pandemic has proved a divisive one for the additive manufacturing (AM) industry. While some businesses have seen staff reductions and a downturn in sales, there are others who would argue, with a reasonable hesitation, that the pandemic has actually had a positive impact on the adoption and perception of the technology. A recent report by market intelligence company CONTEXT revealed that while almost every category of AM hardware took a dip in sales, the professional 3D printing market, which accounts for machines costing between 2.5K-20K USD, grew by 17% from 2018 to 2019, a trend which has continued in recent months as work from home scenarios invigorated purchases of compact professional systems for remote usage. For UK-based Photocentric, a photopolymer 3D printing specialist whose large-format LCD Screen printers fall just within that Professional sweet spot, the last few months have provided an opportunity to scale-up its high-volume 3D printer farm ambitions fuelled by an order of 7 million protective face shields for the NHS. “We produce everything here, which is one of our big advantages,” Photocentric’s 3D Development Engineer Ed Barlow tells TCT from the farm on an exclusive virtual tour. “While the whole world was shut down for COVID we had the great opportunity, given that we make our own chemicals, […] we formulate our own resins in house with our own chemistry team, we build our own printers with UK stock, […] we had all the bits we required to build this farm behind me and it allowed us to do this in a matter of a few weeks.”

Bringing everything in-house, the company was able to iterate the mask design 23 times, build a farm of over 36 machines (so far), and ramp up manufacturing for 350,000 face shields each week including post-processing and assembly. At the time of writing, the company has surpassed production of 2.5 million face shields for the NHS.

WHAT NOW?

Temporarily switching 3D print capacities over to PPE production is, however, a short-term solution, evidenced in the recent closure of Voodoo Manufacturing’s Brooklyn 3D print farm which had leveraged its desktop FDM machines to assist in the COVID-19 fight. For other users who purchased professional machines as a result of COVID, whether prompted by work from home scenarios or similar PPE manufacturing efforts, the next challenge is how to repurpose that technology going forward. In a recent panel hosted by MakerBot, CEO Nadav Goshen suggested that companies are now being encouraged to challenge their supply chain legacies, heavily impacted by the pandemic, with additive alternatives, and according to CONTEXT’s Chris Connery, the demand for professional systems is expected to remain. “Difficult economies and a lot of the key industries that 3D printing currently caters to still have some difficulty ahead,” Connery explained. “Once we get past

all that we do believe that this install base of professional machines, this next generation of engineers who are sequestered at home are going to be the management and CEOs of the next generation and they would have become familiar with additive manufacturing.” For Photocentric, the success of the Magna farm has been a proof point for 3D printing’s potential in mass manufacturing and what Barlow says will be “many more Magna farms in many different industries going forward.” “Coronavirus has given us a means to rapidly scale up what we we've always intended to do, which is custom mass manufacture. This Magna farm is the first of many. It's something that we are rolling out as a company strategy going forward, much bigger production lines with 3D printing at its heart.” Some of those other industries are already starting to materialise. Photocentric recently mobilised a new research group for the lowcost mass manufacture of battery electrodes which exploit 3D printing’s geometric freedom. While this specific venture isn’t a direct result of its COVID activity, it exemplifies the flexibility of professional AM systems in a diverse range of manufacturing scenarios. Barlow adds: “What we've managed to do is scale and build a long-lasting model that's competitive with many of these technologies going forward, not just in the short scale of the Coronavirus challenge.”

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SKILLS & EDUCATION

RE-DESIGNING EDUCATION

Words: Peter Gough, MSc, MSc Industrial Digitalisation Programme Leader, Department of Engineering Postgraduate Taught Programmes Leader, and Senior Lecturer in Digital Innovation at PrintCity, Manchester Metropolitan University.

n the Summer of 2018, MMU played host to a collection of industry leaders as part of a factfinding session for a new course to gauge just what they wanted from new people they looked to employ. We wanted to build a totally new course that encouraged problem-solving, creativity, common sense and a mindset that was not afraid to try new ideas. Underneath this would be a foundation of softskills development on which to build communication and presentation skills that are essential, not only in this domain, but indeed for every business sector in the world. The most viewed talk (66M views) on TED is Sir Ken Robinson's 'Do Schools Kill Creativity?'. He died this August but his legacy is one that made people stop and think about how we teach and what learning actually is. 'Rewiring Education' by John D. Couch gives a more in-depth analysis of how we got to standardised tests at the cost of creativity and the arts. We can sum it up in just three statements: Exploration replaced by expectation, collaboration replaced by competition and discovery replaced by memorisation. A famous US army recruiting slogan was 'Be all you can be' but with these standardised tests, they made you believe at an early age that you were already all you could be. The late and great Douglas Adams had a great relationship with new technologies. He once defined technology as 'stuff that doesn't work yet' and 'anything that is in the world when you're born is normal'. Children born after June 29th 2007 will never know that smartphones were born with them, they are just normal to them but a real challenge for non-digital natives who struggle to get to grips with them. For a moment, imagine someone could not hear you but could see you. You make the 'call me' gesture with your outstretched

034 / www.tctmagazine.com / 28.5

thumb and little finger but try this with a young person and they won't as readily understand as all their calls are made on a glass slab with no design similarity to a clunky old plastic telephone handset with the microphone and speakers at opposite ends. So with that background for context, our MSc Industrial Digitalisation course was born. Even our admissions criteria changed. Generally, if you want to study Biology for example at university, you need previous entry qualifications in Biology. So what about Industrial Digitalisation? Limiting entry based on what people had done before can prevent them becoming anything else they could be. A class full of students from the same educational route is not one that is fertile with differing opinion and experience so we consider anyone from any course but interview rarely where we need to check suitability. In the first year of the programme, we were approached by a large sportswear company who agreed to fund a 12-month research project to investigate tennis shoes and ankle injuries in tennis. We put three students on this, one was an engineer, one was a product designer and the other was a business graduate. Without any one of them, we could not have undertaken the project and we saw this as a clear vindication of our entry criteria - it worked. This amalgamation of different academic backgrounds has opened doors the other way too and we now have aspects of 3D printing embedded into programmes around the university, from fashion to furniture design and architecture. Additive manufacturing is just one spoke in the wheel of our course but it provides the perfect vehicle for design, discovery, experimentation and collaboration. We don't do exams; we use problembased assessments where students are

encouraged to make things but then be able to support and justify their decisions and manufacturing processes to others. Knowing how you made something takes on a whole new value when you have to explain why you made it. Around this, we strongly encourage our students to be unafraid of failure because, once again in the words of Sir Ken Robinson, 'if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original'. When students vehemently defend a notion or idea and then back it up with logical reasoning, you know they're ready.

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ADDITIVE IS A LIGHTHOUSE

THE RIGHT TRACK