TCT EU 28.6 by TCT Magazine

3D PRINTING & ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING INTELLIGENCE

MAG EUROPE EDITION VOLUME 28 ISSUE 6 www.tctmagazine.com

POWER UP

PUSHING THE LIMITS OF PRODUCTIVITY WITH SLM SOLUTIONSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; NXG XII 600. materials How to accelerate metal AM & a novel way of reusing polymer powders

Tooling & moulding

Complex cutting tool designs at Guhring UK

Intellectual Property Insights and innovations on the subject of IP

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VOLUME 28 ISSUE 6 ISSN 1751-0333

EDITORIAL

HEAD OF CONTENT

Laura Griffiths e: laura.griffiths@rapidnews.com t: + 44 1244 952 389

SENIOR CONTENT PRODUCER

Samuel Davies e: samuel.davies@rapidnews.com t: + 44 1244 952 390

ADVERTISING HEAD OF MEDIA SALES

Carol Cooper e: carol@rapidnews.com t: + 44 1244 952 386 ADVERTISING MANAGER

Nicky Martin e: nicky.martin@rapidnews.com t: + 44 1244 952 365

PRODUCTION

Sam Hamlyn Matt Clarke Ellie Gaskell

MANAGEMENT C.E.O. / PUBLISHER

Duncan Wood

From Screen to Machine:

Optimise your AM Build Process (and beyond …)

VP, CONTENT, STRATEGY AND PARTNERSHIPS

James Woodcock e: james@rapidnews.com t: + 44 1244 952 391

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FROM THE EDITOR DANIEL O'CONNOR

The New Normal As I depart TCT and the AM industry for a career in the arts (darling), I was asked by Laura and Sam if I’d like to pen some final thoughts on the industry in print, and because I have such a pompously high opinion of myself, I agreed. I’ve been part of the team editing TCT Magazine for over seven years and, as Laura pointed out in episode 46 of Additive Insight, my career in AM is as old as the Ultimaker 2. Upon reflection, that machine’s debut at TCT Show in September was a significant turning point in the industry. The Ultimaker 2 shaped the Ultimaker brand we know now; it’s hard to believe that a technology Volkswagen see as essential on their assembly floor was, in 2010, a wooden machine that looked more like something from the Flintstones than a machine creating jigs and fixtures for production lines across the globe. From 2013 onwards, the most significant changes have not come from the 3D printers themselves but the technologies that surround it. Material science, software development and post-processing solutions have accelerated the adoption of the technology to the point where, particularly in SLS, it can now compete with injection moulding.

Adoption of the technologies throughout industry has happened. There was something of a throwaway remark by Dr David Wragg of Leonardo Helicopter at the last conference I attended pre-lockdown. During his presentation he said that he wasn’t going to show any prototyping or jigs and fixtures applications because Leonardo now just considered it ‘standard practise’. Standard practise by aerospace manufacturers, the normality of big brands like Adidas, Chanel and BMW using the tech for mass volume production, the fact that friends message me Ikea furniture spares from Thingiverse, the fact that nobody is wowed by a 3D printer anymore, it makes me feel like we’ve done our job. 3D printing is the new normal. A synonym for normal can be ‘boring’, this probably means new and interesting stories are more difficult to come by and, in the face of such challenge, my flight response beat fight and I’m leaving Laura and Sam to pick up the baton. In all seriousness though, there’s not a better team in the industry; it’s a perfect blend of innovative content creation and dogged journalism that will see TCT go from strength-to-strength.

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VOLUME 28 ISSUE 6

29:31

COVER STORY

8 11

08. POWER UP

SLM Solutions explains how its latest metal additive manufacturing platform, the NXG XII 600, is set to enable industrialised serial production.

11. AM INDUSTRY NEWS

Some of the key developments of the last couple of months, including two machine launches, a consumer product application and a retiring inventor.

13. STEPPING ON THE GAS

Senior Content Producer Sam Davies talks to Sandvik about metal additive manufacturing powder development at its Sweden and UK sites.

17. BETTER METAL POWDER, BETTER METAL PRINTS

25. MEASURE OF SUCCESS

Laura speaks to the suspension specialist which holds the title for "Oldest Working FaroArm in Europe."

Sam speaks to the co-founder of a company using 3D scanning and 3D printing to produce life-like manikins for COVID-19 training.

Tooling & moulding

28. A CUT ABOVE

Sam reports back from a pre-lockdown trip to Guhring’s UK facility, where the adoption of additive manufacturing has led to some innovative cutting tools.

Intellectual Property

Equispheres VP of Strategic Partners and Alliances explains why the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ aphorism is as true of metal additive manufacturing as it is of computer software.

31. STAY SAFE

19. COVESTRO BUYS OUT DSM

35. RIGHTS RESERVED

A look at Covestro’s acquisition of DSM as it places a focus on the circular economy.

21. GOING GREEN WITH BLUESINT Head of Content Laura Griffiths talks to Materialise about Bluesint technology, which enables SLS 3D printing with up to 100% re-used powder.

27. FROM SILVER SCREEN TO COVID-19

news

MATERIALS

Metrology & 3D Scanning

Dr Lee-Bath Nelson of LEO Lane talks to Laura about how supply chain challenges have emphasised the importance of IP protection. Professor Hing Kai Chan of the University of Nottingham Ningbo China discusses his patented ‘digital watermarking method for 3D printing models’ algorithm.

36 Executive Q&A 36. NO DISTRACTIONS

Laura speaks with 3D Systems CEO Jeff Graves about materials science, focusing on applications and the transformation of manufacturing.

39. FORMNEXT IN FOCUS

A series of interviews conducted during Formnext Connect, including Solukon on its move into polymer AM, VELO3D on the expansion of its metal AM portfolio and much more.

GUEST COLUMN

82. ALLOYS FOR HIGH-TEMP APPLICATIONS

Alloyed’s Will Dick-Cleland on the potential for new high-temperature AM alloys aerospace.

POWER UP SLM Solutions paves the way to industrialised serial production with the NXG XII 600.

etal 3D printing can lead to commercial and technical advantages in the production of complex, dense metal parts. Today, advanced users of additive manufacturing already use SLM technology for the production of prototypes and even for the production of parts in small batches. But what does it take to make the leap to industrialised serial production? Key figures are costs per part and the productivity of the SLM process in combination with high part quality. With its recently launched NXG XII 600, selective laser melting pioneer SLM Solutions showed how to push the limits of productivity and revolutionise metal additive manufacturing. The highly anticipated SLM machine is equipped with 12 lasers, 1 KW each and a square build envelope of 600 x 600 x 600 mm. NXG XII 600 is the fastest machine on the market, 20 times faster compared to a single laser machine and equipped with innovative technical features like a zoom function to achieve highest productivity and reliability. It is designed to be used in serial production for high-volume applications as well as for printing large parts, which opens up new applications in the automotive and aerospace industries and paves the way to industrialised serial production. In addition to the parts that SLM Solutions showed at Formnext last year, the company has now shared further application examples printed on the NXG XII 600. This midframe (pictured top right) for an application in the aerospace and defense industry has a very complex design and is difficult to manufacture with traditional manufacturing methods. The part has a diameter of 560 x 427.5 mm and was produced in only 69 hours, while a density of 99.5 % was achieved on the total substrate surface. This application shows the speed and productivity of the new 12 laser SLM machine. A radically improved use of laser time in the build process enables unrivalled build-up rates. The new machine was designed from scratch for serial production and features a whole new optic system, the most compact on the market. It enables large overlap and is based on a tailor-made laser scanning system to best fit the build area. All 12 optics provide spot size definition via a double lens system called zoom function, enabling customers

08 / www.tctmagazine.com / 28.6

â&#x20AC;&#x153;What we deliver here with 12kW of installed laser power is truly ground-breaking.â&#x20AC;?

COVER STORY

KEY FEATURES • Build Envelope: 600 x 600 x 600 mm • 12 lasers with 1KW each • Zoom function • Integrated Scan Field Partitioning for even load distribution between all 12 lasers • Automatic build cylinder exchange • Automatic build start • External preheating station • External depowder station • Lowest production cost by reducing cost per part and overall build time

4 RIGHT:

AEROSPACE AND DEFENSE APPLICATION EXAMPLE 3D PRINTED IN JUST 69 HOURS ON THE NXG XII 600

6 BELOW:

THE NXG XII 600

to choose between different spot sizes in the focal plane which boosts build-up rates to 1000 cc/h and more. Producing a higher yield of parts in a single build job thereby enables mass production at a low cost-per-part. Sam O’Leary, COO at SLM Solutions, is enthusiastic about the machine launch and underlines that a new era of manufacturing has started: “The NXG Xll 600 is a revolution in industrial manufacturing. Up until now, the limit had been considered to be that of a quad laser system – what we deliver here with 12kW of installed laser power is truly ground-breaking and a major step forward, not just for additive manufacturing, but for manufacturing in general. The potential cost reduction and productivity gains that this machine offers you means for the first time in the history of additive manufacturing, you can have true serial production fully integrated into your supply chain.” To facilitate the integration of the NXG XII 600 into factories and supply chains, several automated features like an automatic build cylinder exchange, automatic build start as well as an external preheating station and external

depowder station are part of the solution. To achieve homogeneous part properties all over the build platform, SLM Solutions has developed a new gas-flow setup along with an optimised chamber design and SLM Solutions’ patented and proven sinter-wall technology. Customers can also rely on the patented bi-directional recoating, which has been redesigned to be more compact and gas-flow optimised. The NXG XII 600 features a robust machine design boasting a new thermal concept. This reduces drifts to a minimum and allows customers to print seamless parts stitched together with up to 12 lasers. Additionally, the machine comes with a brand-new UI concept focusing on the operator, which optimises the workflow and reduces training requirements. Again, this underlines SLM Solutions’ focus on productivity, reliability, and safety. The machine is available with two different powder handling options: a gravity based and a vacuum-based solution, that both keep downtime between each build job to a minimum.

28.6 / www.tctmagazine.com / 09

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NEWS

AM INDUSTRY NEWS WORDS: SAM DAVIES

SCOTT CRUMP RETIRES

In September, one of the additive manufacturing industry’s leading inventors stepped away from an industry he was part of for 34 years. In 1989, Scott Crump had filed patents for Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) and founded Stratasys. He led the company through an IPO, helped drive a range of product developments and worked alongside the likes of Boeing, Airbus and General Motors. In 2020, he gave what may be his last ever interview. “I’ve been in the industry for a long time, it’s been a fantastic ride and I just feel it’s a good time to step back, focus on other things,” Crump

told TCT. “Stratasys has come a long way, a lot of applications, a lot of new segments, and we’ve got good leadership. Stratasys is in good hands. At some stage, you just get a feeling it’s the right time to retire.” He went on to discuss his penchant for leaving his comfort zone, the invention of FDM, founding of Stratasys, acquisition of MakerBot, partnerships with industry heavyweights and parted with some words of advice. Read the entire interview at: mytct.co/ScottCrumpStratasys

VELO3D TARGETS XC APPLICATIONS

THE MOST RADICAL 3D PRINTED MIDSOLE

A year on from the shutdown of Futurecraft facilities in the US and Germany, Adidas unveiled its latest effort with what has been described as the ‘most radical’ 3D printed midsole yet. Designed as a proof of principle, the STRUNG running shoe boasts a new lattice structure produced in a blend of UC curable resin and polyurethane using Carbon’s DLS 3D printing process. Supplemented by a reduced heel weight, the new midsole contributes to a shoe that caters specifically for forefoot-striking runners who hit 5m/s or faster. “We’ve made great progress in our ability to scale and in exploring how it can be used for different groups of athletes and consumers,” Marco Kormann, Director of Platform Innovation at Adidas Future, told TCT. “The future of our additive creation technologies will be the increased ability to understand more about different athletes.” Where forthcoming Futurecraft running shoes will be manufactured, however, Adidas chose not to comment.

Having already established itself as a capable aerospace and power generation equipment supplier, VELO3D has moved to up the ante with eight 1KW lasers operating within a 600 x 550 mm build volume. The Sapphire XC (extra capacity) is the third instalment of the company’s metal 3D printing hardware portfolio and has been designed to help customers in the aerospace, defence and energy markets build parts at larger sizes and volumes while maintaining consistent quality. Explaining the addition of the Sapphire XC to the VELO3D portfolio, CEO Benny Buller told TCT: “Our target markets share common characteristics of having a strong need to reduce the production cost as well as produce larger components. Both existing and new customers see the value [of Sapphire XC] and there are currently 13 preorders.” Read more on Page 55.

ULTIMAKER REVAMPS ENTRY-LEVEL SYSTEM

As Formnext Connect rolled around, and despite not exhibiting at the virtual event, Ultimaker still had something to shout about. After placing an extensive focus on making its product range suitable for more industrial environments, in 2020 the company switched its focus to ensuring its offering remained accessible and easy-touse. There were software developments aplenty through the Essentials platform, and the company also unveiled the new Ultimaker 2+ Connect. The machine has a stiffer build platform, is now equipped with a touchscreen for easier operation, can transfer files remotely with added security through Ultimaker Digital Factory and is compatible with the Air Manager. “By adding these improvements,” CEO Jos Burger told TCT, “we can keep solidifying our position of the Ultimaker 2 in the entry level market and what we hear from resellers and distributors is that is a wise move. These are strong segments and we want to keep focusing on them to provide an entry-level product that allows them to get acquainted with Ultimaker and then grow to other types of printers, materials and use cases.”

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MATERIALS

STEPPING ON THE GAS WORDS: sam davies

hrough a recently announced, ring-fenced collaboration, Sandvik and GE Additive set out a very specific materials roadmap for the latter’s H2 Binder Jetting system. It has been driven by the demands of its partner’s end-users and designed to facilitate series industrial applications.

SHOWN: TITANIUM POWDER TOWER AT SANDVIK’S SANDVIKEN AM POWDER PRODUCTION PLANT

The details, for now at least, remain behind firmly closed lips, but Sandvik’s general additive manufacturing (AM) strategy has been made very clear. For more than 15 years, the Swedish firm has been working alongside AM users to deliver metal powder solutions and, since 2013, has made sizeable investments into a wide range of AM technologies. It houses Powder Bed Fusion, Electron Beam Melting and Binder Jetting machines; boasts nine gas atomisation towers to support its metal powder production; and, in the last couple of years, has slammed on the accelerator as it establishes itself as a leading metal AM powder supplier. While a smash-proof guitar made from 3D printed titanium and machined stainless steel proved an effective marketing tool last year, through materials collaborations with GE, ExOne and Renishaw; investments in the BEAMIT and Zare service bureaus; and the securing of ISO 13485:2016 and AS9100D certifications, Sandvik has been prolific in getting things done. The developments of the last 24 months all serve to supplement its 3D printing powder production plants in Sandviken, Sweden and Neath, UK, and continue the traditions of a company founded in the 1860s. “It builds on the heritage, DNA and approach that Sandvik has had over its 158-

year history, driving materials evolution,” Keith Murray, VP & Head of Global Sales at Sandvik AM, tells TCT. “In that time, it has been successful through innovation and diversifying into new and different areas, continuously launching new materials. The interest in additive is driven by the same thing.”

MATERIAL DEVELOPMENTS

Having stepped up its presence in AM through an R&D centre several years ago, Sandvik expanded its play in the sector gradually by plugging gaps in its product portfolio. Titanium and aluminium were the biggest of those gaps and have since been addressed by materialspecific production sites set up in Sweden and the UK, respectively. With these metals complementing its tool steels, maraging steels, stainless steels, duplex and superduplex steels, nickel-based superalloys, cobalt alloys and copper alloys, Sandvik believes it has the broadest range of metal AM powders out there. What’s more, it has control over every step of their development, from raw materials through gas atomisation and all the downstream processes.

The company has decades’ worth of gas atomisation experience and considers it the most commonly used production method of metal additive powders for a reason. “It is inherently strong in producing spherical particles and flow is one of the fundamental characteristics that the powder has to have,” Murray explains, before detailing how the secondary steps of sizing and screening metal powders help to ensure the required particle size distribution for the desired AM processes. Underpinning this is a combination of automation and person-power: scanner systems deliver data measurement and control, robotics helps with process transfers, while parameter setup of the sizing process and running of the machines remain manual tasks. “To build quality into the product, you have to build quality into the processes,” Murray emphasises. “And that means setting up and understanding the atomising process, the sizing process and having all the process controls and monitors in place to ensure that we execute and control all the critical parameters. If you control processes in a good way, then the test [phase] is just confirmatory. If you’re reliant on testing at the end to guarantee quality, then you open yourself to the risk of material not meeting spec and then you have to repeat the loop all over again. That adds time, it adds cost. To avoid that, it’s all about building quality into the entire process.” This increased process quality has already yielded tangible returns. Not content

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MATERIALS with just filling the gaps in its materials portfolio, Sandvik has also sought to make improvements to several of its metal AM powders. One of those is Hastelloy X (UNS N06002), an alloy originally developed for casting applications in the 1950s that is recognised as a difficult material to process using AM technologies. Prone to cracking, Sandvik went about solving the issue and, today believes its optimised material, Osprey HX, ‘greatly reduces the propensity for that material to crack.’ An updated maraging steel powder has been another example of these efforts. “We make a lot of maraging steel, that’s something we have a very good market position on, but last year, we introduced an improved maraging steel for the AM applications where surface hardness is very important,” Murray explains. “The standard product on the market today can achieve a level of about 52 HRC on the Rockwell hardness scale. We can achieve over 60 HRC Rockwell after heat treatment. It’s a superior product that will allow our customers to expand the range of tooling applications, [for example], that they can produce additively because you get better material performance.” As Murray goes on to say, metal powders are all about the characteristics. The sphericity of the powder and distribution of particles ensure flowability, the composition of the material helps to keep the chemistry tightly controlled, and cleanliness ensures a reduced risk of residuals and contaminants defecting the resulting part. As the AM industry has spread its focus from the consistency of the printing process to the performance of the materials, Sandvik has pushed forward.

INTERNAL APPLICATION

For several years now, Sandvik AM has been sharing its developments with its sister businesses. Using a new ironchromium-aluminium alloy, the Sandvik Group’s industrial heating brand, Kanthal, recently set up an AM offering for the development of heating elements and components. Before that, the Seco Tools

SHOWN: SANDVIK COROMANT’S LIGHTWEIGHT COROMILL 390 MILLING HEAD

division had begun supplying a coolant clamp for a milling head which was printed with Powder Bed Fusion using Sandvik’s Osprey 18Ni300 maraging steel and features curved cooling channels on the interior. While this application of AM allowed Seco Tools to design and produce a part that can’t be done any other way, Sandvik Coromant’s use of the technology has resulted in weight reductions of 80% and productivity increases up to 200%. Meanwhile, the Sandvik Coromant business has deployed AM to produce a lightweight milling head, the CoroMill 390, using titanium instead of tool steel and implementing topological optimisation to lightweight the part. This is said to have ensured the depth of the milling head’s cut is increased and done at considerably quicker speeds. The successful internal implementation of AM has been significant, but Sandvik is also serving external customers too, an effort bolstered by adding the capabilities of BEAMIT and Zare. Supplementing the progress made in the last couple of years, and with high hopes of metal binder jetting technology establishing itself as another production tool, Sandvik is now looking to facilitate the greater application of AM, then

SHOWN: SECO TOOLS COOLANT CLAMP PRODUCED WITH POWDER BED FUSION TECHNOLOGY IN OSPREY 18NI300 MARAGING STEEL

scale its capacity to meet the new demand. Pivotal to that is the expansion of its materials portfolio. It has the processes, it has plugged the gaps and improved the materials industry knows and loves, and now the company is wanting to harness its innovative and diversifying traditions to make more significant strides in the AM space. “It’s getting to the stage,” Murray finishes, “of developing alloys specific to additive technology. The history of the industry so far has all been around taking existing alloys and materials that were developed for conventional manufacturing processes – for casting, machining and forging – and transferring those into additive and demonstrating that, for example, Alloy 625 made by additive is comparable to Alloy 625 made by a cast group. “In the first 20 years of the industry, that was the focus, which is understandable. But I think we’re in a stage now where people are looking at more than that, recognising that additive technologies have certain characteristics and, if you use those characteristics in the right way, you can produce a new family of materials that are designed, metallurgically, to take advantage of thermodynamic cycles of laser melting versus trying to convert something that was being made for 50 or 60 years using the same thing.”

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MATERIALS

BETTER METAL POWDER, BETTER METAL PRINTS

By Doug Brouse, VP of Strategic Partners and Alliances at Equispheres.

here is an old adage in computer software – garbage in, garbage out. This aphorism is true for many things, including metal additive manufacturing (AM). Two issues currently challenge the industry: reliability/consistency problems in the AM process and low speed of production. These two issues result in metal AM costs roughly 10x that of traditional manufacturing processes such as casting. Fortunately, printer manufacturers have been working towards resolving consistency issues by making lasers more precise, build environments more controlled, and hardware more robust. Similarly, they have been attempting to increase production speed by improving ingress/egress of parts and packing their systems with lasers. Commendable, but these incremental improvements can only achieve so much – an examination and re-evaluation of acceptable feedstock is critical to achieving the gains necessary to compete with traditional manufacturing.

Traditional gas atomised feedstock powder was never intended for the metal AM process. Early metal AM machine makers selected the feedstock as a means to simplify the commercial introduction of their printers. It enabled their customers to find and use a wide variety of material and allowed the manufacturers to focus on their core business of building machines. However, as the industry matured and moved from R&D and into production, it became clear that better powder feedstock specifically designed for AM, is necessary to meet the broader mass markets’ demanding requirements. This presents a new challenge; what ‘better feedstock’ means has not been clearly defined. The industry generally accepts that powder uniformity, particle smoothness, and narrow particle size distribution (PSD) matter but what has not been understood is how much these properties matter and how this translates into better performing parts. For example, metal AM produces mechanically strong parts most of the time, but it does not produce them all the time. Instead, the process produces parts with mechanical properties that are spread over a spectrum from ‘okay’ to ‘excellent.’ That range isn't ideal when you're designing mission-critical or safety-critical parts. For demanding aerospace and automotive applications, this uncertainty forces design engineers to assume AM is only dependable enough to produce parts at the low-end of the performance spectrum, resulting in parts that are effectively over-designed and bulky. The good news is that better feedstock that has been designed specifically for metal AM can resolve this issue. Research has shown that

‘better powder’ must have the following characteristics to improve the AM process: • Narrow PSD - less than a 30 μm spread between the 10 and 90th percentiles • Few fines - powder particles with a diameter less than 15 um not exceeding 20 million particles by count per gram of material • Excellent sphericity - greater than .93 sphericity • Smooth - specific surface area less than .05 m2 /g Powder with these features will flow two times faster, spread 30% more densely and adsorb ½ the moisture compared to traditional powder. This translates into parts that exhibit ‘very good’ to ‘excellent’ mechanical properties. This improved consistency provides design engineers the statistical confidence to raise the higher ‘a-basis’ design allowable limit by 20 to 30% and produce lightweight high-performance parts. Better powder not only improves the effective mechanical performance of the parts, but also plays a large role in reducing production costs. Powder that spreads 30% more densely can be printed in thicker layers as there are fewer voids, and the energy from the laser is more easily absorbed. By doubling the layer thickness, the speed of vertical production doubles. Additionally, the uniform laser absorption, uniform melting and solidification allow the scanning speed to increase 20%, adding an extra boost to the horizontal production speed. Because 50% of the cost of producing an AM part is related to the cost of the printer time, a two times productive gain roughly translates into a ~25% overall reduction in part cost and represents a significant step towards economic parity with casting. Metal AM can - and will - replace many traditional manufacturing techniques and offers customers better, greener, less expensive products. Creating this future starts with choosing better powder feedstock.

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MATERIALS

COVESTRO BUYS OUT DSM I

t was a move that took the industry by surprise, though not because the additive manufacturing (AM) space isn’t used to one material supplier taking over another. In the last few years, BASF acquired Advanc3D Materials and Setup Performances; Evonik bought out Structured Polymers; and Henkel has introduced materials based on the expertise of Loctite and Molecule.

But Covestro’s $1.61B move to integrate DSM’s Resins & Functional Materials business, and with it the company’s AM offering, into its own did raise a few eyebrows. DSM was among the first thirdparty materials suppliers to establish itself in the industry and has maintained that leadership position despite the likes of BASF and Evonik emerging alongside them. That its next step, a logical one through the lens of its business strategy per the company, was to be done in tandem with Covestro was on few people’s radar. “We believe it is positive news for the future of the additive manufacturing business,” a DSM statement read. “By combining our strong innovation capabilities, sustainable product portfolios as well as complementary technologies and customer industries, we will unlock significant value,” added Covestro CEO Dr Markus Steilmann. “It is a key step to drive innovation for the transition towards a circular economy.” The recent Formnext Connect virtual event was the first glimspe of this ambition. ‘Entirely dedicated’ to the

Circular Economy concept, Covestro's presence at the event focused on products that were made from alternative raw materials, like recycled plastics and its CO2-based cardyon brand, while also highlighting its Addigy range of filament, powder and resins based on polyurethanes, thermoplastic polyurethanes and polycarbonates. Within this portfolio, there are said to be grades with a bio-content of almost 50%, products made out of recycled materials and materials that promise a lower carbon footprint. Such is the range of mechanical properties, like flexibility, strength and rigidity, Addigy is said to have materials suitable to the automotive, footwear, healthcare and electronics sectors. In each industry, the company wants to help companies scale, while being as green as possible.

By mid-2021, when the acquisition is set to be completed, DSM’s broad offering will supplement Covestro’s goals of enabling sustainable production at scale. Through a variety of portfolios, DSM supplies more than two dozen materials to users of stereolithography, powder bed fusion and filament extrusion technologies, while also increasingly providing more options for Fused Granulate Fabrication. Joining its Arnilene AM6001 GF and Arnite AM8527 pellet materials at Formnext was the EcoPaXX AM4001. This material is 42% bio-based according to ISO 16620-1 2015(E) and is said to exhibit excellent thermal and mechanical properties with low moisture uptake, making it suitable for the automotive space, among others. While

“Covestro is the right company to develop the business.” enabling a range of applications in this industry, DSM also believes the material will help users lower their emissions and reduce their carbon footprint by enabling lighter weight products. Sustainable AM is what has brought the two companies together. Seeing AM as a ‘high growth segment’, Covestro was always going to step up its presence in the market and considered DSM’s 3D printing business to be the vehicle to help ‘drive innovation and advance sustainability’ across many industries. In a statement given to TCT, Michael Friede, the Head of Covestro’s Coatings, Adhesives, Specialties segment, said: “The partners along the value chain will profit from a merged expertise and know-how in the field of AM and the complementary product portfolio will expand solution offering for end users. In the context of innovation, DSM’s additive manufacturing will be a good strategical fit and contributor to Covestro’s vision to become fully circular.”

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MATERIALS

GOING GREEN WITH BLUESINT WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS

hen TCT spoke to Fried Vancraen on the Additive Insight podcast back in April, the Materialise CEO and founder described his pride in centring the company’s early mission statement on using 3D printing to create a better and a healthier world. He said: “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." Proving this was not just another platitude on the industry’s looming issue, the Belgian additive manufacturing leader has announced the development of a selective laser sintering-based process and material innovation called Bluesint, which makes it possible to 3D print with up to 100% re-used powder. “The story of Bluesint starts almost 7 years ago, when we experimented with a CT scan to get very detailed impressions of our SLS prints,” Jurgen Laudus, VP & General Manager, Materialise Manufacturing told TCT. “The CT scan revealed very minor irregularities in the printed objects. Irregularities that weren’t visible to the naked eye and that we weren’t able to see before. The next step was to figure out what caused these irregularities. Slowly but surely we gained more insight about the process behind this and we learned what buttons we had to turn to impact the outcome. Once we were able to apply these insights to actually control the process, we decided to use these insights to address the issue of powder waste.” The process has been engineered to overcome the so-called “orange peel” effect, a surface texture problem often found in laser sintered parts produced with only used powder from previous print jobs. The effect is caused by shrinking which occurs when the

“We aim to re-use more than five tons of powder that would normally become waste.”

powder cools down between two consecutive sintering processes. Currently, the answer is a mix of used and virgin powder, but Laudus notes how this option is simply not sustainable. “With laser sintering, the second most commonly used 3D printing technology, up to 50% of the powder becomes waste,” Laudus explained. “The potential to recycle the used powder is limited and 3D printing with only used powder creates surface problems that make the 3D printed object unsuitable for most applications. That’s why manufacturers mix used powder with fresh powder, commonly in a 50/50 ratio. This makes the SLS print process not only more costly but it also creates a lot of waste. With our ability to better understand and control the 3D printing process, we knew this represented a great opportunity.”

SHOWN: PARTS PRODUCED VIA THE BLUESINT METHOD ARE SAID TO BOAST SIMILAR MECHANICAL PROPERTIES TO A STANDARD PA12

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MATERIALS

Bluesint works by controlling two lasers within the printer, one for sintering the powder, and a second to keep the powder above a certain temperature. This prevents it from cooling down between two layers, and as a result, eliminates the dreaded shrinking process. This breakthrough, Materialise claims, delivers 100% recycled parts featuring similar mechanical and visual properties to those printed with fresh powder. “As we gained a better understanding and control of the various printing parameters we were able to manipulate the process,” Laudus said, elaborating on the multi-laser technique. “There are two options: applying a local pre-heating before the actual sintering pass or applying a local post-heating after the actual sintering pass. Local means that it needs to be done by the laser and locally only where material needs to be sintered. Heating means that the energy delivered is not enough to melt the material, but just to pre-heat or post-heat. “By preventing the powder to cool down, we can prevent the shrinking process that causes a deformation of the surface, the so-called orange peel effect." JUST HOW SUSTAINABLE IS AM? As we explored in the last issue of TCT, sustainability continues to stir up debate in the additive manufacturing sector as manufacturers and end-users question whether the process, long perceived as intrinsically more sustainable than traditional manufacturing methods, is in fact as green as we think. In a recent survey presented to Chinese manufacturers by Materialise, 85% of those asked said they believe this to be the case. “This confirms a general consensus that AM is a sustainable manufacturing technology,” Laudus said. “But a recent LCA indicates that for large series of identical products, 3D printing is currently not the most sustainable choice. These kinds of studies are important to

SHOWN:

BLUESINT PA12 PART PRINTED WITH 100% RE-USED POWDER

“The question becomes: what can we do to make AM more sustainable?” avoid greenwashing and substantiate what we do.” Laudus does, however, believe we may need to cut AM some slack: “On the other hand, we need to give AM some credit: ‘young’ standard manufacturing technologies such as injection moulding have been optimised for production for over 75 years. 3D printing has been used in a production context for hardly 20 years. 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?”” Materialise recently participated in a Lifecycle Analysis (LCA) study in partnership with BASF based on the series production of one million pairs of 3D printed midsoles to determine the environmental impact throughout the product’s life. When comparing data from three different 3D printing technologies and conventional polyurethane casting, every time additive was found to have a bigger impact on climate change and depletion of fossil fuels. While bucking the belief that AM is naturally more sustainable, Materialise recognises additive’s other unique advantages, such as the ability to customise products

or bring smaller series production closer to the point of demand, could help balance its environmental impact. Meanwhile, exploration of Bluesint is ongoing and Materialise intends to onboard select customers to a beta programme and load up several machines throughout next year with the powder to meet some serious material recycling ambitions. “In the next few months we plan to run several aser sintering machines with Bluesint PA12," Laudus said. "In this start-up phase alone we aim to re-use more than five tons of powder that would normally become waste. In addition we have created a beta programme for the Bluesint PA12 service and invite selected customers with diverse applications and a focus on sustainability to participate in the market validation process of the new technology. This beta programme will teach us which objects and which applications our customers choose to run with Bluesint PA12.”

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METROLOGY

MEASURE OF SUCCESS WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS

hen FARO went in search of the “Oldest Working FaroArm in Europe”, the 3D metrology specialist was surprised to discover there were plenty of examples of its portable coordinate measuring machines (CMM) still going strong in the wild.

SHOWN:

ÖHLINS RACING WAS PRESENTED WITH A NEW FARO 8-AXIS QUANTUMS SCANARM SYSTEM

“We knew our products had significant longevity but were pleasantly surprised to see over 200 submissions for this contest,” Lars Axelsson of FARO Europe told TCT following its regional search. The oldest was found in Sweden at Öhlins Racing, a provider of advanced suspension technology to the motorsport and automotive industries. Here, a 1993-era FARO Metrecom Arm was still kicking after dozens of years being put to work primarily measuring motorcycle and mountain bike geometries to understand chassis and installation dimensions for its suspension explained. “We can measure where products. the products are produced, even while the products are still in the production With a few adaptations over the years coupled machines or when visiting a supplier and with in-house software developments to measuring parts at their facility. This is a key maximise its capabilities, the near 30-year-old benefit that saves time for our customers, arm has remained an important piece of kit for avoids moving components around the Öhlins’ measurement operations, even with a factory and prevents bottlenecks in the new state-of-the-art FARO arm recently installed. measuring room.” “We have mounted the arm on a linear guide rail which is fixed to a vehicle lift table. It can easily be moved around the measured object, locked in a new position and zeroed against a fixed 3-point steel plate,” Tomas Andersson, Öhlins Racing elaborated. “This enables the possibility to use the original coordinate system and measure the additional points from the new arm position. These [are], of course, basic functions for modern measuring software but these improvements and adaptions have helped us a lot during the years, and with the proven quality of the arm, extended the lifetime to the present date.” The contest saw Ohlins take delivery of a new FARO 8-Axis QuantumS ScanArm System, an 8-axis rotary scanning platform which promises a reduction in scan times by up to 40%, while maintaining accuracy, even in compact spaces. “The new eight axis system is designed to be used in a wide spectrum of industries, one of the biggest benefits is its ruggedness and ability to be used in the production area,” Axelsson

The Ohlins team now plans on transferring much of its current measurement activity over to the new arm, believing the new 3D scanner and 8-axis functions will open up new possibilities to speed up measurement of products such as front forks. These components are currently probed to measure but this will allow the collection of more useful information, combined with probe measurement data for important mounting points like brake calipers. Anticipating high-demand for the new system, Andersson adds, confidently, “The first thing we will set up before [we] even start using the new arm is a booking system since we expect it to be used and requested a lot more than the old FARO Arm.” Commenting on the increased demand for repeatable and stable measurement processes across production lines, to ensure component quality, Axelsson concluded:

“Now there is a greater need to control the process instead of just the parts.” “By increasing the measurement capabilities, we can monitor the parts and the process to ensure we get the best end product in a repeatable way. Now there is a greater need to control the process instead of just the parts. Measurements of control parameters in different steps of the production can help industries identify and react to deviations in the process at a much earlier stage. This helps reduce stop time, costly rework and scrapping parts that hurt important environmental and financial targets for modern industry. FARO’s range of products and software suits this purpose perfectly.”

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3D SCANNING

FROM SILVER SCREEN TO COVID-19 WORDS: SAM DAVIES

hots are fired, soldiers duck for cover, fighter jets fly overhead, the enemy retreats and Spielberg bellows to indicate the end of the take. As actors and runners ready for the next scene, the bodies strewn on the battleground remain lifeless. More than 20 years after Saving Private Ryan earned Spielberg his second ‘Best Director’ Academy Award, the company behind the lifelike models imitating the many fallen soldiers during World War Two was supplying its products for a different kind of fight and one playing out in real-time. It would deploy 3D scanning and 3D printing technology to do so. A few weeks before the UK entered its first nation-wide lockdown, Lifecast Body Sim donated five manikins to NHS Nightingale Hospitals in England and Wales to support the health service with its COVID-19 response and training. The company had been working with the medical industry for a number of years, with a team of clinicians helping to provide manikins that are realistic enough to teach doctors, but suddenly the demand for training equipment was more urgent. Thousands were in Intensive Care Units at the peak of the first wave, thousands more potentially just weeks away from the same predicament, and Lifecast’s models were being used to practice CPR techniques to help patients breathe.

“We’re always in R&D and thinking of new ways to help train medical professionals.” can also be intubated, catheterised and have a collapsed lung re-inflated.

“For COVID-19 training, the bodies have real pulses and lung functions that can help medical personnel practice putting patients on a ventilator, taking their pulse, and giving CPR in a lifelike way,” explains John Schoonraad, Lifecast Body Sim’s co-founder and Creative Director. “Each function of the manikins has gone through rigorous R&D. We needed to be certain that our lung volumes and pressures would replicate those of a real person when attached to a ventilator. We also made bodies with a realistic chest recoil which allowed us to teach prone CPR (face down CPR). This was vital as many COVID patients responded much better when their lungs were lower.”

The company has achieved this by combining traditional casting and moulding techniques with 3D technologies. An Artec Eva 3D scanner is used to capture natural expressions and positions of the human body in a process that takes just a few minutes, the data is processed in the Artec Studio software and then 3D printed. Lifecast Body Sim then refines those prints and uses them to produce a mould with malleable clay, high in plasticity and unique in its elasticity, to add finer details, before creating the dummies with silicon. Hair, eyebrows and eyelashes are added later, while the company has also managed to create functioning ‘lungs’ with differing breathing capacities based on age.

Schoonraad says that cosmetically, manikins used in the film and medical sectors are the same, though they have different functions. For film dummies, it is sometimes important that they can breathe and have pulses, while medical ones, which need to be durable enough to be used daily,

Commenting on the use of 3D technologies, Schoonraad says: “When we’re developing a new product, we need new specs. While there are lots of development overlaps, we’ll still need to get new scans of people for the dummy. Using 3D scanning saves us loads of

time, whether it be for medical or movie applications. The scanning can be done anywhere so it’s definitely the way to go for these applications.” Since March, more than 20,000 medical professionals in the UK have been trained for COVID-19 procedures using Lifecast Body Sim’s manikins, while the company is working on creating new dummies, such as pregnant women and premature babies, to allow nurses to practice on a variety of different patients. It is all to ensure that the company is prepared for any eventuality, especially as COVID-19 cases rise through the winter. “Things are always in a state of flux, but we are prepared,” Schoonraad, finishes. “We don’t sell any COVID dummies, we donate them, and we’re ready to help as needed should the situation worsen. From a tiny human embryo to an 85-year-old woman, we’re creating new manikins to serve different purposes every day. We’re always in R&D and thinking of new ways to help train medical professionals. We’re just scratching the surface.”

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A CUT ABOV Senior Content Producer Sam Davies talks to Guhring about how metal additive manufacturing is enabling significant redesigns of several cutting tools.

ander through the rows of CNC cutting and milling machinery, past the brazing set-up positioned in the corner and beyond the quality assurance apparatus arranged along the back wall, through a big blue door and sat beside a furnace is a single Markforged Metal X.

SHOWN: GUHRING CUTTING TOOLS PRODUCED WITH AM

We are inside a facility which is pioneering a new approach to Polycrystalline Diamond (PCD) cutting tool production and represents the only Guhring production centre out of 72 to be applying additive manufacturing technology like this. The site is in Aston, UK, just down the road from Birmingham and, in early March, hosted a presentation and tour for dozens of engineers looking to learn from an AM user that has hit the ground running. Markforged, and its UK reseller Mark3D, are said to be very impressed with how quickly Guhring UK has managed to not only identify applications but develop and deliver them to several customers. So enthused is one Mark3D employee that he interrupts a slideshow presentation to emphasise that Guhring UK is ‘leading the way in their market’ with ‘nobody else on the planet’ using the tech in the same way. Starting with a Markforged Design system, Guhring UK was first printing composite bodies of cutting tools that they would go on to manufacture with CNC machinery to assess form and fit, so that there were no unwanted collisions after they had positioned the tips. Not long after, Mark3D introduced Guhring UK to the Metal X machine, which they quickly deployed for the manufacture of cutting tools that were sent to select customers to retrieve some feedback. “There was one application that we did for a company abroad which they wanted to turn around in a week,” Alan Pearce, PCD Production Supervisor at Guhring UK tells TCT. “What we did was print the head, raise the PCD, ground the shank and shrunk it into a holder, so it became a monoblock tool, and we sent it to the customer. It worked fine and we turned that around in just over a week, from design to shipping. From the design of the tool, it was just a few modifications to the body, like some grinding on the shank; we do a plastic version to make sure everything is okay; then we do a steel body [with the Metal X]; sinter to harden the body; and then braze and wire grind just like a normal steel body tool or carbide tool. The fact we could do it so quick, that’s a massive advantage.” The typical turnaround period for Guhring’s PCD tooling is a couple of weeks, sometimes more, but after a successful first implementation of additive, the company

028 / www.tctmagazine.com / 28.6

has wasted no time in moving onto the next part, and the next part. Twelve months after adopting AM, the company is unveiling its H13 tool steel milling cutter with a weight reduction of 60%, a time reduction of 66% and a tooling costs saving of 75%. It is the key draw as engineers from across the UK take their seats in the Aston facility. This part is most suitable for application in the automotive industry to cut aluminium pieces and can be printed, washed, sintered and sandblasted within a few days, before the PCD tips are then brazed and the tool is ground with a clocking ring. The part has 125-micron layers, is printed with modular support structures that fall away during the wash and are said to feature smooth surface finishes in the inside pockets. Guhring has also designed the cutting tool with an internal triangular webbing which, along with the thickness of the walls, contributes to that 60% weight reduction. This lighter weight is said to put less strain, stress and force on a CNC machine’s grippers and spindles, while also allowing for faster tool changes and, subsequently, a reduction in cycle times. Meanwhile, thanks to some optimised cooling channels, which work to supply coolant and flush away chips as the cutting happens, the lifespan of the tool has increased too.

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“When it cuts, it forces the chips through the centre of the drill. And the chips come out at the bottom around the body,” describes Weston. “As an engineer, I love it, that's what it's all about. It's special what these guys get up to here. Now, I'm not allowed to tell you much more, but this is something that has been very, very well received.” “3D printing is the only way to do this part,” Pearce adds later. “With the coolant holes design, it would be impossible to do with manual CNC machines. You need to print this part.”

“One of the things they're finding, because they can be very, very directional with the coolant holes, is the tip life is going up,” explains Mark3D UK Managing Director Ian Weston. “Before, the coolant is just a wash or, at best, a sparked hole somewhere in the area. Now, if you want to run it down the side of that tool, we can have letterbox shaped vents kinked straight at the cutting face. All of a sudden, the coolant is exactly where it needs to be. There's a lot of progress being made with internal geometry and that’s stuff you can’t make any other way.” The message from Weston during his presentation is the same as it was to Guhring when the company first began to apply 3D printing: “Don’t think about printing everything, just focus on the awkward stuff.” What he shows the packed room next is something once considered an awkward design to tackle, indeed it was impossible to manufacture through conventional means, but with AM they found a way. As he clicks to the next slide, ‘phenomenal,’ is Weston’s assessment, ‘really special.’ It is an ejector drill that has been designed to make sure that, as the tools cuts away, the chips come backwards out of the cutting area to significantly reduce the risk of swarf being left behind on the piece that is being cut. To direct cutting chips away from the cutting area, the coolant channels have been designed to come along the sidewalls of the tool and twist at a 90-degree angle to squirt coolant at the bottom to divert the chips away.

Print this part is what Guhring UK is doing as it continues to embrace the advantages AM brings to the company. An anecdote told on the way around Guhring UK’s facility is that of all the engineering staff in Aston, it was the intern, who has since been taken on full time, that was most sceptical of 3D printing’s ability to produce the cutting tool’s required by the likes of BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, Airbus and BAE Systems. The scepticism, quite like the metal chips that fly out as Guhring’s 3D printed cutting tools get going at over 10,000 RPM, has been washed away. The introduction of AM has not only allowed Guhring to negotiate complex designs to improve performance, but it has allowed prototype parts to be produced quickly and taken in physical form to production meetings, as well enable Guhring to scrap minimum order quantities on certain parts and free up capacity on its conventional manufacturing machinery. And, as a company with more than 70 production facilities around the world, there’s surely more to come. “The more and more tooling that we're doing, the more and more we're learning,” finishes Pearce. “We're looking at more and different applications so we can use the printer to print tools, to give us a better chip flow, to give us a better coolant flow, all the time. The Guhring plants throughout the world all try to replicate each other. That’s how we first started. We were replicating a plant in Germany. If 3D printing takes off, that will be the case as well.”

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WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS

t’s funny how quickly a phrase can filter into your day-to-day lexicon. Before this year, ‘stay safe’ was something I’d only heard on the regular as a kid when I would rush out of the front door to go play with my friends, or even now on a pre-flight phone call to my mum when I’m travelling solo. Now, it’s in my emails everyday as people I’ve barely shared a handful of exchanges with thoughtfully wish my family and friends well during a universally difficult year. In additive manufacturing (AM), however, staying safe has become about more than just washing your hands to the sound of happy birthday two times (an insight into the UK’s COVID strategy) and staying two metres apart. The pandemic has also forced those within the industry, particularly new users, to think more urgently about how they’re protecting their 3D printable part data, as I heard in my now annual catch up with Dr Lee-Bath Nelson, Co-founder and VP Business at AM software company LEO Lane. “IP issues have always been issues and the more you use additive in production, the more of an issue it becomes,” Nelson told TCT. “I'll even say, conversely, if you do not use additive in production but you come across supply chain failures as we have in COVID, and then you want to use additive as an emergency stop gap, that's even worse in terms of needing IP protection.”

Whether it’s a huge manufacturing organisation seeking to ensure its valuable data is kept in-house or an independent designer wanting to protect their products from copycats, protection of IP is an issue that remains ever relevant to all corners of the AM industry. To address that, LEO Lane is a cloudbased software as a service company which offers solutions to help control the quality and quantity of additive parts. Founded in Israel in 2014, users large or small can securely turn their parts into LEO files - or Limited Edition Object – which control how, where and how many times said part can be produced. It’s a factor more companies have been forced to consider after supply chain hold ups caused by international lockdowns and travel restrictions during the height of the pandemic resulted in alternative methods to be sought in place of traditional manufacturing routes. For some, in stepped additive manufacturing, particularly in the case of crowd sourced COVID products, as a way to manufacture in-demand parts more quickly, perhaps without tooling, and closer to the point of need; benefits the technology has long lauded.

“The more you use additive in production, the more of an issue [IP] becomes.” “During this COVID crisis, we've seen companies that have started to think about, what do I do in the case of failure or emergency?" explained Nelson, "and they realised that if they don't put protection in place in times of peace, then they won't have the protection in place when they need it in times of emergency, and that means that they won't have a solution.”

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In a conversation last year, Nelson explained to me how IP protection doesn't always have to be combative, it can be about ensuring the quality of a part so that every time it is produced, the designer or manufacturer can have confidence in knowing it will be the same each time it comes out of the machine. For COVID-related components used in healthcare scenarios with human lives at stake, this issue was all the more paramount. Nelson points to one of the most famous examples of 3D printing to come out of the crisis from a hospital in Italy. The hospital urgently needed to source valves in order to place intensive care patients on ventilators but the original manufacturer was unable to supply the crucial components in time and unwilling to release its 3D part data. Instead, the hospital turned to a local makerspace which was able to reverse engineer the valve and ultimately helped to save the lives of ten people. Had the original manufacturer already had that protection in place, as a LEO file for example, they could have offered the 3D file specifically for this emergency scenario, retained ownership and served their customer better. “In “normal times”, you need to put in place the mechanisms that will allow you, even if you don't use additive on a day-to-day basis, to move over to additive in case of

“If you want to go to producing close to the location … the issues with IP protection and consistency become even more acute.” failure or emergency,” Nelson said. “Anything additive in production, but especially in emergencies, you have to have security and you have to have repeatability. You can't have these emergency ventilator parts come out all wonky, that's even worse than not having them at all. So, these are things that we address at LEO Lane.” With a solid foundation in delivering IP protection, consistency and repeatability enforcement for AM products, LEO Lane is now looking more closely at workflows and how to allow customers to encapsulate and securely share their knowledge. Giving an update on developments teased just 12

months prior at last year’s Formnext, Nelson says COVID, while entirely unanticipated, has made this development all the more timely. “Clearly with COVID that's even more important,” Nelson explained. “The fact that you can securely pull knowledge from different people, different experts, different places, without actually having to come together, put together some kind of partnership or agreement and doing it the legal way. That you can do it using technology is very important.” Very on-brand, Nelson is keeping details on this development locked, but the message right now is for manufacturers to be better prepared, not only in times of crisis but in times of normality, whatever that may look like in our post-pandemic future. “Secure knowledge sharing is going to become ever bigger because of our new normal or whatever that will be,” Nelson concluded. “I think that software will continue to be a super important part, even more so than before because of remote work, for example. […] That means that you need to be able to control remotely. That's always software. The role of software in the ecosystem has grown a lot over the last couple of years. I think it will grow even faster and bigger, in 2021.”

Listen to the interview in full on the Additive Insight podcast: mytct.co/AdditiveInsight

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Laser Lines Ltd

Supplying 3D Printing Solutions for 27 Years - and counting! FDM | Polyjet| Metal | SLA | SLS | Bureau Laser Lines offers a comprehensive portfolio of 3D Printers and 3D Production systems. The team has amassed over 100 years of experience selling and supporting the complete range of Stratasys FDM and Polyjet systems alongside the desktop Formlabs and Makerbot 3D Printers. For metal parts there are the Desktop Metal Studio, Shop and Production systems, the Additive Industries MetalFab1 modular production system and the exciting SLS printers from Xact Metal. In addition to the impressive list of printing solutions from world leading manufacturers, Laser Lines also offers a bureau facility and certified training courses to ensure you get the best out of your investment. We are keen to help our customers with their purchasing or up-grade decisions and therefore offer competitive leasing options as well as generous Trade-in packages.

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RIGHTS RESERVED Sam Davies talks to the professor behind the industry's latest IP protection patent.

believe this patent has great potential and will play an important role in stimulating the development of 3D technology,” Professor Hing Kai Chan commented in a recent press release. “Getting a patent is the first step.” It’s a step that has taken Professor Chan, and his colleagues at University of Nottingham Ningbo China, three years. The Ningbo campus is one of two overseas branches of the University of Nottingham and has faculties of businesses, humanities and social sciences, and science and engineering. Inside the latter, Professor Chan, while cooperating with the Law Schools of the University of Exeter, Durham University and the University of Sussex in the UK, recently filed a patent for a ‘digital watermarking method for 3D printing models’ that tracks and protects intellectual property (IP). Prior to the filing of this patent, Professor Chan believes it has been all too easy to pilfer the IP from a 3D printing model. “The main challenge is the digital nature of the source CAD files,” he told TCT. “The files can be encrypted, but not the printed objects. Therefore, it is a matter of computational time for someone who possess the files to unlock the encrypted contents and then produce the products, illegally.” While typically the anti-counterfeiting of a 3D printing model has been achieved by embedding a digital watermark into an STL file, Professor Chan, and the additive manufacturing vendors and users he interviewed during his research, had concerns over the efficacy of these watermarks and the subsequent impact on adoption and application. The alternative invented by Professor Chan and his team is an algorithm that

transforms the ‘3D spatial matrix similarity problem’ into a ‘2D image matching problem’, remaining almost invisible to the naked eye so as not to affect the appearance of the part, but unlikely to be lost during the design and additive manufacture of the part. It enables the tracing of item-level information, including the 3D printing platform used and the individual responsible for the design, to protect IP rights. “The patented algorithm adds a watermark on physical printed objects, so the digital files will be altered every time a new digital file is needed, for each batch of production, for a new buyer, etc.,” explained Professor Chan. “The watermark can be changed - in theory - for each printed object. Via a proper licensing mechanism, the designer keeps the original design and sends the “watermarked files” to the buyers accordingly. Therefore, we can trace the source of the files. Reverse engineering cannot tackle this protection scheme. In addition, this concept provides companies

who are willing to pay the licence fee with a channel to recognise IP issues.” Professor Chan was motivated to invent a new solution for IP protection within 3D printing because of the regularity within which IP is stolen and because, when it does happen, it is ‘difficult, if not impossible’ to trace the source of infringement. He believes this adds significant risk to the adoption of 3D printing which, with his background in industrial engineering, he assesses has the capability to optimise production and operation processes. “3D Printing is a typical example of such innovative production process that could bring business operations to a better level” he offered. “That said, if this is compromised by IP issues, companies may not be able to gain the intended benefits brought out by the technology itself, due to poor diffusion. [And] without mass applications, the technology will not be fully utilised.” To provide a contribution to help the potential of 3D printing to be fully utilised, Professor Chan is now in the process of applying for funding to develop a licensing platform to take the patented technology into the commercial space. As with 3D printing, Professor Chan believes his invention holds a lot of potential, but he also recognises more can be done to protect IP rights. “The 3D printing equipment designers and manufacturers play an important role in this protection,” finished Professor Chan. “For example, the patented concept can also be implemented via their printers. They are actually the direct actors who help convert the digital files to physical objects. If they are taking part in this, it will be easier for other researchers to develop IP protection schemes like ours.”

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NO DISTRAC 3D Systems CEO Jeff Graves talks to TCT Head of Content Laura Griffiths about materials science, the company’s new application-focused strategy, eliminating distractions, and how digital will play a key role in the transformation of manufacturing. 3D systems specifically, I was very attracted to the history and culture of the company. As you know, we were the founder of the industry through Chuck Hull's innovation and there's a very deep culture here of innovation and leadership and in transformative type operations, which we bring to bear now for the betterment of both healthcare and industrial applications.

TCT: What was it that appealed to you about 3D Systems and the additive manufacturing industry as a whole? JG: Well, it's certainly a very exciting industry that I've followed for a long time. My attraction to the company was actually multi-fold. One of them is, I was educated in material science. That's where I got all of my degrees and it dominated the first half of my career really developing new metal systems like titanium alloys and the processing of those materials. So, I've got a deep foundation in materials science, which I dearly love. I rose up through the ranks in engineering companies like General Electric, where I expanded responsibilities and operations and then finally running businesses. This is my fourth company as CEO. My desire has always been to lead not only an engineering rich company, and one that drives value from that, but one that was heavily involved in materials science. And you really can't get any better than the additive manufacturing industry.

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TCT: 3D Systems is one of the most established names in AM with a history charting back to the invention of SLA. Coming in, where do you think 3D Systems’ strengths lie in this increasingly competitive marketplace? JG: We've got a great technical foundation in all three of the core technologies that are vital to additive and that's hardware, software and materials science. So, we have deep roots in all three legs of the stool, if you will, that are required for success and we have a heritage of focusing on key applications and converting those to additive. So that's basically our business model going forward, we're going to be very application focused, in specific, high growth markets that really benefit from additive manufacturing. And we will grow from our roots, our core of

hardware, software and materials, which I would argue we have the strongest suite of those of any company in this industry. We're going through a process now of basically eliminating all other distractions. So, everything else that the company had gotten involved with related to subtractive manufacturing and other elements that are non-core, we are de-emphasising or divesting and we're reinvesting in those three legs of the stool: hardware, software and materials with a very strong application focus. TCT: Can you talk a little about your journey with additive manufacturing – do you remember when you were first made aware of it or recognised AM’s potential? Were any of your previous companies using AM? JG: I left school with my PhD in ’87 and my PhD thesis was actually on titanium powder metallurgy. So I remember the early days of actually consolidating powders into net shapes and right away there was the innovations associated with laser processing and building lasers that were powerful enough to sinter powder together into shapes. My experience started with metals and net shaped metal processing through a variety of applications. So I'm very familiar with how the technology has evolved over time. In my last company, MTS systems,

EXECUTIVE Q&A

CTIONS

“We're going to be very application focused.” I had the fun privilege of developing testing equipment for additive products. So as you know, some additive products are very thin walled or very specialised designs that are very difficult to test to make sure they're going to perform as intended from the designer standpoint. So, I've been exposed to additive in all of its phases throughout my career, and pretty intensely, in my last company.

5 ABOVE:

FIGURE 4 HI-TEMP 300 AMB

3 LEFT:

JEFF GRAVES, 3D SYSTEMS CEO

6 BELOW:

FIGURE 4 PRO-BLK 10

TCT: You’ve previously stated that you believe “digital manufacturing will play a key role in the transformation of manufacturing” – can you talk about what you mean by that and what it might look like for today's manufacturers? JG: It's very interesting how COVID has changed things, I would have answered that question with fewer facets to it before COVID. I would have said that additive is an absolute breakthrough technology to allow designers to design higher performing parts with very little cost impact to doing that in the past and this goes back to the roots of additive manufacturing. Before additive, the more complex the part, generally, the more expensive the part because you had to machine it and work it into shape and there were shapes that just weren't possible to manufacture. Additive changed that entire paradigm. So, you can now make very complex parts, the part cost is relatively insensitive to the complexity of the part itself. That's a new design paradigm. And I would tell you, those paradigms change fairly slowly in industry broadly. So, we've needed a new generation of designers to grow up with additive to really adopt it. What COVID has done now is superimposed on that, from a supply chain standpoint, an incredible need for flexibility. If you think about the evolution of COVID, it at first shut China down largely, and then progressed through Europe, and the United States, supply

chains were highly distributed. So, it caused every company in the world to look at their supply chain and say, ‘I can't tolerate this, I have to have more flexibility in my supply chain.’ Even if there are short term cost implications, I need emergency capacity, I need flexibility to make different parts. So additive, I believe, will play a key role there to reconfiguring supply chains, and with an eye toward bringing added flexibility. As companies move to do that, I think then the designers in those organisations will say, "Wow, now that my supply chain guys have brought this capability to the company, what else can I do with it?" So I think you'll see an ever faster adoption now of additive manufacturing. I believe we're really, as an industry, coming into a new era of more rapid adoption of the technology as we go forward. TCT: Has it helped to change perceptions around additive as a manufacturing technology? JG: I think absolutely, it's going to change the outlook of supply chain leaders. And as they then bring that flexibility into their supply chain. Their design engineers are going to say, "what can I do with this technology now that it's in house?" […] I really believe you're going to see an explosion in the designing of components to be made by additive manufacturing, because it's not only driven now by design engineers. […] Now that supply chain leaders are going to be bringing in additive, I think you're going to see design engineers jump all over the technology and really pull it much more quickly, and that'll be good for all of the companies involved in this industry.

Read the full interview at mytct.co/JeffGraves

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Production 3D Printing is a reality for Clenaware Systems Ltd Clenaware Systems Limited are a UK manufacturing company who have been designing and manufacturing ‘ware washing’ equipment for over 50 years. Developing new products that contain a lot of plastic parts can be a costly business, particularly when the product quantities aren’t huge. Ask their ‘hands on’ Managing Director Richard Harris who gets involved in the day to day design and build of Clenaware Systems products. Keeping new product development and ongoing production costs under control is an important part of his role.

Clenaware now have 11 Markforged production machines and work them long, lonely hours when everyone’s gone home. “When you rely on production machines it’s important to look after them, so we made sure we arranged with Mark3D to regularly service them and backed this up with a success plan to cover spares and provide discounted materials”, says Richard. “Mark3D called the other day and told us about a new material that has been released and we’re going to give it a try, we’re always up for trying new things”.

Richard says, “Investing in moulding tools is a big and expensive step for us and it’s especially painful when they change. We used to receive stipulations from suppliers for minimum order quantities too, so it got us thinking about alternatives”. “One part is a filter housing, and we were being asked to order them in batches of 1000, which would last us years, if the part got superseded it would have left us with redundant stock on our shelves, which is ultimately ‘cash’. The tools came from various suppliers in the UK and abroad and were left with suppliers until they were needed.

A tour of the facility confirms that 3D printing low volume production parts is making a big impact, there are printed parts being fitted every day, that have been designed and printed onsite. Parts are fitted directly, with no re-work. The ultimate goal is to print spares locally for their overseas agents too, and Richard sees a time when they’ll be supplying the printer as part of their service – the distributed printing of spares is something that interests him very much.

“Initially we thought about concentrating our additive project on R&D to make sure that we minimised our cost of change on these tools, by printing and approving final designs before committing to anything else, but actually it turned out much better than that! It’s improved our business immensely” “We identified over 100 parts as potentials for low-volume production 3D printing, including nozzles, door catches and cable management devices and cut out the need for any mould tools at all. After a little investigation we decided to purchase 2 Mark Two printers with 3-year success plans, the materials were great for us and the printers had a good reliability record. Very quickly we added 2 more Onyx One printers were added for additional capacity.” Clenaware Systems have now moved the majority of the target parts over to a printing process. The remainder are still stock items or will need some engineering change to optimise the printing process. They now design new parts to suit the process and old, no longer available parts are being made too. “One part we used in our electrical design has been discontinued by the supplier leaving us with a potential issue” says Richard. “In real terms it wasn’t anissue for us, we simply designed one ourselves and used a few bought in parts to get around it – it was so easy to do”.

Clenaware Systems didn’t set out to directly measure the ROI. Richard has his finger sufficiently on the business pulse to know if things are right, and he’s happy. Buying mould tools is an expensive business, the majority of which has been negated. Combine this with not having to over order parts to drive down the unit cost and the savings are substantial. The hugely reduced inventory frees up cash for the business too, which he can fund other initiatives with. Sometimes when stocks have been built up the machines have a day off, but it isn’t long until they start up and the familiar background hum begins again. “The machines aren’t at all noisy, however it feels strangely quiet when they aren’t running, it also acts as a reminder to me that I’m not saving money somewhere” says Richard. Asked if he’d do the same thing again Richard will happily tell you that it’s one of his better business decisions and he fully expects investment in more machines sometime in the future. Each and every time Clenaware Systems save money by not buying a tool the decision is further vindicated. Taking a huge cost out of the business allows a bigger spend on R&D and ultimately better products, which is something the team take great pride in.

mark3d.com/en/clenaware

„When Vic and I began looking at 3D printing to see if it was viable for the business, we had no idea where it would take us. Now we’re some way down the road I have no regrets at all. Our stock levels are under control and we very often print to order, and R&D has been so much easier too“ – Richard Harris, Managing Director, Clenaware Systems Ltd

FORMNEXT CONNECT

omehow, even without flights to catch, miles of trade show floor to walk and late nights playing havoc with the nine to five routine, this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all-digital Formnext Connect managed to feel as busy as ever for the TCT Content team. From curating and hosting a first-class speaker lineup for the two-day TCT Conference @ Formnext Connect, to the thousands of words written on the latest developments coming from those companies exhibiting virtually, content-wise, this felt a lot like any regular November on the TCT calendar. But of course, our activities were hardly anything like our usual end of year trip to Frankfurt as our conversations took place behind screens on back-to-back video calls and our speakers presented their AM insights to a remote audience via Zoom. Over the next few pages, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll find highlights from the TCT Conference, exhibitor Q&As and all of the news you need to know from the virtual event.

CONTENTS 043 TCT Conference round-up 045 Essentium 049 Solukon 051 Inovus 055 Velo3D 057 CASTOR 061 AM Flow 064 Nexa3D 067 Other news

FOR MORE VISIT: MYTCT.CO/FORMNEXT20

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OPEN MATERIALS PLATFORM THAT’S MAKERBOT METHOD In just over three decades, 3D printing has gone from being a wacky new technology which had enormous potential but was incredibly expensive. To a highly flexible, time-saving design and production process which has almost limitless possibilities for both consumer and B2B products and markets. In fact, it was back in 1989 that the first FDM, or Fused Deposition Modelling 3D printer was invented. With it came the dawn of a whole new era of opportunities for product design and manufacturing. The very first 3D printer used a mixture of wax and plastic to produce its three-dimensional print output. Today, new 3D printers are being introduced all the time, and with this explosion in popularity, a wealth of new materials are also being developed and optimised for use in 3D printers. All this choice poses a range of questions for any business looking to harness the potential of 3D printing: Which machine is right for us? Which materials can it print with? Do we use one material for everything or different materials for design concepts, manufacturing, and final parts? MAKERBOT BRING METHOD TO THE MADNESS Founded in 2009, MakerBot was one of the first companies to make 3D printing accessible and affordable with their first 3D printer, the Cupcake CNC. Today, MakerBot serve the largest installed base of 3D printers worldwide and run the largest 3D design community in the world. In 2013, MakerBot was widely recognised as the leading brand in the consumer 3D printer market, which led to the business being acquired by Stratasys, the world’s leading 3D printing company. This move enabled MakerBot to put in place their ambitious plans to redefine the professional desktop 3D printer market. A year later, they introduced the world’s first Wi-Fi connected desktop 3D printer. These plans are still being rolled out and can be seen in the release of the MakerBot METHOD series of 3D printers. Incorporating key Stratasys technologies, the MakerBot METHOD series has moved the professional desktop 3D printer to a performance price point never seen before.

Just as important is the adoption of the Open Materials Platform, which has vastly increased the range of materials which these printers can use. This in turn opens even more potential applications to MakerBot 3D design and print. As the CEO of MakerBot, Nadav Goshen points out, “In an age of disruption, businesses are under pressure to innovate and bring products to market faster. Current desktop 3D printers derive their DNA from hobbyist 3D printers and are insufficient for many applications in the professional segment. “We believe that METHOD is the next step in helping organizations adopt 3D printing at a larger scale. METHOD provides a breakthrough in 3D printing that enables industrial designers and mechanical engineers to innovate faster and become more agile. It is built for professionals who need immediate access to a 3D printer that can deliver industrial performance to accelerate their design cycles. METHOD is developed to bring industrial technologies into an accessible platform, breaking the price-performance barrier and redefining rapid prototyping in the process.” The MakerBot METHOD range of professional desktop 3D printers includes the METHOD X which prints the full range of MakerBot materials. Then there is the METHOD which prints a selection of MakerBot materials to guaranteed dimensional accuracy, plus the specific Carbon Fibre Edition. Together, these three innovative products enable MakerBot to reach multiple markets and budgets. OPEN PLATFORM OPENS UNLIMITED ENGINEERING MATERIALS The METHOD and METHOD X can print with official MakerBot materials and have been rigorously tested for thousands of hours to achieve engineering standards of printed part dimensional accuracy and strength.

These materials include: NYLON CARBON FIBRE Carbon fibre reinforced nylon optimised for high strength to weight ratio, stiffness, and heat resistance, making it ideal for structural applications and metal replacements. ABS One of the most popular materials for injection-moulded consumer products due to its clean surface finish, durability, and heat resistance. METHOD X can print manufacturing-grade ABS without warping and without weakening additives. NYLON Nylon’s ability to withstand high temperatures and its’ durability combine to give it above average abrasion resistance. Thus, it is an excellent material for replacement parts in a manufacturing facility or distribution centre. PC-ABS This strong, engineering-grade material has both a high heat resistance and high impact resistance. When ABS does not provide a high enough impact resistance, but high heat resistance is still needed, PC-ABS is a great alternative due to the addition of polycarbonate. SR-30 SUPPORT This dissolvable support material from Stratasys has been developed to work seamlessly with ABS, ASA, and various other high-temp materials. Using SR-30 with these typically more challenging materials can give exceptional results not possible with PVA which is very difficult to use with ABS. In addition, the Open Materials Platform enabled by MakerBot LABS also enables you to use unlimited advanced print materials in the same machine – offering enormous cost savings plus unparalleled design and manufacturing flexibility. These materials include SEBS 95A (flexible), PETG - ESD (anti-static), PETG carbon fibre, ABS carbon, POLYMAX PC, DURABIO, PC-PBT, Polylite, Polymax Fire Resistant and many more.

For more information and a free carbon fibre print sample, contact MakerBot in the UK&I 0115 9380 380 or email marketing@artsystems.co.uk

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FORMNEXT CONNECT

CONFERENCE

TCT CONFERENCE @ FORMNEXT CONNECT WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS

his year’s TCT Conference @ Formnext Connect was unlike any other. Speakers gave their presentations via Zoom, attendees tuned in from laptop screens the world over, and the whole thing came together at a studio slash cinema in the middle of Liverpool during a Tier 3 UK lockdown. But one thing that remained was the calibre of speakers across this two-day all-digital line-up. Presented in association with Link3D, speakers from Marshall Aerospace, Fraunhofer and more provided insights on additive manufacturing (AM) applications, materials and processes, research and industry challenges. From Virgin Orbit, Propulsion Development Engineer Dayle Alexander, and Oluseun Taiwo, Engineer, Propulsion Advanced Development/Additive Manufacturing spoke about the utilisation of metal powder bed fusion to build intricate details and cooling channels into thrust chambers and injectors, while also working with a hybrid direct energy deposition process for structural jackets and cladding. Of the company’s additive activity, Taiwo said: “Additive manufacturing actually allows us to increase performance of the components propulsion-wise and structurally on our vehicle while decreasing cost, lead-time, complexity and part count.” Of course, it would have been impossible to host an AM in healthcare session this year without touching on the technology’s relevance during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the focus of a presentation from Jesse Chang and Pierre Viaud-Murat, co-founder and

supply chain lead at MyMaskMovement, a global collaborative project setup to provide better-fit PPE using 3D technologies. Rounding out the session were Maxillofacial Surgeon and PhD Scholar in Medical 3D Printing at AIIMS who provided insight into the application of AM in massive maxillofacial Trauma cases, and Jordan Van Flute of UK-based Inovus, a medical simulation technology manufacturer that you can read more about on page 51. The conference also highlighted some of the industry’s biggest challenges, chief among them was sustainability. Sherry Handel, Managing Director of the Additive Manufacturing Green Trade Association, hosted a panel session with perspectives from an entrepreneur, academic researcher, and sustainable design expert on the role of sustainable design in AM. Based on a series of Life-cycle Analyses for every major AM technology, Sustainable Design Strategist and researcher Jeremy Faludi, Ph.D. explained how energy was the biggest priority followed by embodied impacts of chosen materials and the machines themselves. Faludi said: “We don’t really want a 3D printer on every desktop, we want to have 3D printers that are shared by a lot of users so we can really maximise the utilisation.”

The next was supply chain, an area where AM offered somewhat of a lifeline earlier this year as supply chains were put on hold due to unexpected closures in the world’s manufacturing hubs. In a report authored by HP, which surveyed more than 2,000 3D printing and digital manufacturing ‘decision-makers’ this summer, 79% shared the idea that 3D printing could help sure up supply chains and make them more agile. Dr Jennifer Johns of University of Bristol shared data around the current and potential role of additive manufacturing to increase supply chain resilience. While examples this year have pitched AM as a “silver bullet” in supply chain, additive’s role is actually more nuanced, as Johns explained: “I think we’re going to end up with a very complex picture of reshoring, of distributed manufacturing and dual sourcing, and they will be mixed together and that complexity will create challenges, particularly for policy making and for manufacturing but there is a clear role for additive in all three of those scenarios.” Catch up on more from the TCT Conference @ Formnext at tctconferenceformnext.com

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FORMNEXT CONNECT

EXCITING TIMES WORDS: SAM DAVIES

“The Air Force is looking at AM very maturely.”

his is super boring stuff to 99% of people in the world, but for me, as a materials scientist, I’m super geeking out about this.”

This excitement is routine for Essentium CEO Blake Teipel. It comes to the fore whenever his company is ready to unveil the latest products of its in-house materials or lift the curtain on an ongoing collaboration. Discussing announcements made in conjunction with Formnext Connect, and prior to the virtual exhibition and conference, the excitement is twofold.

FIRST, MATERIALS

Expanding its Carbon-fibre range, Essentium’s Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)-CF material is considered by Teipel to be a ‘utility-grade’ product that exhibits ‘great printability, great surface finish and low moisture uptake relative to nylons and other polyamide-based materials.’ Certified for use on Essentium’s High Speed Extrusion (HSE) and open for processing on other platforms, it enters the company’s product portfolio as a cheaper alternative to the HTN CF25 material launched at last year’s Formnext, while giving a slightly better

performance than the PA CF grade, which has been used for biomedical and tooling applications. “This PET carbon fibre is a little bit harder, slightly less tough [than PA CF, but], with a mid-pack carbon fibre material, we’ll still enjoy the benefits of stiffening a material: dimensional stability, thermal stability, mechanical stability, all those things you enjoy when you typically put carbon fibre in,” Teipel tells TCT. “If you engineer the compound properly, then you can push the mechanical limits in some areas like strength and stiffness, while not degrading the mechanical properties in other areas like toughness and ductility. We’ve been able to accomplish that.” Another of Essentium’s new additions represents a first for the company, as it combines electrostatic properties with colour. Anti-static and with 58 Shore D hardness, the TPU 58D is ‘perfectly tailored’ for jigs and fixtures and answers customer requests for the ability to designate tools that are used in different departments or areas of a facility by colour. It is another example of Essentium not resisting industry pull.

Earlier this year, the company told of its development of Essentium 9085 (made from SABIC’s ULTEM 9085 resin) in response to the demand from the aerospace sector. That material, which is manufactured and certified by Essentium in its ISO 9001- and AS9100D-certified facilities, was fast tracked for release after the US Air Force awarded the company a four-year contract. The certifications followed. Essentium 9085 is now commercially available, and while versions of the material have been applied by the likes of Airbus and Boeing for interior cabin parts at the front of the lifecycle, Essentium is targeting application midway through or at the ‘tail-end’ of the lifecycle of planes. Through its work with the US Air Force, Essentium is looking to have a positive impact on the organisation’s maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) and ground tool operations. “Aeroplanes are always expensive,” Teipel says. “They’re expensive when they’re flying but also when they’re sitting on the ground. So, you need both types of printed part. The one you can print and certify to fly, and the printed part you can use while the aeroplane is on the ground to do the service and turn around that aircraft as fast as possible.” This is the other reason for Teipel’s excitement.

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FORMNEXT CONNECT

SECOND, US AIRFORCE Aligning with the US Air Force over the last 12 months, Essentium has witnessed the organisation reshape its industrial base, embrace advanced manufacturing methods and ‘encourage companies to work with the military, without them necessarily becoming a defence prime.’ Via its AFWERX division, the Air Force is becoming an early-stage investor and looking to tap into US and global tech ecosystems. Through this, the US Air Force has begun working with around 1,000 new companies over the last couple of years, including several 3D printing firms. The collaboration with these companies helps the Air Force rapidly sustain its ground and air vehicles through the aptly named Rapid Sustainment Office, which is looking to keep its fleet of vehicles ‘up to par’ and trying to improve the total flight hours of each aircraft. Essentium has responded to these goals, having a ‘tiny impact’ on what is a big drive from the Air Force to modernise operations and enhance efficiencies. Teipel’s company came to be involved in these efforts after some of his team saw a lot of what they perceive Essentium to offer in a US Air Force report published to Congress. They quoted its demand for advanced additive capabilities that are open back to the government department and are now working with the Air Force to support MRO and ground tooling, while also providing a boost to the industrial base that helps to supply the country. Now, Essentium is using the expertise it pitched to the Air Force to address many of the organisation’s problems. Among them is certifying materials at greater speed and volume than is currently possible. Working with the Air Force Research Lab, who are tasked with the requirements involved to certify a material, Essentium is set to harness

the sizable build volume of its HSE machines and its speed capabilities, to certify four times the quantity of materials at reduced time and cost. “As a result of Essentium’s machines being faster, we can now print the statistically large number of sample parts that are required to undergo full certification much faster,” Teipel explains. “When you’ve got a part that you need to produce in a short amount of time that goes into some end application, it’s always great to have that faster, but when you’re trying to certify a material on the front end for use over time then you’ve got to produce hundreds or thousands of test specimens. And if you can produce those parts five, six, seven, eight times faster then you can get to certification much more quickly.” The other key issue being addressed is one that allows Teipel to exercise his geeky side. Such are the old age of a lot of Air Force aircraft, many of the internal structures are made from 28 different military specified grades of phenolic materials, which were defined back in the 1950s. While the materials can be used to produce brackets that hold hydraulic hoses, wiring and mechanical systems

in place, phenolics are also highly toxic via oral exposure. What’s more, because much of Air Force aircraft have been in use for decades, some phenolic parts are wearing out and there’s no direct replacement materials to make those parts. Some depots are said to use wood to hold structures in place, but since this is not sustainable, the Air Force wants exact replacements that achieve the same mechanical performance as the phenolics. “We took a look at the mil-specs and we designed a compound. There are four compounds we want, we got funded to do the first one, and we think they will address the 28 mil-specs that are currently out there,” Teipel says. “We’re going to start with a material that we think will address about 25% of those mil-specs and provide the ability to be 3D printed on site, because what the Air Force wants is two things: they want expeditionary part production, where you’re downrange or you’re on a base and you have this printer drawing a part file from a repository, and they want to print at the point of service.” These wants have led to several contracts being handed to 3D printing companies this year, including Open Additive, Optomec and GE, via the Strategic Financing programme which Essentium is a founding member of. The variety of companies now working with the Air Force has impressed Teipel, who’s eager to get back to it. “You’ve got to have the right tool for the job,” he finishes. “Essentium can do things Optomec can’t, they can do things we can’t. [The Air Force] is looking at it very maturely and you’ll see this ever-broadening focus, ever deepening investment in various types of additive to bring about specific value propositions at large scales. It’s very exciting.”

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FORMNEXT CONNECT

SOLUKON MOVES INTO POLYMERS WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS

his year marked a significant change of pace for the TCT Award-winning postprocessing specialist Solukon as it unveiled its first piece of hardware aimed specifically at the polymer additive manufacturing market. Already up and running with a number of customers in Germany, the SFP 770 combines both excess powder removal and a cleaning cycle in a fully automated process that allows for a large 150 litre build box of polymer parts to be unpacked and finished, residue-free, within in a few minutes. TCT spoke to Andreas Hartmann (AH), CTO and Cofounder of Solukon to find out more.

TCT: Solukon is moving into polymers for the first time – how different is this technology from your previous metalfocused solutions? AH: While we are concentrating on removal [of] residual powder from highly complicated metal structures, our new polymer process involves much more post-processing steps that had to be solved. The process includes an automated unpacking of the complete build box, internal transfer of unpacked parts and fine cleaning of the part surface. [This] is fully programmable to adapt it to a huge range of part sizes and geometries that can appear within one print job. TCT: Can you talk about the need for this solution and the gap you’re aiming to fill in the additive market? AH: The development was launched and pushed by a long-standing customer. His long-term aim is an economic powder free shop floor.

The idea is that all processes run without contact to the powder. We expect this to be a mandatory prerequisite when thinking about future mass production. TCT: Echoing that customer's goal, you've said the SFP 770 is a key step towards an automated “highly efficient and powder-free shop floor” – how does it achieve this? AH: The operator loads a complete printed build box directly from the printer. After cool-down, the system will unpack this due to [a] brand new process within minutes. After unpacking, the parts are automatically forwarded to a finishing process. Here, residual powder from the part surface is removed by shot blasting and ionised air. When the machine is opened again the operator will hold finished parts in his hand. All the dirty manual processes with contact to powder are handled efficiently and automatically inside the machine. That will accelerate the post-process and keep the environment clean. TCT: Can you talk about the type of polymer additive manufacturing technologies this is designed for?

AH: The machine is designed for SLS and MJF, especially for EOS P7 systems. We already made peripherical solutions for this machine but the innovation has solely been developed by us. TCT: We’ve seen Solukon’s metal post-processing solutions installed with a number of industrial customers including service providers like Siemens Materials Solutions and Protolabs – in which industries/customers do you see the demand for this new polymer solution? AH: We see the future for [these] complete solutions at large service providers, but also at companies that have an eye on the issues of powder contamination. We decided to provide the unpacking unit also as a single system without the cleaning unit for customers that already run a shot-blast or similar cleaning system. The unpacking will help the operator to save most of the post-processing time and avoid manual operations in the powder cake. Unpacking of a 150 litre build box can be done in under 10 minutes. We expect that this makes it interesting for most AM users. TCT: As additive manufacturing is increasingly being explored for production manufacturing – how will this new solution help facilitate that transition for polymer products? AH: With this automated solution the employees will have much more time for other important tasks. If the production output is going to be increased, no additional head count needs to be added. The post-processing efforts are significantly accelerated through automation. The system allows [users] to unpack a build box simultaneously during the cleaning process. With OPC/ UA control, the machine is prepared for further automation such as automated loading. We hope to be able to offer the next step to production.

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FORMNEXT CONNECT

INOVUS ON USING AM TO CREATE AFFORDABLE, FUNCTIONAL MEDICAL TRAINING EQUIPMENT

uring this year’s TCT Conference @ Formnext Connect, Jordan Van Flute, Chief Technology Officer at Inovus Medical (Inovus) shared how additive manufacturing has allowed the UK-based medical simulation equipment developer to deliver affordable and highly functional medical training devices. Here, the CTO speaks to TCT about the company’s journey with 3D printing from a prototyping tool to a means for mass production. Inovus began the way any good start-up story does; in a garage, cobbling together your first prototypes using any tools you can get your hands on and “bumbling away through engineering problems” as Jordan Van Flute, Chief Technology Officer at Inovus, recently recalled to TCT. Having forgone any formal engineering training, it’s a career that found him, not the other way around, as the selfproclaimed “natural engineer” had a knack for taking things apart and

tinkering. Yet it was this non-traditional background that freed the CTO from the constraints of those conventional engineering ways of doing things and, as Van Flute puts it, one of the reasons they ended up at 3D printing. Founded in 2012 by a trio of psychology and medical graduates in the North West of England, Inovus is a designer and manufacturer of medical simulation products designed for teaching skills in critical care, medicine, hysteroscopic and general surgery. Pursuing careers in the medical industry allowed the founders to see first-hand the challenges students and medical professionals faced in getting access to high quality, affordable and versatile healthcare training equipment. After putting the feelers out, they learned the problem was a common one across the industry and set out to build their own. Of those first basic prototypes, Van Flute said the team gained positive traction early on with some key opinion leaders, but after running the numbers on the more traditional manufacturing route of finding a designer, outsourcing in large

volumes and storing surplus stock, they discovered they would need to take a different approach if they were to realise their ambitions. Van Fute said: “There was just no way that we could create something that was affordable enough to be able to sell it to the end user at the kind of price point that we needed it to be in order to be able to provide accessible surgical simulation across the board for anyone training at home, all the way through to training in the hospital.” But a first sale early on to the NHS through Wigan Royal Infirmary allowed the team to invest in their first piece of advanced machinery; a CNC machine, acrylic bending machine, and a desktop 3D printer. “It was a little tiny desktop machine, originally just bought to create tiny little component parts,” Van Flute explained. “One of the things that you must

SHOWN: INOVUS CO-FOUNDERS JORDAN VAN FLUTE AND DR ELLIOT STREET

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FORMNEXT CONNECT

remember about our sector is that it's a very low volume but high margin sector [...] so, it allows us to be able to use these technologies that otherwise wouldn't be available to other manufacturers within this space. That was our first taste of 3D printing and we discovered that we could do all kinds of different things in different geometries that we couldn't do in the traditional machines. That's really what got the seed planted.”

couple of years before deciding to bring SLS in-house. The team went shopping at TCT Show 2018 and after raising a few eyebrows at a number SLS vendors, a representative from 3D Systems was at the Innovus office within a matter of days with a handful of SLS parts in tow. The first 3D Systems ProX SLS 6100 machine was installed in January last year and since then, Van Flute explained, the company has “exploded.”

The team spent time honing their craft and building out their production capacity until 2013 when they outgrew their humble garage and moved to a new facility … a basement underneath a pub. But this phase allowed them to grind and reinvest in yet more sophisticated machinery until eventually moving to their current premises where the company has lived for the last three years.

“We are already now at full capacity with that machine,” Van Flute said. “So, whereas we had this one product that we were SLS printing when we first got started, we now SLS print about six casings for different products and make a total of about 560 smaller component parts that are used inside of much larger assemblies.”

Though it wasn’t until 2014, in a project brought to them by Edge Hill University in Liverpool, when Van Flute says Inovus really began to explore the full potential of 3D printing. Tasked with creating a piece of training equipment for cricoid pressure, they started looking at the possibility of 3D printing casings as an alternative to injection moulding in order to save money on tooling costs and manufacture in low volumes. Working with a service provider, Van Flute and team had a selection of selective laser sintered parts in-hand within a week.

“That was a real moment for me where I thought this technology could change our sector in a big way.”

“I think that was a real moment for me where I thought this technology could change our sector in a big way because we knew that it was all about low volumes but maximising the margin. And we knew that by having a technology like that at your fingertips, you could make changes on the fly that you couldn't with injection moulding. It gave us so much flexibility.” Inovus continued working with the service bureau for a

Not only has SLS enabled Inovus to print parts directly, including the ability to print quick changes on the fly or produce replacements for customers, it has also improved other areas of production like the printing of injection mould tools for silica parts. It’s just one of the ways the company is doing things differently, but key to this success, particular in mass manufacture, Van Flute believes

is actually in the way Inovus finishes its parts. “We try and do things as modestly as possible and in a way that's most cost effective. We're problem solvers and engineers and we really enjoy that process. When it comes to things like the finishing processes, rather than having that huge CapEx up front or the incredibly expensive consumable costs of things like dye, we we've taken that all internally and we've created our own machines to process parts at a speed and quality that suits us as a business.” From FDM prototypes to end-use parts being churned out daily across a multitude of applications, 3D printing has become an integral part of the Inovus story and it’s one Van Flute says the team enjoys sharing with customers who may be unfamiliar with the kinds of enduse capabilities now possible with the technology, specifically SLS. “Like a lot of industries, there's a lot of excitement in anything that is made in a different way,” Van Flute said. “I think that for people who are familiar with [SLS], it's not as mind blowing, which is a shame, but for people who aren't, like a lot of the people that we work with in our industry, it's mind blowing for them to see some of these casings.” Reflecting on that journey with the technology, Van Flute added: “I don't think I envisaged with those desktop machines where we would end up but it certainly was the thing that kind of led us to where we are and I, as I always do, just let it take its course. I think that sums me up really as an engineer, I just kind of let things happen and let them evolve naturally.”

SHOWN: LAPAR SIMULATOR ALLOWS SURGEONS TO PRACTICE PROCEDURES IN GENERAL SURGERY AND GYNAECOLOGY

28.6 / www.tctmagazine.com / 053

FORMNEXT CONNECT

CAPABILITY,QUALITY, PRODUCTIVITY WORDS: SAM DAVIES

VELO3D CEO Benny Buller [BB] talks to TCT about the expansion of its hardware portfolio.

TCT: Can you explain the motivation behind the Sapphire XC platform? BB: As our target markets are aerospace and defence, energy, and power generation, they share common characteristics in terms of having a strong need to reduce the production cost as well as produce larger components. But, creating a larger build volume and higher productivity system is only a small piece of the equation – there is still tension between what designers need, what is manufacturable and the capability to manufacture at the quality required. Maintaining consistent quality is only magnified as a customer approaches scale in volume or part size. Sapphire XC was created to leverage all the capabilities introduced by the VELO3D Sapphire system in terms of freedom of design and quality control by offering industrial customers a way to produce the parts they want, through our SupportFree process with quality-assured production. Both existing and new customers see this value, and there are currently 13 pre-orders for Sapphire XC. TCT: What considerations did you have to make when equipping this system with eight 1KW lasers? BB: Eight lasers requires a lot of thoughtfulness when it comes to alignment, calibration, and overall management. We have a lot of experience in managing multi-laser optics and are the first to employ metrologies like in-situ overlay correction, beam stability, distortion mapping, and much more. These quality assurance protocols have earned VELO3D a strong reputation when it comes to repeatability, and we will apply that practice to Sapphire XC. TCT: VELO3D also recently revealed its plan to roll out a Sapphire Gen 2 machine – can you explain why this has been necessary, just a few years since the launch of the machine?

BB: As we introduced the Sapphire system, our primary focus was on capability, then focused on quality, and after getting to a level that we are satisfied with both of those, we are now starting to push productivity, which of course reduces print cost. Sapphire Gen 2 is bolstered with both hardware and software improvements, making it a more competitive mid-sized LPBF system, producing anywhere from 1050% improvement in both productivity and cost reduction. Sapphire Gen 2 can also be retrofitted on all installed machines starting in Q2 2021. TCT: You now have a three-strong hardware portfolio with the Sapphire (Gen 2), Sapphire XC and the one-metre tall version – what has been the thinking around making these all available? BB: VELO3D is unique because the Sapphire family of systems all share a foundational architecture. In other words, the optical train, gas flow, metrology, SupportFree process, and non-contact recoater are all uniform among the systems. This uniquely enables customers to transfer their part recipes among the Sapphire systems without having to endure the vicious cycle of prototyping.

Each of these systems was launched with customer orders tied to them. Our metre-tall system has attracted significant interest by oilfield applications, and Sapphire XC is popular among space and aviation. Sapphire is still going to be a very important work horse as this is a very cost effective and easy to work with system to develop and start production of parts. However, when scaling up production rate, instead of buying four additional Sapphire systems, a customer would be able to buy one Sapphire XC and accomplish the same capacity with roughly 3-4x lower cost. TCT: In October, Boom Supersonic unveiled its XB-1 aircraft with more than 20 VELO3D-enabled components – how significant is your collaboration to the AM and aerospace industries? BB: We are highly collaborative with the space and aerospace industry and are working with a number of these end users on application development. We guide them through the fact that they do not need to compromise their designs in a painful way to make them manufacturable by AM. Additive manufacturing should enable design innovation, instead of modifying designs to be suitable for additive manufacturing. The great thing about Boom Supersonic and other aerospace companies is that they push our technology to the finite limits and force us to be better – improving both part quality and the ability to manufacture a new class of parts. How much thinner can titanium be printed without cracking? How can we improve our residual stress process even more? These are questions that we have to ask ourselves daily, so we enable the manufacturing of even more complex components.

28.6 / www.tctmagazine.com / 055

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FORMNEXT CONNECT

MAXIMISING 3D PRINTING’S POTENTIAL WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS

don’t know about you, but I’ve had my fair share of experiences proudly setting up a 3D printer on my desk, staring at it blankly, only to wonder: “What on earth should I print?”

As we’ve come to learn over the last three decades, additive manufacturing’s (AM) real value is in identifying those killer applications where reductions in lead time, manufacturing costs, weight, tooling, and so on can lead to huge benefits across a part’s lifecycle. Setup to help manufacturers find such key apps is Israeli start-up CASTOR, which recently launched a new advanced version of its industrial 3D printing decision support software tool. Speaking to TCT back in October, CASTOR CEO Omer Blaier described how the Tel Aviv-based company’s recommendation algorithm inside its debut solution CASTOR Light provides automated technical and economic analysis of CAD files, “allowing manufacturers to make an informed decision whether to use 3D printing or not.” A month later, in an update on the company’s next generation offering, Blaier elaborated on the driving force behind CASTOR’s founding: “From the experience we have of being in a position to actually see the market needs and really get to know the hardware capabilities of 3D printing, we've understood that it's really the lack of information and in-house expertise that prevents enterprises from utilising 3D printing to generate profits. “The hardware is already there, 3D printing can do amazing stuff; we need to bring the files into the printer, we need to bring the applications to the printer and that is being done only with software, only with automatic tools. We've generated an automatic tool to identify such opportunities.” During an 18-month beta of its first cloud-based solution, CASTOR received around 30,000 part uploads to the software and generated a number of white label solutions for largescale customers along the way. It was here where CASTOR saw the

need for a more sophisticated tool that would not only help AM novices to identify parts but assist those with AM knowledge in understanding how to optimise them. “Until today, CASTOR was mainly focusing on finding the low hanging fruits out of an existing design,” Blaier explained. “CASTOR Enterprise is mainly focusing on identifying design for additive manufacturing […] as a tool in the hands of those additive manufacturing experts in large organisations who already decided to go to additive manufacturing.” Put simply: “Light is more for non-experts to understand where to start from and Enterprise is for experts to do their job better.” While CASTOR Light was initially launched as a screening tool to help non-AM experts find potential cost reductions in their parts, CASTOR Enterprise takes that a step further by identifying not only cost reduction opportunities in the part’s current form, but also small changes that could create “huge impact on the bottom line.” To achieve this, CASTOR has deployed several new features on-board its Enterprise solution including the option for customers to have an on-premise version of the software installed onto their internal systems to provide “single click button analysis.” CASTOR has also been mindful about how these tools integrate within the current infrastructures of large organisations and has therefore included the ability to amalgamate with current PLM and ERP software in a bid help the software to “live in the environments that engineers are already used to living in.” Finite Element Analysis capabilities have also been introduced to provide further data on part printability. It’s both “very quick and very unique to additive manufacturing,” according to Blaier and takes into account the un-isotropic properties and material characteristics across an entire part. Blaier adds: “We call it "likelihood to failure" of a part, meaning that you can, very quickly, first identify business opportunities and if it can save you money.” Perhaps most significant are the product’s part consolidation tools which provide visibility on where adjacent parts can be combined into a single piece to reduce further weight and manufacturing costs.

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FORMNEXT CONNECT “Some use the tool as a prototyping tool, but it's not the purpose, the purpose is to help manufacturers use it for end-use parts considerations," Blaier confirms. "That's why we start with material properties. First, identify the best match material in 3D printing that matches the traditional manufacturing materials properties, according to the preference of the user.”

“We’re identifying bulky parts – as in they have a lot of material within the part that can be removed – and we are actually providing a redesigned part so that you can reduce the weight, and we’re doing that automatically for thousands of parts at once,” Blaier said. There are said to be “tonnes of customisations” allowing engineers to control the parameters for their estimations to determine the breakeven point with traditional manufacturing methods. Furthermore, while customers can start out by inputting their in-house machines to generate results from those on-site capabilities, the software can also reach out to its network of 3D printing service bureaus to weigh up the benefits of outsourcing. “Because we're now approaching large enterprises, it's not only the bottom line savings that we're looking at, which is really important for SMBs for example, it's also the top line that we generate for the enterprise in the inventory costs and the shipping costs and the labour costs involved in assembling two parts together, and the strategic decision level of whether it makes sense for me to buy a printer or to outsource it always to a service bureau,” Blaier explains. “All those top line savings considerations are in a new panel that we've generated for experts to see how

“We've understood that it's really the lack of information and in-house expertise that prevents enterprises from utilising 3D printing to generate profits.” 3D printing fits into all the elements of the cost savings of an enterprise.” The belief is that this Enterprise level tool, which takes into account real-world manufacturing scenarios and considerations, could help to accelerate more end-use part production by giving manufacturers a clear understanding of where additive makes the most sense.

That grounding in materials was demonstrated in CASTOR’s first major project with materials giant Evonik, which invested in the start-up through its venture capital arm last year. Through this partnership, CASTOR created a tool to help Evonik customers select the most appropriate 3D printing process for their design geometry and see if their application is the right fit for Evonik’s materials. Other customers include power tool manufacturer Stanley Black and Decker which is using CASTOR’s tool for cost reduction analysis across their thousands of consumer-facing products. There’s also beer company ABInBev, which is using the software to tackle challenges in maintenance and spare part sourcing across its numerous sites to determine whether additive can be used in place of traditional manufacture. “Evonik is using us because they've understood that in this digital world today, digital transparency with end users is a must to understand whether 3D printing can help or not,” Blaier said. “So potential customers can now upload parts and see if it makes sense to use advanced materials as a way for communication in these crazy times and in general to make better decisions before going into additive.” Putting materials at the core of the decision and analysis process correlates with a wider shift in the AM industry which has seen a surge in materials vendors pairing up with service providers to reach out to endusers. It echoes the sentiment from Thomas Große-Puppendahl, Head of Innovation Growth Field Additive Manufacturing at Evonik, which at the time of the CASTOR partnership announcement, said: “With the software, broader adoption of 3D printing at a commercial scale is now possible.” Reflecting on CASTOR’s ambitions to make that broader adoption possible with the launch of CASTOR Enterprise, Blaier concludes: "CASTOR was founded with the goal of helping manufacturers drive profitability by using industrial 3D printing, creating tools which solve the challenge of identifying where, when, and how to use 3D printing to reduce costs.

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FORMNEXT CONNECT

AUTOMATING THE AM-FLOW WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS

n our last Additive Insight podcast as a trio, our former TCT Head of Content Dan O’Connor mused how, in his eight years spent in the additive manufacturing (AM) industry, the most significant developments he’d seen were that in the automation of post-processing. Those developments, he claimed, were an important part in enabling AM to graduate to mass production. You’d think he’d been taking tips from AM Flow, a developer of automation solutions for AM post-production, which is aiming to do just that with a mix of AIpowered software and hardware solutions that address those end-to-end postprinting workflow steps.

“Automation is absolutely necessary.” “If you look at AM versus injection moulding […] injection moulding is a fully mature technology with fully mature automated processes around it. AM is by no means a mature technology, let alone this automated environment. We're making baby steps in that area. I think these are just the evolutionary steps towards creating that end-toend automation. […] The

driver in this is cost and our cost price in printing as an industry is too high. On top of that, we've got things like lead times and quality. All of those issues need to improve for additive manufacturing to stake its claim. I think that automation is absolutely necessary.” Carlos Zwikker, Commercial Director at AM-Flow made those comments in a conversation with TCT ahead of this year’s Formnext Connect where the Netherlands-based company had planned on showing its new AM BAGGING solution, the latest module in its growing suite of products, which now offers fully automated bagging and labelling of AM parts. It follows a now annual unveiling of AM Flow’s latest wares which began with the reveal of its AM VISION prototype in 2018, and last year, a first look at its AM SORT system. AM-VISION sits at the core of AM Flow’s ‘stack’ to deliver part recognition based on geometry and overcome what the company has observed to be one of the most labour-intensive steps in the production process.

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“If we have people doing all that work, our additive manufacturing industry is not scalable.” Once a part is identified, it can be put through the sorting system, picked using a robotic gripper and transported via the use of fully autonomous cobots, known as AM-ROUTE. Zwikker continued: “Those are all sorts of modules that fit in the production line perspective but the essence is, we can identify it first because if you can't identify parts, you can't do all the other stuff.” The problem, Zwikker believes, is that additive R&D has historically focused heavily on the printing portion of the value chain. While more attention has been paid to materials and software developments in recent years, AM Flow has taken it upon itself to tackle the other process steps which need to be considered in order to make additive a scalable production method. “What we're trying to do is create production lines for additive manufacturing, but additive manufacturing hasn't created itself as a full-blown production environment,” Zwikker explained. “We're increasing the number of applications of additive manufacturing because it's proving itself, which is great news. There are more volumes, more stuff being printed but now that you're generating more and more, people are also not just prototyping but getting into serial production.”

Zwikker points to the business models of well-known manufacturing providers like Materialise and Protolabs which are churning out high volume, high mix parts daily. Take a walk around Shapeways’ factory, for example, and the rows of bright white SLS printed parts neatly ready to be shipped to customers is astonishing. These kinds of operations have established efficient processes, such as optimal nesting, to build and deliver those different models to various clients. AM Flow wants to optimise those next steps that occur once a part comes out of the print and de-powdering stages and lands onto a sorting table. “People start sorting with their hands, what is this piece? For whom? What needs to happen to it? Does it need to be polished? Or does it need to be coloured? Or does it go immediately into the DC?” Zwikker said. “That's basically the big hole of post-processing that we've jumped into by saying, “look, we have to automate all those steps.” Because if we have people doing all that work, our additive manufacturing industry is not scalable. It's going to be too costly.” Given those production volumes, a leadership team with a background at Shapeways (AM Flow CEO Stefan Rink was formerly Shapeways VP of Global Manufacturing while Zwikker served

as interim Chief Commercial Officer as recently as 2017), and the backing of companies including Materialise and Midwest Prototyping during a recent Series A funding round, naturally service providers would seem like an ideal fit for AM Flow’s technology. But Zwikker says there’s even more opportunity in AM operations inside other major manufacturing environments. “We experienced first-hand what it means to have an enormous amount of orders, different customers, and how to process hundreds, if not thousands, of different pieces,” Zwikker said of the time he and Rink spent at the online 3D printing service provider. “So, it would seem that service providers are the logical sort of target but no, there is a lot more being printed at the moment by OEMs. BMW is already way beyond 1,500 pieces a day.” The COO does, however, reinforce that service providers are a “core part” of AM Flow’s business and the company counts Shapeways, Materialise and Netherlandsbased service provider Oceanz amongst its key customers alongside AM super users like BMW. Those types of customers have been a seal of approval for this type of technology, bolstered by a recent win in the Formnext Start-up Challenge which Zwikker described as a “validation of our vision and what we're trying to achieve.” In the company’s pitch for the award, Zwikker reiterated the belief that AM has focused on “workstation optimisation” rather than working towards “full end-toend digital factories.” Asked how AM Flow fits into making that digital factory vision a reality, Zwikker said: “We have the same kind of vision, working towards a lights out factory. Ultimately now we've got a number of printers, and then it needs to flow through, and it comes in batches. What if we create an environment where you have 50 or 100 printers, [parts] all come out, it doesn't matter what time of day, and you can process [them]? That's the kind of environment we're working towards.”

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DOUBLING U Senior Content Producer Sam Davies talks to Nexa3D CEO Avi Reichental about the acquisition of NXT Factory.

our years ago, two 3D printing start-ups, a Stereolithography (SLA) vendor from Rome, Italy and a Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) system provider from Krakow, made a gutsy decision to up sticks, move their respective businesses across the Atlantic Ocean and settle in Ventura, California under the stewardship of a former 3D Systems CEO. Avi Reichental’s new venture, XponentialWorks, was just getting started. It was scouting young and innovative companies, investing in some abroad and persuading others that he would become co-founder of to base themselves in California. The idea was that the likes of Nexa3D and NXT Factory could ‘collide’ in the same facility space, benefit from the same guidance, marketing, domain expertise in AI and robotics, and use the same IP firm. That idea grew. As both begun laying the foundations for commercialisation of their respective SLA and SLS technologies, they agreed to use their existing space at the facility to build both Nexa’s NXE400 and NXT Factory’s QLS 350 systems and utilise the same supply chain. By the end of 2019, Reichental sat as the CEO of Nexa3D and discussions were underway about how the two companies might take the next step. “As our campus in Ventura expanded,” Reichental recalls, “we, in parallel, built two very complementary products and, at a certain time towards the end of 2019, we began to realise that we were finding ourselves repeating for NXT Factory a lot of the steps that we’ve taken maybe six or nine months prior with Nexa3D, which is a little bit further ahead in its evolution. Namely, how do we set-up the go-to market? How do we go and create the reseller arrangements? How do we sell and market the product? How do we provide the pre- and post-sale, and also ongoing customer success operations?” As the NXT Factory team put their minds to these quandaries, COVID-19 swept across Europe and North America, and it began working alongside Nexa3D to supply PPE and other components to healthcare centres. Reichental has many ways of describing the pandemic. An ‘awakening’ and a ‘catalyst’, ‘hard’ but ‘productive’. It has been a busy period for the company, maintaining momentum with the sale of 70 NXE400 platforms, the signing of distribution agreements, the release of around half a dozen new materials, and in the run-up

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to Formnext, the release of the xCure post-processing system. “Increasingly, we are coming to grips with the reality that when you print at the speeds we are printing, we’re just kicking the can forward in terms of the next bottleneck, and the next bottleneck is clearly then in the washing and curing,” Reichantal says of xCure. “What’s the point of printing as fast as we can – up to eight litres per hour on the build platform – if we can’t assure consistency or if your scrap rate is high?” This open platform is a dual cure system born out of necessity as the company printed thousands of components during the first wave of the pandemic. Capable of UV and thermal curing, boasting a range of resin-specific pre-sets and the ability to process parts at volumes of 16 litres, it is designed to allow companies to scale. The xCure platform supplements a growing materials portfolio that saw the additions of xCast, a resin tailored for the printing of investment casting patterns, and the general purpose PRO410 material in the last few weeks. Nexa has an alliance with Henkel on the SLA side of the business, while partnerships with DSM and Evonik have already been secured to assist on the powder bed fusion side. Unsurprisingly, the two sides have very similar ideas about how to enable adoption and application of their technologies. The QLS 350 will be shipped next year with a PBT material included as a freebie, just as the PRO410 resin is with the NXE400. As that landmark drew closer through 2020, conversations that were had at the end of last year arose again. Already sharing a working space, promising similar benefits and collaborating with materials suppliers, NXT Factory was now starting to consider distribution, marketing and all the things required to ‘prove, nail and scale’ its technology. “The obvious question,” Reichental explains, “was why replicate here? We have two companies that have similar DNA, they sit in the same campus, they are completely complementary in terms of addressable market, – in fact, they kind of double the addressable market – they have an almost identical value proposition which is about 20x sync productivity, scaling it and taking additive to the production floor, why not just come together? “Because together, we can create a much more powerful and much more compelling value proposition that is not saddled by legacy issues or older technology

FORMNEXT CONNECT

“Maybe Nexa3D acquiring NXT Factory was preordained. We just didn’t see it.”

SHOWN: PART PRINTED IN XCAST MATERIAL

and really go to the market with a unified front. It wasn’t a difficult or a long discussion. COVID-19 gave us the last push of, ‘hey, why are we screwing around here? Let’s make this happen.’ Maybe, in some ways, it was preordained. We just didn’t see it.” What Nexa has seen however, was the need to understand prospective customers and add capabilities that they so desire. As such, Siemens came on board to standardise the QLS portfolio to its advanced factory automation and edge computing technologies, which will allow customers in the automotive space, for example, to easily integrate the platform into factory automation control systems and exploit data acquisition and analysis. It supplements the QLS’

SHOWN: NXE400 WITH THE XCURE STATION

SHOWN: THE QLS 350 SYSTEM

capacity to produce up to 150k polymer parts annually, per Nexa3D, within its 350 x 350 x 400 mm build volume, which is equipped with four 100W lasers and can process materials like PA 11, PA 12 and PA 6 at temperatures up to 240°C. As it now sits beside the NXE400 system, Nexa3D is confident it can now penetrate several industries with its multiple 3D printing processes, broad range of polymer materials, optimised post-processing stations and automation capabilities. “COVID was an awakening and a catalyst,” Reichental assesses. “Part of our preparation was how do we strengthen Nexa during this period and use it to our advantage. [We were] accelerating partnerships and product developments and new product launches, but the other part was, we have a unique opportunity here, at the right stage for both companies, to basically double our addressable market and go out with a more complete portfolio that can benefit enormously from the secular tailwinds that will emerge out of COVID.”

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FORMNEXT CONNECT

IN OTHER FORMNEXT NEWS WORDS: SAM DAVIES

DESKTOP METAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENTS Desktop Metal, harnessing its own software expertise and that of Materialise, made significant advancements to its Shop and Production Systems in November. Live Sinter is a process simulation software said to correct shrinkage and distortion of binder jet 3D printed parts during sintering, while an optimised Build Processor from Materialise deliver tools such as slicing and support integration for build prep and process integration capabilities around machines, servers and front-end software platforms. “As manufacturers look to capitalise on the flexibility of volume production delivered through technologies such as binder jetting, Live Sinter is a firstof-its-kind solution that offers a path to predictable and repeatable outcomes by demystifying the sintering process,” commented Desktop Metal CEO Ric Fulop. “The combined strength of our metal 3D printing solutions with Materialise’s three decades of experience in 3D printing software and application development will help to accelerate the transformation of manufacturing with end-to-end metal 3D printing solutions,” added VP of Product and Business Development Arjun Aggarwal.

OFFICE-FRIENDLY SLS LAUNCH Developed in Sweden and for operation within an office environment, the Gravity 2021 platform was introduced at Formnext by Wematter. The machine is powered by Selective Laser Sintering technology, boasts a build volume of 300 x 300 x 300 mm and has a print speed of 1.2cm/ hour. It can print in PA 11 and PA 12 powders, with polypropylene and fibrereinforced materials in development, and is said to be easy to service thanks in some part to a sturdier recoater that ‘doesn’t stop for any obstacles.’ “We want to lower the thresholds for AM in development organisations and product-owning companies and make it more accessible by reducing the demands on the user,” commented CEO Robert Kniola. “Through Gravity 2021, we hope to take another step in that direction.”

ADDITIVE INDUSTRIES MAKES BIG STATEMENT After SLM Solutions (Pages 4&5) initially grabbed the headlines during Formnext week, Additive Industries snuck in right at the end with some big news of its own. The MetalFAB-600 is set to be launched next year with a 600 x 600 x 1000 mm build

STRATASYS & NTOPOLOGY COME TOGETHER It started two months ago, and already, the partnership between Stratasys and nTopology has yielded its first result. An FDM Assembly Fixture Generator is now available on the nTop Platform engineering software to help users of Stratasys Fortus FDM machines to engineer more optimal fixture assemblies with automatic design tools. These capabilities were developed in under 60 days according to both companies and as they continue to

volume, ten 1KW lasers and the capacity to print 1000cc/hr. It will first go through a beta phase with a select number of customers before, Additive Industries expects, having its impact in the aerospace, high tech and energy sectors. “We see that the market is ready to start taking large parts into industrial production with AM,” Additive Industries Product Manager Jurgen Westerhoff told TCT. “With the MetalFAB1, we gained experience with these applications and environments, making it clear that, for us, very large part production is the way to go.” To read more from our interview with Additive Industries go to: mytct.co/AddIndMetalFAB600

work alongside each other, the plan is to release similar tools for other application pain points. “Stratasys is a market leader in 3D printing and they’ve seen that the design tools are a major bottleneck to maximising the value in their machines,” nTopology CEO Bradley Rothenberg told TCT. “We decided, for the industry to stay competitive, the hardware companies and software companies need to collaborate and develop these ecosystems to deliver end-to-end workflows that meet the needs of customers.”

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NO SHOW GUIDE

NO SHOW GUIDE â&#x20AC;&#x153;Products and technologies you may have missed out on seeing across live show floors.â&#x20AC;?

ith the pandemic shifting our flagship TCT 3Sixty event to summer 2021 and Formnext going online for the first time, opportunities to browse the latest AM technologies and vendors have been limited. So, for this year, instead of our usual show review features, we present our alternative 10-page 'No Show Guide' to fill you in on the AM processes, materials, software, auxiliary technologies and services you may have missed out on seeing across those live show floors.

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NO SHOW GUIDE

3D SYSTEMS

ADDITIVE INDUSTRIES

Company category 3D Printing & AM Hardware Manufacturer

333 Three D Systems Circle, Rock Hill, South Carolina, 29715, United States of America

Achtseweg Zuid 155, Eindhoven, North Brabant, 5651 GW, The Netherlands

www.3dsystems.com

www.additiveindustries.com

sales@3dsystems.com

team@additiveindustries.com

+1 803.326.3930

+31402180660

ASTM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Material Jetting (e.g. Polyjet), Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP)

ASTM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF)

3D Systems, a leading additive manufacturing solutions partner, infuses every interaction with innovation, performance, and reliability - empowering customers to create products and business models never before possible. Each application-specific Healthcare and Industrial solution is fueled by 3D Systems' application engineers’ expertise - helping customers transform how they deliver products and services.

Additive Industries is a 3D metal printer manufacturer for high quality, metal parts. It offers a system specifically aimed at high end and demanding industrial markets. With class-leading build volume, reliability as well as productivity, Additive Industries redefines the business case for aerospace, automotive, energy and high-tech equipment. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Additive Industries has demo and service centres in the USA, UK and Singapore and is a global key player in large volume Metal printing systems.

ARBURG GmbH + Co KG

THE EXONE COMPANY

Company category 3D Printing & AM Hardware Manufacturer

Arthur-Hehl-Straße, Loßburg, Germany, 72290

127 Industry Boulevard, Irwin, PA, 15642, United States

https://www.arburg.com/en/products-and-services/additivemanufacturing/

www.exone.com

contact@arburg.com +49 7446 330 ASTM Technology Classification Material Extrusion (e.g. FDM, FFF) ARBURG is a leading global manufacturer of machines for plastics processing. The portfolio includes the freeformer for additive manufacturing and ALLROUNDER injection moulding machines. ARBURG produces exclusively at the German headquarters in Lossburg, but is represented by its own organisations at 35 locations in 26 countries and, together with trading partners, in more than 100 countries. Of the approx. 3,200 employees worldwide, some 2,650 work in Germany.

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solutions@exone.com 1-877-773-9663 ASTM Technology Classification Binder Jetting As the pioneer and global leader in binder jet 3D printing since 1995, ExOne has been on a mission to deliver powerful systems that solve the toughest problems and enable world-changing innovations. ExOne's 3D printers transform metal, ceramic, and sand powder into precision parts and tooling solutions. Visit at exone.com.

NO SHOW GUIDE

RENA TECHNOLOGIES AUSTRIA GMBH Company category 3D Printing & AM Hardware Manufacturer / Post-Processing Leobersdorferstrasse 31-33, Hirtenberg, Lower Austria, 2552, Austria www.rena.at surfaces@rena.com ASTM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Binder Jetting, Directed Energy Deposition

RENA Technologies Austria is an E2E process provider and technical partner for innovative functional metallic surfaces. The surface of a component is typically of critical importance for its industrial application. Based on extensive research and many years of development work, it offers smart production processes for electrochemical surface finishing that go beyond the limitations of even state of the art galvanic coatings. RENA's deep understanding of the actual surface reactions provides the basis for the relevant electrochemical surface processes to get the optimum result. Fast and reliable application of new processes to customer production facilities is ensured by its knowledgebased development instead of trial and error.

UNIZ TECHNOLOGY LLC

HANS WEBER MASCHINENFABRIK GMBH

Company category 3D Printing & AM Hardware Manufacturer

9400 Activity Rd Ste L, San Diego, CA, 92126, US

Bamberger Str. 21, Kronach, Bavaria, 96317, Germany

https://www.uniz.com/us_en/

https://www.hansweber.de/en/

toufang@uniz.com

additive@hansweber.de

ASTM Technology Classification Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP) UNIZ makes some of the world's fastest 3D printers, which showcase a record printing speed of 1200 mm/h. UNIZ designs and manufactures the SLASH series stereolithography (SLA) 3D printers for desktop. UNIZ released a special limited edition 3D printer--Slash C, which uses an 8.9" 4K monochrome LCD screen specially designed for light transmittance and high resolution. UNIZ continues to utilise its unique and cutting edge technology in order to provide significant advantages to its consumers.

+49 9261 409-300 ASTM Technology Classification Material Extrusion (e.g. FDM, FFF) Think big, print fast - Weber Additive industrial systems enable a fast and cost-efficient 3D print of large-scale plastic parts. DX - CNC-controlled gantry system - 2.5 mÂł build volume DXR â&#x20AC;&#x201C; robotic system Both equipped with a special additive pellet extruder. Weber's direct extrusion offers many advantages, like high output and print speed.

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NO SHOW GUIDE

SLM SOLUTIONS GROUP AG Company category 3D Printing & AM Hardware Manufacturer Estlandring 4, Luebeck, Schleswig-Holstein, 23560, Germany https://www.slm-solutions.com/en/ info@slm-solutions.com +49 451 4060-3000 ASTM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF) SLM Solutionsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; robust Selective Laser Melting metal additive manufacturing systems optimise fast, reliable and cost-efficient production for complex, completely dense metal parts. SLM Solutions focuses on long-term success, providing support and knowledge-sharing to elevate customer production. A publicly traded company, SLM Solutions Group AG is headquartered in Germany with offices worldwide.

LITHOZ GMBH

NOVANTA

Company category 3D Printing & AM Hardware Manufacturer

Mollardgasse 85a/2/64-69, Vienna, Wien, 1060, Austria

Parkring 57-59, Garching, Germany, 85748, Germany

www.lithoz.com

https://www.novanta.com/photonics

sales@lithoz.com

scanners@cambridgetechnology.com

4319346612221

+49 (0) 89-31 707-0

ASTM Technology Classification Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP) Lithoz presents industry-leading and trusted 3D printers, designed for scalability and ready for advanced developments and serial production. The CeraFab System family is the ultimate choice for enabling the industrial serial production of high-performance ceramics using additive manufacturing. Each machine in the CeraFab System family, consisting of the S25, S65 and S230, offers a full 3D printing system for advanced developments. From small-scale to large part production, these machines can accommodate all types of high-quality 3D printing projects thanks to their different build volumes and have the fastest building speed on the market.

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ASTM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP) Novanta develops cutting-edge components and sub-systems for laser-based diagnostic, analytical, micromachining and fine material processing applications. Powerful lasers, coupled with advanced beam steering and intelligent sub-systems incorporating software and controls, deliver extreme precision and performance, tailored to our customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; demanding applications.

NO SHOW GUIDE

THERMWOOD CORPORATION Company category 3D Printing & AM Hardware Manufacturer 904 Buffaloville Road, Dale, IN, 47523, USA www.thermwood.com sales@thermwood.com +1 1-800-533-6901 ASTM Technology Classification Material Extrusion (e.g. FDM, FFF) Thermwood is the oldest manufacturer of 3 & 5 axis highspeed machining centers (CNC routers). The company is also the technology and market leader in large scale additive manufacturing for thermoplastic composite moulds, tooling, patterns & parts with its LSAM systems that print and trim on the same machine.

INCUS

RPS - INDUSTRIAL 3D PRINTING SYSTEMS

Company category 3D Printing & AM Hardware Manufacturer

Christine-Touaillon-Str. 11 / Top 18 Technologiezentrum Seestadt / Building 2, Vienna, 1220, Austria

Unit 3 Premus Brunel Park, Coldharbour Way, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, HP19 8AP, United Kingdom

www.incus3d.com

www.rps.ltd

office@incus3d.com

enquiries@rps.ltd

+43 1 280340 - 311

+44 (0)1296 425 665

ASTM Technology Classification Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP)

Incus GmbH is an engineering company based in Vienna, Austria offering a new approach to lithography-based metal additive manufacturing. Incus is taking the printing of metal materials to the next level with a new process offering excellent surface aesthetics for complex structures combined with cost-efficiency, reproducibility and manufacturing speed. Based on the concept of photopolymerization, the Incus Hammer machine series and technology enable new possibilities in the 3D printing of metal components across a wide range of applications.

RPS is a British owned and operated company who are experts in industrial 3D printing technology. Founded on servicing and supporting industrial 3D printers, RPS specialise in polymer additive manufacturing and provide a range of industrial 3D printing solutions for customers world-wide.

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NO SHOW GUIDE

ULT

ARMSTRONG RAPID MANUFACTURING

Company category 3D Printing & AM Hardware Manufacturer

Company category AM Service Provider

Am Goepelteich 1, Loebau, Saxony, 02708, Germany

6920 Manlius Center Road, East Syracuse, NY, 13057, USA

www.ult.de/en

armstrongrm.com

ult@ult.de

sales@armstrongrm.com

+49 3585 41280

315-437-1517

ASTM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF)

ASTM Technology Classification Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP)

ULT is a global vendor of ventilation and air technology systems, incl. inert gas purification, fume extraction in post-processing as well as process air drying solutions. The company has years of experience in additive manufacturing, particularly SLM processes, providing air cleaning and dehumidification systems.

Armstrong RM is a premium supplier of Machined Aluminum & Zinc Castings and RIM Molded Polyurethane Parts, specialising in quick turn prototyping and short run production services, generally in quantities of 1- 1000 per year.

BURMS 3D DRUCK JENA GMBH & CO.KG

CA MODELS

Company category AM Service Provider

Carl Zeiss Promenade 10, Jena, Thueringen, 07745, Germany www.burms.de info@burms.de +49 3641 9283126 ASTM Technology Classification Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP) Miicraft DLP Printer, open system for all materials and application. Genera AM Solutions and Raplas Ltd partner for production solutions. Over 25 Years of expertise with multiple machines in house for test and Benchmarks.

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10 Borrowmeadow road, Springkerse industrial estate, Stirling, Stirlingshire, FK77UW, Scotland www.camodels.co.uk sales@camodels.co.uk 01768 464434 ASTM Technology Classification Material Extrusion (e.g. FDM, FFF), Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Material Jetting (e.g. Polyjet), Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP) Established in 1983, CA Models has been setting the standard for excellence in the rapid prototyping industry for over 30 years. Specialising in additive manufacturing, precision CNC machining and specialist model making, it is committed to providing customers with a quality product and responsive service. This is achieved through its unique blend of market-leading technologies and model making craftsmanship.

NO SHOW GUIDE

BLUE POWER CASTING AND POWDER PRODUCTION SYSTEMS Company category AM Service Provider Brettener Strasse 32, Walzbachtal, Baden-Wuerttemberg, 75045, Germany www.bluepower-casting.com info@bluepower-casting.com +49 7203 92180 ASTM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF) BluePower Casting Systems started to develop and produce machine solutions for the metal powder production and processing industry almost 10 years ago. In addition to the existing Gas Atomiser Solutions, in 2021 BluePower will launch Water Atomiser and Ultra-Sonic Atomiser Solutions to enlarge their machine portfolio to meet basically all requirements on different powder properties and applications.

IMPACT INNOVATIONS GMBH Company category AM Service Provider BĂźrgermeister-Steinberger-Ring 1, Rattenkirchen, Bavaria, 84431, Germany https://impact-innovations.com/en/ info@impact-innovations.com +49 8636 695190-0 ASTM Technology Classification Directed Energy Deposition Impact Innovations GmbH is the global technology leader for industrial cold spray systems and processes. The company was founded in 2010 and is based in Germany. Impact Innovations is a pioneer and innovator for tailor-made solutions in the field of cold spraying, a highly innovative process for surface coating and additive manufacturing with a wide range of metals while retaining the initial physical and chemical particle properties.

AGILE MANUFACTURING LTD DBA PIVOT AM SERVICE

3D PRINT BUREAU

Company category AM Service Provider

920 W 10th Street, Pella, Iowa, 50219, United States of America www.pivotam.com info@pivotam.com (1) 641-780-5686 ASTM Technology Classification Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP) Pivot provides comprehensive service and support, remotely and onsite, on industrial 3D printers, focusing on SLA printers by 3D Systems and Fortus FDM printers by Stratasys. Pivot also sells refurbished 3D printers, perform appraisals, and perform relocation services. Pivot developed the ACE wash tank for SLA post-processing. Other offerings include: 3D printing supplies, filament, resin, and repair parts.

Normacot Road, Longton, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, ST3 1PR, United Kingdom www.3dprintbureau.co.uk contactus@3dpb.co.uk +44 (0)1782 757320 ASTM Technology Classification Material Extrusion (e.g. FDM, FFF), Material Jetting (e.g. Polyjet) 3D Print Bureau offers a bespoke 3D Printing service to clients, no matter the size or budget. With a range of Stratasys PolyJet & FDM 3D printers, it is able to provide reliable advice on your specific applications, knowing the technologies and their capabilities inside out.

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NO SHOW GUIDE

DASSAULT

ALTAIR

Company category Software

10 Rue Marcel Dassault, VÉLIZY-VILLACOUBLAY, France, 78140, France https://make.3dexperience.3ds.com/welcome marketplace.make@3ds.com ASTM Technology Classification Material Extrusion (e.g. FDM, FFF), Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Material Jetting (e.g. Polyjet), Binder Jetting, Directed Energy Deposition, Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP), Sheet Lamination 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace MAKE provides on-demand manufacturing services. Get instant quotes from qualified manufacturers and receive quality parts whatever the process: 3D Printing, CNC Machining, Injection molding, Sheet Metal, and more. 3DEXPERIENCE Marketplace Make is directly accessible via an Add-in from SOLIDWORKS and CATIA.

1820 E Big Beaver Rd, Troy, MI, 48083, USA www.altair.com/additive-manufacturing info@altair.com ASTM Technology Classification Material Extrusion (e.g. FDM, FFF), Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Material Jetting (e.g. Polyjet), Binder Jetting, Directed Energy Deposition, Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP), Sheet Lamination Cut product development and AM costs with Altair, a global technology company providing solutions in data analytics, simulation, and HPC. Altair delivers software that goes beyond the creation of 3D-printed prototypes with a robust simulation toolchain for production AM design, reducing material usage, print times, and post-processing.

CADS ADDITIVE GMBH

SIMUFACT ENGINEERING GMBH

Company category Software

Technologiepark 17, Perg, Austria, 4320, Austria

Tempowerkring 19, Hamburg, Germany, 21079, Germany

www.cads-additive.com

www.simufact.com

office@cads-additive.com

info@simufact.de

+49 3641 9283126

+49 40 790128160

ASTM Technology Classification Material Extrusion (e.g. FDM, FFF), Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP)

ASTM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Binder Jetting, Directed Energy Deposition

CADS Additive GmbH develops highly-specialised software components for the additive manufacturing process. The components are modularly-structured and offer support along the entire process chain – from the product idea to the supplying of the finished product. They can be integrated into the existing software platforms (e.g. CAD providers) or delivered as a stand-alone software suite.

Simufact Engineering, part of Hexagon (HMI), provides simulation solutions worldwide for the design and optimisation of manufacturing processes – including forming, joining, metal-based additive manufacturing processes, and generative design.

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NO SHOW GUIDE

DSM

PRAXAIR SURFACE TECHNOLOGIES

Company category Materials

Urmonderbaan 22, Gate 2, Building 170, Geleen, Limburg 6167 RD, Netherlands www.dsm.com/additive-manufacturing/ additive.manufacturing@dsm.com ASTM Technology Classification Material Extrusion (e.g. FDM, FFF), Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP) DSM has one clear goal: to unlock the full potential of additive manufacturing, enabling sustainable production and improving people’s living. Drawing on decades of experience in 3D printing technologies, performance materials and deep application expertise, DSM helps manufacturers change the way they design and manufacture products.

Am Mühlbach 13, Wiggensbach, Bavaria, 87487, Germany www.praxairsurfacetechnologies.com/am AME.Europe@linde.com ASTM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Binder Jetting, Directed Energy Deposition Praxair Surface Technologies pioneered many of the technologies in metal powder manufacturing and is recognised as a leader in high performance industrial powders. Through its line of aerospace-grade TruForm metal powders, it applies this expertise to metal powders for AM applications.

DUNLEE

ECKART GmbH

Company category Materials

Röntgenstraße 24, Hamburg, 22335, Germany

Guentersthal 4, Hartenstein, Bavaria, 91235, Germany

www.dunlee.com

www.a20x.com

marketing.dunlee@philips.com

info.eckart@altana.com

+49 40 34971 1391

00499152770

ASTM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF)

Dunlee has a rich history with 100+ years of expertise in developing, producing and integrating innovative components for Imaging Solutions. Dunlee is a leading provider of 3D printed tungsten parts, we process pure tungsten under controlled conditions and in strict accordance with medical standards, using the powder bed laser melting additive manufacturing technique. It is capable of producing complex, customised components with details as small as 100 μm with a positional accuracy down to 25 μm.a

A20X️ powder for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) has been developed for high strength production components to be used in the most demanding applications. Excellent high temperature properties, stress corrosion resistance and significantly better fatigue properties when compared to Al-Si based additive manufacturing alloys. Originally developed as a casting alloy, A20X️ is now available for use in laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing. Suitable for use with all leading brands of AM equipment, A20X️ powder has produced parts with up to 511MPa UTS and over 13% elongation.

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NO SHOW GUIDE

CREAFORM - AMETEK

PULVERMEISTER GMBH

Company category Quality and Assurance

Company category Post Processing

Meisenweg 37, Leinfelden-Echterdingen, Baden-WĂźrttemberg, D-70771, Germany https://www.creaform3d.com creaform.info.germany@ametek.com +49 711 1856 8030 ASTM Technology Classification Material Extrusion (e.g. FDM, FFF), Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Material Jetting (e.g. Polyjet), Binder Jetting, Directed Energy Deposition, Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP), Sheet Lamination

Flutgraben 2n, Goldbach, Bavaria, 63773, Germany https://www.pulvermeister.de info@pulvermeister.de +491713113868 ASTM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF) Manufacturer of equipment for the industrial post-processing of powder 3D printed parts.

Creaform develops, manufactures, and sells 3D portable and automated measurement technologies and specialises in engineering services. The company offers innovative solutions for applications such as 3D scanning, reverse engineering, quality control, non-destructive testing and product development.

LASER LINES LTD

TRI-TECH 3D

Company category Reseller

Beaumont Close, Banbury, Oxon, Oxfordshire, OX16 1TH, UK www.3dprinting.co.uk 3dworld@laserlines.co.uk +44 (0) 1295 672500 ASTM Technology Classification Material Extrusion (e.g. FDM, FFF), Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Material Jetting (e.g. Polyjet), Binder Jetting, Vat Photopolymerisation (e.g. SLA, DLP) Laser Lines Limited, very much open for business with a portfolio of 20+ innovative plastic and metals 3D printing and Additive Layer Manufacturing solutions. For over 25 years Laser Lines experience, support and expertise has helped numerous companies reduce manufacturing costs, accelerate time to market, reduce development cost and control confidentiality.

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3-4 Innovation Way, North Staffs Business Park, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, ST6 4BF, United Kingdom www.tritech3d.co.uk info@tritech3d.co.uk + 44 1782 814551 ASTM Technology Classification Material Extrusion (e.g. FDM, FFF), Material Jetting (e.g. Polyjet) Tri-Tech 3D are the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading experts in 3D printing. Tri-Tech 3D offers the complete range of Stratasys Polyjet & FDM 3D printing technologies, as well as resellers for Desktop Metal systems. TriTech 3D has a dedicated engineering team, all passionate about 3D printing and fueled by a technical challenge.

NO SHOW GUIDE

VERDER SCIENTIFIC INC ASTM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Binder Jetting

Company category Hardware and Materials 11 Penns Trail, Suite 300, Newtown, PA, 18940, USA www.verder-scientific.com info-us@verder-scientific.com 1+267-757-0351

Verder Scientific sets standards in high-tech equipment for quality control, research and development of solid matter. Particle Size and Shape Analysis, Elemental Analysis, Heat Treatment, Microstructural Analysis and Hardness Testing – Verder Scientific offers high-quality solutions combined with expert advice and support worldwide for your additive manufacturing & powder injection moulding process.

MICROTRAC MRB, PART OF VERDER SCIENTIFIC

ELTRA ELEMENTAL ANALYZERS, PART OF VERDER SCIENTIFIC

RETSCH, PART OF VERDER SCIENTIFIC

Company category Hardware and Materials

215 Keystone Drive, Montgomeryville, PA, 18936, USA

11 Penns Trail, Suite 300, Newtown, PA, 18940, USA

www.microtrac.com

www.eltra.com

https://www.retsch.com

marketing@microtrac.com

info-us@verder-scientific.com

1+215-619-9920

1+267-757-0351

ASTM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Binder Jetting

Microtrac MRB is an industry leader providing innovative solutions in Particle Characterisation. The combination of Laser Diffraction and Image Analysis offers additive manufacturing users a unique insight into the size and morphology of their powders.

Eltra is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of combustion analyzers for precise and sensitive CSONH determination in powdered metals. Whether measuring the carbon content in steel, or analyzing oxygen & hydrogen during the sintering process, its elemental analyzers provide tailor made solutions for quality control in powder metallurgical processes.

RETSCH is the world leader in sample preparation for solid materials. For powder metallurgy, Retsch instruments contribute to the particle size analysis of feedstock and recycling of materials. From Sieve Shakers to Jaw Crushers, Retsch offers industry leading instrumentation, expert advice, and support for your QC and R&D laboratory requirements.

CARBOLITE GERO, PART OF VERDER SCIENTIFIC Company category Hardware and Materials 11 Penns Trail, Suite 300, Newtown, PA, 18940, USA https://www.carbolite-gero.com info-us@verder-scientific.com

STM Technology Classification Powder Bed Fusion (e.g. SLS, SLM, DMLS, MJF), Binder Jetting Carbolite Gero is a leading manufacturer of furnaces & ovens from 30°C - 3000°C, and has extensive experience in heat treatment of MIM parts. As a well known furnace supplier for Additive Manufacturing in powder metallurgy and MIM applications, Carbolite Gero supplies furnaces to debind & sinter the formed part.

1+267-757-0351

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27.1 / www.tctmagazine.com / 049

EXPERT COLUMN

ALLOYS FOR HIGHTEMP APPLICATIONS Will Dick-Cleland, Process Technology Team at Alloyed discusses the potential for new high-temperature AM alloys in the aerospace industry.

t is fair to say that, to date, metal AM processes have not performed well with the highest temperature materials â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that is to say, materials for components that operate at the top of the temperature range within jet turbines. In the aerospace sector such applications would include, but are not limited to the critical areas of a turbine engine such as the back-end of the compressor, the combustor, the high and low pressure turbine areas, and the exhaust. All parts in these areas of the engine are exposed to high temperatures and higher levels of oxidation. For such high temperature applications, the aerospace sector typically uses nickel (Ni) alloys such as IN738, IN713 and MarM247. However, these alloys are incompatible with welding techniques due to their chemistry, as they do not respond well to rapid thermal gradient changes and it is virtually impossible to control the amount of cracking during the weld process. This is the conundrum facing users of metal AM within the aerospace sector looking to capitalise on the advantages that the process has to offer for high temperature applications. This has driven further exploration of alternative materials that could replace traditional high temperature alloys without compromising structural integrity while at the same time being compatible with AM. The advantages of AM-compatible alloys for high temperature applications derive from the fact that the components assembled in hot sections of engines are usually some of the most expensive, and due to the harsh environment in which they work have short life-cycles. Using the L-PBF process with high temperature alloys offers manufacturers the opportunity to benefit from better inventory management, reducing late penalties due to tooling delays, and creating more intricate shapes, often allowing the integration of several components in a sub-assembly into one. ABD-900AM To address this, Alloyed worked with leading aerospace OEM Honeywell to

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test a new high temperature nickel alloy ABD-900AM with the L-PBF process, to determine if it could serve as a replacement for existing high temperature casting alloys. Today, Honeywell AM operations incorporate tensile, LCF, and creep testing equipment, powder characterisation equipment, and a vacuum furnace for stress relief and heat treatment. In 2020, more L-PBF machines were added to its Arizona lab, which is fully equipped to manage end-to-end powder and mechanical characterisation, preproduction builds, and a full range of R&D activities. After an initial introduction to Alloyed by a third party, Honeywell recognised the potential of the Alloys By Design (ABD) system brand which stimulated further interest in the ABD-900AM material and its potential for high temperature aerospace applications as it was not prone to cracking. The result of this initial collaboration was a dedicated project that would see Honeywell build a limited number of test specimens in its AM laboratory located in Bangalore, India. Honeywell would build and test the material to determine if the results merited continued investment and development. ABD-900AM is an age-hardenable, nickel-based superalloy designed specifically for use as feedstock in the L-PBF process. It is optimised for environmental resistance and hightemperature tensile strength, with a working temperature range up to 900Â°C (1652Â°F) in its age-hardened state. ABD900AM not only offers a higher operating temperature but also significant long term stability. Exhibiting excellent creep strength, ABD-900AM has also demonstrated superior resistance to cracking during manufacture and heat treatment, enabling complex part design. It is designed to be free of solidification, liquidation and strain-age cracks, and

showcases exceptional printability for a 40% y'-phase strengthened alloy. The ABD900AM alloy also shows high as-printed part density of >99.9%. The results from Alloyed and Honeywell show that ABD-900AM is an alloy that demonstrates great potential for high temperature applications. The material welds and fuses extremely well, particularly when compared with other high temperature nickel alloys. While ABD-900AM is not a replacement for CM Mar-247 in most cases due to the oxidation capabilities, it does exhibit very good mechanical properties at high temperatures when compared with Mar 247 or IN792 or IN713 or IN738.

Happy Holidays to our additive manufacturing family! We can’t wait to bring the community back together next year at North America’s most important additive manufacturing event. VISIT RAPID3DEVENT.COM TO LEARN MORE

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