HOW BURLOAK’S EARLY BELIEF IN AM PAID OFF

HOW BURLOAK’S EARLY BELIEF IN ADDITIVE PAID OFF

Laura speaks to Samuel, Son & Co.’s CEO Colin Osborne (CO) about Burloak Technologies' expansion, certification & scaling AM.

TCT: When Burloak’s acquisition by Samuel was confirmed, you commented, "our early belief in the transformative potential of AM is paying off.” Why were you confident in the technology so early on?

CO: I come from an engineering and metallurgy background and have spent my life in manufacturing – car parts, air parts, every sort of manufacturing you can think of. I joined Samuel in 2015. At 165 years old, and with 15 different businesses, Samuel is very uniquely positioned to identify opportunities for manufacturing innovation because we make so many different things. We manufacture everything from tubing for engines to pressure vessels, to extrusions for solar panels and service about 15,000 customers ranging from big OEMs like Boeing or Tesla or GM, to mom-and-pop machine shops.

The common theme in all that we do is metal. When we first started looking at additive manufacturing, we realised that we could produce innovative metal parts that can't be produced any other way. We realised that we could produce parts 70% lighter and two times stronger. And we saw that it [could] completely disrupt the supply chain. We certainly didn't have all the answers, but I think we had a high degree of confidence that this was going to become a mainstream process just like casting or forming or extruding.

TCT: You opened a second AM facility last summer. Can you talk about the growth that led to this milestone?

CO: As you keep expanding and winning new customers, you have to expand your capabilities. While we have an excellent facility in Canada that provides endto-end additive solutions for many customers, adding a second facility in California helps us expand our footprint so we can serve even more customers. It also allows us to address any sensitivity due to the nature of the work we’re doing, which requires production take place in the country where the customer is located. This obviously includes defence-related work, which is extremely proprietary and requires compliance with ITAR and government requirements that isn’t conducive to going across borders. Between these drivers, controlled goods legislation and NIST legislation, we knew that for most of our U.S. customers, we would eventually have to produce in-country.

From a growth perspective, in addition to having an economy as big as Canada’s, California is also a major hub for space and aerospace. Now we have existing and prospective customers only a two-to-three-hour drive from our facility that we can engage with.

TCT: You’ve spoken about challenges around scaling AM. How is Burloak addressing those obstacles?

CO: What's neat to me about Burloak and Samuel is our ability to help customers scale. You may have this incredible technology leader that can go from blue sky concept to proof of a commercially viable product but when they need to go from a prototype to producing 2,000 or 5,000 units a month, they don’t know how to do that.

I think people underestimate the difficulty of going from small scale to large scale. The beauty of our partnerships with customers is that we can help them in the early stages of design and prototyping for AM, and

SHOWN:

SAMUEL, SON & CO. CEO COLIN OSBORNE

SHOWN:

BURLOAK RECENTLY EXPANDED ITS AM FOOTPRINT IN THE U.S.

“We had a high degree of confi dence that this was going to become a mainstream process.”

SHOWN:

END-TO-END AM SOLUTIONS when they need to scale up, we also have the systems, and infrastructure and knowledge to do that. In fact, we do this with major OEMs for thousands upon thousands of parts every day.

TCT: Burloak was approved as a metal AM supplier to Boeing last year. We know certifi cation is a challenge in AM. Can you talk about how you achieved this?

CO: Even before Samuel acquired it, Burloak was staff ed with many aerospace people. Our founder was an aerospace engineer, and I would say at least half of the people in our shop were PhDs who had spent much of their life in the aerospace industry. Our very deep understanding of manufacturing for aerospace was very valuable when it came to certifi cation.

I empathise with companies that have not been in aerospace and then decide to get into the industry and suddenly have to face the certifi cation process. It is a very, very diffi cult process and it needs to be because of fl ight safety. For us, it took 18 months to get that one [The Boeing Company] BAC 5673 certifi cation for aluminium with multiple rounds of testing on multiple pieces of equipment. In aerospace, every piece of equipment is certifi ed by serial number, so even if you are certifying identical machines, they require separate certifi cation processes. It's a long, expensive process. Fortunately for us, both within Samuel and Burloak, we have signifi cant experience with aerospace.

TCT: You’ve previously commented that this “represents a step forward on the path to a greener future for aviation.” Can you elaborate?

CO: From an environmental perspective, the fi rst reason additive is so compelling for aviation is you can produce a part that's as strong or stronger while also being much lighter. This means you can achieve immediate fuel savings, and in turn, an immediate reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The second reason, which doesn't get as much press, is a reduction in the supply chain complexity required to manufacture metal parts. This is true with parts for planes, cars, trucks, and anything else you can make out of metal. Our supply chain today involves buying metal from 70 countries around the world. I look at the supply chain of somebody casting something in Germany or Indonesia, then shipping it over to me, I cut it into a plate. The plate is then machined, and the parts get heat treated. After that, somebody rivets something onto it before it is delivered to whoever is responsible for putting the part onto a car or a bus.

I look at the thousands of miles that part travelled and the yield loss which is often 80-90% and compare it to what happens with AM – taking powder and printing that part locally, as required. When you think of all the greenhouse gas, fuel and yield loss associated with getting a traditionally manufactured, fi nished component into a plane or vehicle compared with the AM process there is an incredible diff erence. All you really do is have to get powder to the printers.

TCT: The last two years have been challenging for aerospace. How has Burloak navigated that?

CO: We've been lucky. We never had a drop in workload and in fact, we've increased staff through that period. We have felt the challenges, but not in the way you might think.

There are a few reasons for this. Two and a half years ago, the majority of our work was aerospace related. Every single customer that we were working with, we kept working with, although the momentum certainly slowed. Fortunately, while the aerospace sector went through its slowdown, the space industry really evolved. More satellites are planned for launch in the next two to three years, than in our entire history. This certainly increased demand for us. During this time period we also consciously tried to do more outreach with customers, especially those in automotive and energy who have great potential applications for additive but didn’t fully understand the business case.

Read in full: mytct.co/BurloakQA