TCT EU 28.1

DESIGN-TO-MANUFACTURING INNOVATION

MAG EUROPE EDITION VOLUME 28 ISSUE 1

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BASES LOADED DESKTOP METAL GEARS UP FOR 2020 IN EUROPE WITH STRONG MANUFACTURING STARTING LINE-UP STATE OF THE INDUSTRY

Facts, figures and thoughts on the current AM climate

sOFTWARE & SIMULATION

Conversations with the latest players in AM software

CREATIVE Applications Precious metals and additive architecture

Hirtenberger. Ingenuity. Engineered

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edge sharpness

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EDITORIAL

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Daniel O’Connor e: daniel.oconnor@rapidnews.com t: + 44 1244 952 398 DEPUTY GROUP EDITOR

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E UR VISIT TH E MANUFACT EA V AR ADDITI 21. International Exhibition for Metalworking Technologies

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Such is the brevity of the additive manufacturing industry; we don’t often have to address the brevity of human life.

But in December, we were saddened to learn of the passing of Dr Carl Deckard – the lead inventor of Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) and co-founder of two companies acquired by 3D Systems and Evonik respectively - at the age of 58. Friends and colleagues described him as a pioneer, a visionary and a genius, while another industry stalwart told TCT how he ‘couldn’t tell his story without Carl.’

As is convention at times of loss, Carl’s story has been recounted numerous times since, though as he’d have conceded himself, his visioneering, pioneering journey wasn’t down to him alone. Deckard worked on the invention of SLS inside the University of Texas (UT) in the mid-late 1980s where he would receive his master’s, file his first patent, and commercialise SLS technology through a business that would become DTM Corp. Of course, he did this with the support of fellow academics, investors and several champions in industry.

While his story can’t be told without acknowledging their efforts, nor can it neglect a couple of moments of serendipity, where rules were relaxed, and genius allowed to prosper.

Indeed, if it wasn’t for an assistant professor at UT named Dr Joe Beaman, Carl would have left UT with an ‘okay but not terrific’ grade at undergraduate level. “Let this guy in, he’s got potential,” Beaman remembers having to convince the graduate advisor. Without that intervention? No master’s, no patent, no SLS process.

Three years later, another moment of fortune. Back then, it wasn’t permissible for UT faculty members or students to own a company operating at the university, since it was considered using public property for private gain. Deckard and Beaman went ambitiously to the highest authority in the UT System and got lucky when the chancellor turned out to be an engineering professor. Impressed with their invention, he allowed them to become the first student and faculty member to own equity in a private company built on campus. Had he not, SLS mightn’t have been commercialised when it was, if at all.

Highlighting these instances is not intended to do a disservice to Deckard’s achievements, for which he is rightly lauded, but to note that even the most inventive need breaks along the way and people to hand those breaks to them. It’s a reminder, in an industry where, despite the wealth of innovation, successful projects are outnumbered starkly by failed ones, that people and ideas still need adequate support.

In the instance of Carl Deckard, twice he could have been stopped in his tracks, twice the doors could have slid shut rather than open.

But the gesture of an optimistic professor and the consent of an enthusiastic university chancellor allowed potential to be realised, a novel idea to flourish, and now on a daily basis, problems to be solved with SLS technology.

Life is short. Back potential.

SAM DAVIES ASSISTANT EDITOR

28.1 / www.tctmagazine.com / 05

VOLUME 28 ISSUE 1

COVER STORY

8

8

08. BASES LOADED

Desktop Metal gears up for 2020 in Europe by talking us through its latest machine launches.

13

industry REPORT 13. STATE OF THE INDUSTRY

Head of Content Daniel O'Connor speaks to some industry figureheads and examines AM facts & figures.

17

EXECUTIVE Q&A

17. CARBON’S NEXT CHAPTER

Carbon’s new CEO Ellen Kullman talks about the future of the Silicon Valley AM company.

12

THROUGH THE DOORS

34. ELECTRON BEAM'S TIME TO SHINE

Dan visits Wayland Additive's Yorkshire HQ to discover a new metal AM technology.

20

SOFTWARE & SIMULATION

20. A PLATFORM FOR INNOVATION

Deputy Group Editor Laura Griffiths talks to nTopology about building a software platform that unlocks AM potential.

23. “WE CARE ABOUT EFFICIENCY, QUITE A BIT.”

Dyndrite CEO, Harshil Goel talks to TCT about going from CAD to 3D print in minutes.

ELISE tells Assistant Editor Sam Davies how it’s bringing a completely new way of thinking to design for AM.

CREATIVE

31

31. WORTH ITS WEIGHT

Sam reports on a new powder atomisation machine designed for precious metals.

32. ENGINEERING THE EXQUISITE

STANDARDS

36

36. STANDARDS FOR AM

sponsored by

27. JOURNEY TO GENERATIVE ENGINEERING

32

34

Laura talks to the team behind a piece of additive architecture commissioned that’s become the focal point of a small parish church.

ASTM International, Director of AM programmes Dr. Mohsen Seifi talks through the latest developments in AM standards.

38

technology launch

38. INCUS Q&A

A few questions for one of AM’s newest players, Incus GmbH.

42 Expert Advisory Column 42. A FLY IN THE OINTMENT

Graham Tromans with a cautionary tale on how not to cure an SLA part.

BASES LOAD DESKTOP METAL GEARS UP FOR 2020 IN EUROPE WITH STRONG MANUFACTURING STARTING LINE-UP.

T

hree years ago, the words “desktop metal” were still a pipe dream, an additive manufacturing couplet yet to be successfully executed. That was until a company of that very name took the concept and put it on engineers’ desks for the first time, making office-friendly metal printing a reality. The name Desktop Metal is now so entrenched in the additive manufacturing lexicon, it’s hard to believe it has existed for little more than a tenth of the lifespan of some fellow industry heavyweights.

Today, Desktop Metal’s Studio System has one of the largest install volumes in its class thanks to companies like Ford, BMW and Google who were among early adopters and investors. With a technology-driven ethos, it has transformed itself into the one of the most funded 3D printing companies, amassed a global sales channel of near 90 partners, and that compact Studio System is now shipping in 48 countries to customers like BMW Group in Germany; Jade Groupe of Portugal, which specialises in metal

08 / www.tctmagazine.com / 28.1

parts production for the luxury fashion world; Weir Group and the University of Sheffield in the UK; CETIM, the Technical Centre for Mechanical Industry, AFPMA de l'Ain, a training and consultancy centre specialising in industry technology and management, Edalis, Soprofame and MSA in France; Politecnico Di Milano, one of the largest technical universities in Europe and Additive Italia srl (Add+It) in Italy; EGIBIDE and Centro Avanzado de Fabricación (IMH) in Spain; BAZIGOS of Greece, among others.

Now, the Burlington, Massachusetts-based outfit is gearing up for its biggest year to date armed with new technologies and a commitment, as the company’s Co-founder and CEO Ric Fulop described, “to changing the way manufacturers and engineers do their work.”

Sitting at the opposite end of the spectrum is Desktop Metal’s large-scale Production System which underwent its first installations this year. With promises of speeds more than 100x faster than quad-laser metal printers,

COVER STORY

DED 6 BELOW:

OPTIMISED CLUTCH PLATE PRINTED WITH THE SHOP SYSTEM

the machine addresses the metal additive industry’s ultimate goal; real manufacturing production. While install figures are currently under wraps, shipments are ramping up and user stories from the likes of IndoMIM, now a full-service manufacturing partner for Desktop Metal with an aligned focus on MIM, are a strong indicator that the machine is on track to fulfil those promises.

For those application areas in between, however, two new technologies announced in the lead up to the recent Formnext see Desktop Metal making a major play for two huge user bases so far underserved by additive manufacturing: machine shops and composites.

“We see 2020 as a year of explosive growth for Desktop Metal,” Fulop tells TCT. “From the continued expansion of our Studio System into new geographies and new verticals, to the broader installation of our mass manufacturing technology, the Production System, to the most recent addition of both the Shop System and Fiber, the bases are loaded for Desktop Metal to deliver the right 3D printing solutions needed that are designed to increase customer success and help innovators find opportunities to unleash the true potential of additive manufacturing.”

TALKING SHOP LEFT: 3

THE SHOP SYSTEM IS THE FIRST METAL BINDER JET SYSTEM DESIGNED FOR MACHINE AND METAL JOB SHOPS

“WE SEE 2020 AS A YEAR OF EXPLOSIVE GROWTH FOR DESKTOP METAL.”

The most recent addition to Desktop Metal’s ensemble is the Shop System which is aimed directly, as the name suggests, at machine and metal job shops. Equipped with a high-speed, single-pass print engine, the Shop System is said to be 10x faster than laser powder bed systems, allowing for up to 70kg of steel parts to be processed per day.

Physically, it takes a similar form to the Production System with a powder station and revamped furnace sitting alongside, but with a price point for the printer starting at 150,000 USD, aims to appeal to users with unique mid-volume manufacturing requirements, from single parts to production batches.

Fulop says: “In the machine shop, if you can free up capacity and human labour, which is the constraint for growth for a machine shop, this is a really great opportunity to then be able to produce a lot of parts.”

According to Fulop, the company saw there was a gap in the market

for companies that may not have the capacity to invest in million-dollar machines (“You can get a lot of CNC machine for 200K”, Fulop said).

The printer offers a spot size of 16 microns per drop, 1600 dpi resolution and distribution of up to 670 million droplets per second. It also offers the smallest drop size of any single pass binder jet system, down to 1 picoliter (a trillionth of a litre) which allows for superior surface finish, and its five lines of 70,000 nozzles per line are said to provide 25 % higher redundancy compared to other systems. The accompanying furnace has also been reworked to allow for greater mass and faster sintering.

“The idea was: what can what can we give them in 3D printing that would be competitive with CNC that would enable them to have no tooling and faster productivity and better shapes?” Fulop explains. “Binder jetting, being the most efficient way of 3D printing, was the right choice to do that. We understood that one of the things CNC gives you is very good surface finish and tolerances.

So, we focused on a print engine that would be very, very high resolution.

This is the highest resolution print engine in the market today by at least 33%. Then we focused on having the smallest drop size possible, so we could have the highest level of detail.

I think there’s incredible demand for it.”

“As the demand for metal AM continues to grow, it is challenging for many mechanical industry companies to identify the right solution that meets their needs and then to implement it in an effective way,” Maxime Fayolle, AM Team Leader, CETIM says. “Desktop Metal is addressing these types of challenges by bringing disruptive technologies to market in a complementary solutions portfolio that covers the full metal product lifecycle. With both the Studio System and new Shop System, we look forward to helping the needs of our customers that are seeking innovative, advanced manufacturing solutions.”

Backing up that demand, Desktop Metal understands that hardware is just one part of the process, which is why the company has built out a team of experts to ensure every piece of equipment has a strong backbone in materials and software.

Desktop Metal’s VP, Inventor and Lead Developer of Live Parts Andy Roberts, for example, has evolved the company’s Live Parts software into a4

28.1 / www.tctmagazine.com / 09

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COVER STORY

3 LEFT:

FIBER PRINTER BRINGS AFP CONTINUOUS CARBON FIBRE REINFORCEMENT TO THE DESKTOP

sintering simulation tool by programming sintering fundamentals into the physics engine to show how a part will react throughout the entire cycle. Its Fabricate software, with built-in metallurgy expertise, also underwent an update earlier this year. Similarly, Desktop Metal’s growing materials library is a good indicator of progress with the company recently introducing 4140 chromoly steel and H13 tool steel for the Studio System, opening up applications in moulding and tooling and critical industrial components.

SMALL BUT STRONG

Desktop Metal recently threw a bit of a curveball, diversifying outside of metals for the first time with a completely different kind of additive technology in the form of a small but mighty machine known as Fiber.

With a small footprint that’s ideal for a print farm setup, there are two Fiber models each featuring a compact build volume of 310 x 240 x 270 mm and two printheads: one to deposit continuous fibre prepreg tape, the kind that has already been used and qualified by industry for years, and the other printhead to extrude chopped fibre filament. The Fiber HT (high temperature) platform is able to process PA6 (Nylon) as well as PEEK and PEKK thermoplastics with up to 60% continuous fibre loading with <1% porosity and can produce flame retardant parts with continuous use temperatures up to 250°C. Fiber LT, meanwhile, is able to produce highstrength, ESD-compliant, abrasionresistant PA6 parts using continuous fibre with <5% porosity and chopped carbon or glass fibre-filled filaments.

Both machines feature a robotic tool changer architecture for future expandability. “That was the key,” Fetfatsidis says “leveraging existing

“We are about making strong parts, making end-use parts and really making functional components,” says Desktop Metal Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Jonah Myerberg, referring to the “desktop metal” misnomer in light of its new continuous fibre desktop 3D printer. “Metal 3D printing, done the right way, accessible to everyone.

Carbon fibre 3D printing, done the right way and accessible to everyone. What we heard from the industry was that the same customer who wants to print metal parts wants to print lightweight, strong composite parts as well.”

Fiber is designed to bring the same level of accessibility the company’s 160,000 USD officeoriented Studio System brought to metals, to the challenging area of composites. To get there, the company leveraged the expertise of Dr. Konstantine Fetfatsidis, a former Aurora Flight Sciences (now a Boeing company) advanced manufacturing lead and long-time user of automated fibre placement (AFP) who founded a company called Make Composites.

Desktop Metal ultimately integrated it into the company’s portfolio, bringing Fetfatsidis on-board as VP of Composite Products.

“WE ARE ABOUT MAKING STRONG PARTS.” SHOWN:

CNC FIXTURE, 3D PRINTED ON THE FIBER PRINTER

material to get the properties but also making a flexible system that could be adapted,” noting the benefit of changeable print heads in opening up future material capabilities, even in metals.

Another key difference is its pricing model. Harking back to those initial goals around accessibility, Fiber is offered via a subscription service starting at 3,495 USD per year including hardware, software and services. It also means, should Desktop Metal come out with a new printer, the customer can send theirs back and get an upgrade. It’s a bit of an experiment, according to Fulop, but customers so far are keen.

“It’s the portfolio, it’s the ability to have a portfolio and be able to help customers grow with our technology and make them successful,” Fulop said of the company’s growing roster.

“We’re excited and ready to build on that momentum with the commercial availability of our portfolio of 3D printing products and prepare for other exciting announcements in the coming months.”

Those coming months are set to be tremendously busy for the company. Both Fiber and Shop System platforms are scheduled for commercial availability in 2020 and more users are set to get their hands on the Production System, which Fulop, without giving away details, suggests could be in line for a number of updates. One thing he and Myerberg do offer, however, is that Desktop Metal knows there are plenty more ways to build parts in metal, hinting that there is more to come over the next 12 months.

Myerberg concludes, confidently, “And we’re just getting started.”

“A lot of people want to use carbon fibre for smaller stuff because it’s less weight, it’s got these great properties, but composites, as they get smaller are actually more expensive,” Fetfatsidis says, alluding to the labour-intensive multi-step process of composite part lay-up which typically prices out smaller parts. “We basically took the media that we use in traditional manufacturing and said let’s put it in a printer.”

28.1 / www.tctmagazine.com / 011

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INDUSTRY REPORT

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY

WORDS: DANIEL O'CONNOR

â&#x20AC;&#x153;THE REALITY IS AM IS STILL A VERY SMALL INDUSTRY; WE USE THE NUMBERS WITHOUT PUTTING THEM INTO ANY SORT OF CONTEXT.â&#x20AC;?

DR PHIL REEVES

A

nalysing the health of the additive manufacturing (AM) industry is a tricky task; ask the OEMs and they'll no doubt tell you all is well, even if there has been some serious restructuring. Ask a user, and they'll likely only see it from their positive perspective of a broader range of materials and machinery. Ask some industry analysts, they'll give you doom and gloom or a booming bonanza, dependent on their leanings.

The truth of the matter is that the state of the industry is almost impossible to judge. And what else do you expect from an industry in which the machines vary in price from hundreds to millions of dollars?

"It's always weird to talk about the 3D printing market because there's hardly one market," says Chris Connery VP Global Research & Analysis at Context. "That's why we break it down at this super high level of personal, professional, design and industrial machinery shipments. Take for example the industrial category [machinery over 100,000 USD typically metal]; overall, we talked about the metal 3D printing industry having a good quarter (Q3 2019), but only because of this new material extrusion metal technology like Desktop Metal and Markforged. When you break it down, you had a bit of a difficult Q3 for the powder bed fusion players. GE and EOS, for example, both saw a decline year over year in Q3."

Those figures are odd given that powder bed fusion technologies are maturing to the point BMW is using the technology for automotive series production and the metal4

28.1 / www.tctmagazine.com / 013

extrusion technologies are just hitting the market with relatively few use cases. Chris was keen to point out Context sees no correlation between the growth of one and the decline of the other. Perhaps there are not enough buyers to go around?

"The reality is that AM is still a very small industry," says Dr Phil Reeves, Managing Director at Reeves Insight. "We use the numbers without putting them into any context; I always listen out for other industry figures to put the AM industry into context. Yesterday on the news, they were talking about wild birds and the market for wild bird seed in the UK is 360 million GBP a year or about 400 million USD. So that's over half of the global revenue of Stratasys in 2018, (663.2 million USD for fullyear 2018)."

When HP talks about carving out a bigger slice of the 12 trillion dollar manufacturing industry for 3D printing, it is worth noting that according to the 2018 Wohler's Report the 3D printing market was worth 7.34 billion USD. That's 0.06% of that 12 trillion dollars; it's a relative drop in the ocean, but that drop is growing at a faster rate than that of manufacturing.

The investment in additive manufacturing over the last ten years has been nothing short of phenomenal.

According to Crunchbase's statistics, 93% of investment in 3D printing companies has come since 2010. The total level of funding in some 2,800 companies has been 4.1 billion USD. A quarter of that has flowed into two companies alone, Carbon and Desktop Metal, both of whom have been shipping machines for less than five years.

A PICTURE OF HEALTH?

Despite the boom times in venture capital funding, there is an air of pessimism you get from spending so much time reading about the AM industry. Along with the slow Q3s for EOS and GE Additive, 2019 saw Renishaw shutter the doors to its dedicated additive manufacturing site in Staffordshire. Although the UK company remains dedicated to AM technology, with the board discussing "next-generation machines" in its most recent earnings conference call, the Stone plant closure and the resulting round of redundancies did cause shockwaves.

014 / www.tctmagazine.com / 28.1

INDUSTRY REPORT

surface finish quality; and high materials cost. Dr Phil Reeves leans more towards the final point: "The biggest barrier to adoption is economics," says Phil Reeves. "There's a lot of talk about the ecosystem now; Formnext was a great example of this, you've got machine manufacturers, materials companies, material handling equipment companies, post-processing, you've got software for the design side, you've got software for the CAM side, you've got shop floor management software tools, DRM [digital rights management] software companies... you've got a huge ecosystem. The reality is, the industrial adoption is predicated on the weakest part of it. And the weakest part is still the economics of the process."

Phil's opinion is reflected in a recent TCT in association with Altair survey (more in Volume 28 Issue 2) in which Cost Justification ranked as the number one answer to the question, 'What challenges does your company face today regarding adopting additive in production?'

TO TCT 3SIXTY

“THE BIGGEST BARRIER TO ADOPTION IS ECONOMICS.” In 2019 alone we saw Mcor collapse, Lulzbot fold only to be rescued, plus Carbon, Stratasys, EOS and HP all change leadership teams. These are rocky times for the AM industry and what with geopolitical difficulties like tariff wars and Brexit plus the outbreak of the coronavirus practically shutting down China - AM's fastest-growing market for what appears to be some months - the start of 2020 doesn't look much brighter.

Reeves believes it's inevitable that in the not too distant future we'll see some consolidation in 3D printing companies: "There are far too many 'me too' companies, particularly in metals. If you look at the number of powder bed laser metal companies, it's tough to differentiate one from another in terms of the product offer, which can't be good for the industry because there's only a finite market. You're diluting the market between multiple players, which means that none of them gets stronger and potentially you're repressing the market and investment because nobody knows which way to turn."

Adoption is still the most significant factor holding back the industry; a recent Ultimaker survey of over 2,500 engineers and professionals revealed that the adoption rate of the those aware of the technologies was a little over 50%.

At the recent TCT Japan 2020 event, Tim Shinbara, VP & CTO at The Association For Manufacturing Technology suggested the four most significant challenges were; lack of verification and validation tools; inconsistent processes;

Although it's difficult for those in our position to do much about the economics of the processes themselves, we can help with the runner up, Business Case Identification, which, in turn, may help with cost justification.

Spotting this trend for slowing down of machine sales and a lack of adoption TCT has taken it upon itself, as an independent organisation, to help drive adoption. TCT 3Sixty (29th September - 1st October) is the new brand for what was TCT Show.

To help exhibitors sell more machines, the content for the new event will focus on three areas on an AM roadmap: • Evaluation: From 20-point plans before raising that purchase order to cautionary tales of adoption gone wrong, the evaluation track will feature speakers aimed at helping visitors understand why, how and when they should be purchasing equipment.

• Adoption: Once the decision to buy has been made, the adoption track focusses on some of the low-hanging fruit use-cases that offer quick ROI. • Optimisation: For users who may already have a machine or use a service bureau for some of the more mundane tasks and are looking to enhance their machine(s)' output be it through partconsolidation or a step into series production.

TCT is on the lookout for speakers to present use-cases in the three above areas. If you feel like you have something that can help to accelerate the adoption of additive manufacturing, get in touch with daniel.oconnor@rapidnews.com.

28.1 / www.tctmagazine.com / 015

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Executive Q&A

CEO ELLEN KULLMAN TALKS CARBON’S NEXT CHAPTER IN THE FIRST OF OUR NEW SERIES OF EXECUTIVE INTERVIEWS, TCT TALKS TO CARBON’S NEW CEO AND PRESIDENT ELLEN J. KULLMAN ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE SILICON VALLEY ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING PIONEER. TCT: You’ve served on the board at Carbon for a number of years, what made you want to take on this leadership role?

EK: As a Carbon board member I had a first row seat to the incredible innovation coming out of this company. I really believe that Carbon is in a position to pave the way for a stronger manufacturing future. I always said it would take a compelling reason for me to take another operating role. And Carbon is compelling. Everything we are doing to reimagine the way products are designed, engineered, and manufactured across many different industries is inspiring. I have the relevant experience building and leading businesses so it’s really an honour to take on this responsibility to propel Carbon into our next chapter.

TCT: Can you give us a sense of what that next chapter may look like?

EK: Right now, we’re focused on scaling our business and supply chain operations, pushing ahead on research and development, and delivering the best products and services to our customers and partners.

TCT: You previously served as CEO at DuPont for seven years. With your experience in the field of materials science, can we expect to see increased focus on Carbon’s materials roadmap?

EK: I’m really excited about the role digital manufacturing will play in achieving a more sustainable future for our planet. Digital manufacturing can offer cleaner, more sustainable approaches to making things. For example, last year Carbon announced RPU 130, a new rigid polyurethane material for automotive and industrial applications. 30% of RPU 130 is composed of a fully plant-based material called Susterra, developed by DuPont Tate & Lyle BioProducts.

A rigid, tough, high-temperature material comparable in performance to

unfilled thermoplastics, RPU 130 demonstrates that achieving more sustainable materials for digital manufacturing can also simultaneously mean achieving better performing materials. This is a major focus for Carbon, and going forward, we are firmly committed to building on this work by continuing to expand efforts to achieve more sustainable materials and practices.

TCT: Coming into this industry, what applications or potential areas for AM excite you the most?

EK: I’m really excited about the applications that are coming out of our performance and protection vertical. The Carbon Digital Manufacturing Platform is the perfect solution for any company looking to create superior, differentiated products, and especially previously unmakeable product designs. For example, our ability to create complex lattice structures that can be tuned to be both energy damping and absorbing with varying functional zones within a single part enables superior performance for products previously made from foam. Further, partnerships with global brands such as adidas, Riddell, Specialized, and CCM are examples showing how companies that have adopted Carbon to advance product innovation can not only design and manufacture better products, but also bring products to market in timelines not possible with traditional manufacturing methods.

TCT: Much of the conversation around AM is about how we take the technology from prototyping to production, which Carbon has been exploring this through partnerships with the likes of Ford and Riddell. What challenges do we face in taking AM to that next level? How is Carbon tackling those challenges?

EK: Sticking with the status quo is always the easy answer. Adopting a new technology that fundamentally transforms the way you make4

3 LEFT:

ELLEN J. KULLMAN, CARBON CEO & PRESIDENT

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Executive Q&A

3 LEFT:

PRODUCTION PARTS 3D PRINTED FOR FORD

things requires a company to be open to thinking about innovation coming from the outside. Manufacturing and supply chain are generally not areas where companies are open to change or risk. The main challenge the AM industry faces is helping companies see the long-term value in adopting AM and how that will pay off in terms of shortening go-to-market timelines; achieving lighter, consolidated parts; making new, complex geometries for improved part performance; and the opportunity to make parts with better performing and more sustainable materials. The proof is there but we haven’t quite crossed the chasm as an industry to mainstream adoption of AM at scale.

“I’M REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THE ROLE DIGITAL MANUFACTURING WILL PLAY IN ACHIEVING A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FOR OUR PLANET.”

TCT: You are one of the first female CEOs in the AM industry and are active in efforts to fix the gender gap in leadership through the Paradigm for Parity coalition - is that something you’re also aiming to champion in AM? EK: Absolutely. Throughout my career I’ve advocated for important issues like salary equity for people of the same job level regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, or any other characteristics. I’m really proud to inherit a culture at Carbon where there is a very strong commitment to making a positive difference in the world and to creating a work environment that enables people of all genders to thrive. I believe we must embrace and celebrate the diversity of experiences, capabilities, talents, backgrounds, identities, and interests of all our employees,

because not only is it the right thing to do, but it also strengthens our ability to innovate and better serve our customers and partners.

TCT: Finally, as Carbon transitions from its start-up phase, what can we expect to see from the company in 2020?

EK: Our focus in 2020 is to continue scaling Carbon’s Digital Manufacturing Platform to deliver on the promise of digital manufacturing.

In 2019 our partnerships with global brands like adidas, Riddell, Specialized, Ford, Lamborghini, and Dentsply Sirona demonstrated how Carbon Digital Light Synthesis technology is accelerating product innovation, and we look forward to developing these programmes further. We’ll also continue to expand access of our platform to product designers and engineers around the world.

SHOWN: CARBON 3D PRINTING LAB

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SOFTWARE & SIMULATION FEATURE sponsored by

WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS

A

dditive manufacturing (AM) technology is outpacing our current software toolset. At least that is the take from one New York-based software developer nTopology, with 30.7 million USD in funding to do something about it.

“People have been working in AM for many years and they’ve had these dreams of things that they’ve wanted to create. It’s not easy to do that with the tools that they have today,” Blake Perez, Application Engineer at nTopology tells TCT during a meeting at last year’s TCT Show.

It’s a good introduction as to why the company’s computational modelling platform exists today, described by Perez as “a modelling tool and engineering knowledge-capture tool for high-performance geometry.” The comments were made back in September when the company made its debut at the Birmingham event and scooped up a TCT Award for its nTop Platform.

Co-founded by Grey Schroy and CEO Bradley Rothenberg, nTopology first arrived on the AM scene in 2015 with its Element lattice design software. With a powerful modelling kernel on their hands, the team started looking at ways in which the software could be expanded to open up more applications. After working with a number of pilot customers, nTop Platform was born.

Formally launched last May, nTop Platform offers a number of toolkits for lightweighting, topology optimisation, additive manufacturing, design analysis and architected materials for users in the aerospace and defense, automotive, medical and industrial design sectors; the company already counts the likes of Lockheed Martin amongst early users. Two months on from that TCT Award win, nTopology announced the next iteration, nTop Platform 2.0, with updated toolkits and the opportunity for users to create their own workflows.

MAKE THE WORK FLOW

nTop Platform has been designed to handle complex geometries in a repeatable way.

Users can design engineering workflows which can be deployed to a whole product family or organisation to speed up the design-tomanufacturing process. Geometries can be modelled directly in the software or design data can be imported from most major CAD tools, optimised, latticed, sliced and supported within a single platform, holding the user's hand through pre-installed data sets or allowing users to build

020 / www.tctmagazine.com / 28.1

SHOWN:

TOPOLOGY OPTIMISATION OF AN AEROSPACE BRACKET

on top of those and input their own IP. “That’s why we call it a Platform,” says Perez.

“Typically, the workflow is, you have this very talented engineer who takes analysis results data, looks at it, has some intuition about how that gets applied to the geometry and it’s back and forth, that person has to be in the middle,” Perez says of the current workflow. “Now you can set up these loops where that happens automatically.”

The typical design-to-manufacturing workflow is a long one with many components to contend with. Designers and engineers are required to switch between multiple pieces of software in order to get a design to the point of manufacture and for every design iteration, those many steps have to be carried out all over again. That’s where repeatable workflows come in.

“The more you enable your team to iterate, make design changes, learn from failures, the better your outcome is, we all know that,” Perez says. “We kind of tied all these processes together, bringing in the simulation data, bringing in your existing geometry, the optimisation, and putting that all together in a single tool. So now you can say, okay I’ve learned from my part, I need to make this design change and go back and make it. Your part rebuilds and then you can just print right way, you don’t have to worry about costing your company man hours in making that design change.”

SOFTWARE & SIMULATION

There are a growing number of programmes on the market offering tools like topology optimisation and we’re seeing more examples of generative design everywhere from aerospace brackets to car steering wheels. nTopology’s take is, topology optimisation is just another tool in the box and nTop allows users to quickly create geometry directly from that without having to manually remap engineering data. That said, it’s still very much a collaborative process between engineer and software.

“If you Google generative design, you’ll get hundreds of answers," says Perez. “What we do is we provide a toolkit for generative design. We give you all of the basic tools that you need to string together whatever workflow you would like to have. It’s not a black box, everything is very open, you know exactly what’s happening with the software. You as a user can put this together and you can generate your multiple outcomes, you can choose based on the constraints that you have, the machine that you have.”

A FRESH APPROACH

Those advances in software products positioned towards additive manufacturing mean some older ways of doing things are gradually being phased out. STL for example, a file format that has been subject to a committee of industry leaders wanting to see it gone in favour of a modern format, may want to watch its back.

“One of our main efforts right now is to really get rid of the STL file entirely,” Perez says. “If you think about it, STL adds no value to your digital tool chain.

It’s a translation mechanism. So, we’re slicing parts directly, we’re providing

“INNOVATION IN EACH AREA IS GOING TO DRIVE INNOVATION IN THE OTHERS.”

5 ABOVE:

ROCKET NOZZLE WITH LATTICE STRUCTURE DESIGNED IN NTOP PLATFORM

slice outputs from our software directly to machines, we’re working with machine vendors and I see that attitude changing as well, where people are being a little more open about the types of files that they accept from their customers, from their users. So, slice export has been incredibly successful in getting these geometries out of the screen and into the machines and that has relied heavily on our relationship with the machine OEMs.” nTopology has been actively working with OEMs like Renishaw and EOS to further explore the potential of this technology and how it meets the needs of various processes (“We know that there are hundreds of AM technologies out there, we’re not going to build for just one, we’re going to build for all of them,” says Perez).

Most recently, the company joined EOS’ Digital Foam programme as a partner to support the 3D printing of applications like protective headwear and performance footwear. There’s also an ongoing discussion around the relationship between AM hardware and software, the idea that one is always going to outpace the other. Perez doesn’t think that’s such a bad thing.

“I don’t think we ever want them to be on the same playing field, because innovation in each area is going to drive innovation in the others,” Perez explains. “Right now, we’re essentially seeing our hardware advance leaps and bounds beyond our digital capabilities, our software capabilities. Software is catching up and then somewhere in the middle is the material space where I think we also have incredibly advanced materials. Now we have to figure out how do we process them? How do we represent them in the software? […] There’s so much good hardware out there. We’re just waiting for the tools.”

The last year has been one of huge growth for the company. It recently opened an office in Regensburg, Germany to cater for its growing European customer base and raised an additional 20 million USD in funding. nTopology says it is now focusing its efforts on user experience, ensuring nTop fits into existing workflows and building out the platform to allow people to customise it to their needs, giving them the ability to create optimised workflows, package them and then share across an organisation or the wider user community. It is also turning its attention to other forms of advanced manufacturing like composite layup and hybrid technologies where it believes, like additive, there is a sizeable gap in the design tools readily available.

“One of our next big expansion efforts is, what does that community platform really look like?” says Perez. “Are there communities based around it? How can I download new functionality that maybe nTopology didn’t create but someone else did?

That’s where you really gain a lot of collective knowledge and you’ll see just leaps and bounds of where the software goes.”

28.1 / www.tctmagazine.com / 021

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SOFTWARE & SIMULATION

DYNDRITE: “WE CARE ABOUT EFFICIENCY, QUITE A BIT.” WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS

T

he above is the key theme that Harshil Goel, founder and CEO of additive manufacturing software developer Dyndrite, says he wants me to take away from our conversation at last year’s Formnext.

It’s a concise introduction from a company built on the enormously complex language of kernels, GPUs and CPUs, but a few simple clicks into a demo, I quickly discover that making complex tools efficient and approachable is what Dyndrite is all about.

'Quick' is a prime word here. Within the first five minutes of our meeting, Goel has successfully imported a model into the Dyndrite platform, generated supports, made some changes, run the next iteration, copied and pasted the new design, added some crucial labels, performed slicing - basically the many steps that designers and engineers have to go through day in, day out to take their design from file to finished part. The recent Forbes

30 Under 30 inductee makes it look so simple that I walk away believing even I, three engineering degrees less qualified, could take the mouse and churn out some successful parts.

“That's the point,” Goel tells me.

“Honestly, if someone has difficulty learning how to use this, we did not do our jobs right. This is supposed to be like English and this is supposed to be really, really accessible. You should be able to go from CAD to print within five minutes of installing the software.”

Dyndrite (pronounced “den-drite”), is a Seattle-based outfit which emerged after more than three years in stealth to a captivated crowd at the Additive Manufacturing Users Group last year.

Backed by Google’s Gradient Ventures and former Autodesk CEO Carl Bass, the company aims to provide an alternative to the software tools which Goel and his

SOFTWARE & SIMULATION FEATURE sponsored by

team of mathematicians, scientists and software experts saw were holding the additive manufacturing industry back.

“We're at a unique point in time where the hardware has actually outpaced the software,” Goel tells TCT. “It's not even just on the design side. It's just how do you go from CAD to print?”

Dyndrite is not a design tool. It’s not a simulation tool either. So, what exactly does it do? Behind the bold statements about ushering in a new era of manufacturing, its interests lie in geometry and the crux is to help people gain control of their CAD to 3D print process. At the core is the Dyndrite Accelerated Geometry Kernel (AGK) and Dyndrite ACE (Accelerated Computational Engine), the world's first fully GPUnative geometry engine. Put simply, the kernel is the central maths behind a programme’s operating system and you can do a tonne of stuff with it. Powered

by NVIDIA Quadro, ACE has been built from the ground up for modern computer architecture, modern manufacturing and modern design needs, according to Goel.4

3 SHOWN:

DYNDRITE ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING TOOLKIT WITH PYTHON INTERFACE

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SOFTWARE & SIMULATION

4 RIGHT:

DYNDRITE IS DESIGNED FOR SERIAL PRODUCTION WORKFLOWS

“We specifically decided to build an additive manufacturing application because we saw a bunch of people in quite a bit of pain running around with their heads on fire and said you know, I think we can build you something to help.”

That "something" is Dyndrite's Additive Manufacturing Toolkit (AMT) and accelerated production preparation build processor for 3D printing, both unveiled at Formnext. The platform allows users to import native CAD data, any geometry type and huge data sets (goodbye STLs), and export to any 3D printing process.

It also comes with integrated Python API for scripting automated workflows and applications which can be used on laptops, desktops, local servers or the cloud.

“Of course, making complex geometries is difficult but I actually think that's a red herring. I don't think many people really care about lattices at all. They look interesting but you can't QA them, you can't clean them, you can't service them and you can't figure out how to fix them,” Goel explains. “On the other hand, being able to iterate is significantly more important. If it takes you 15 minutes to load a file and you do that four times a day and you have 10 people in your company and your burn rate is $100 to $200 an hour, you've now burned $10-20,000 a week just opening files.”

“THE IDEA IS TO MAKE EVERY SINGLE PERSON SUPERMAN OR SUPERWOMAN.”

Processes that have traditionally taken engineers multiple pieces of software and hours or days to complete can now be done in a matter of minutes. Goel shared how some customers who were used to taking up to 70 hours to slice a design were now able to do so in under two hours. Furthermore, the ability to handle complex geometries natively without constant importing and exporting means part quality is controlled.

provides OEMs, software vendors and service providers with the necessary tools to develop for the platform. 3D Systems, ExOne, SLM Solutions, ANSYS and Altair announced their participation at Formnext, bringing this industry working group to a total of 15 members.

“The idea is to make every single person Superman or Superwoman," Goel adds heartily.

"Again, the whole point is efficiency. Everything that we do is basically ROI guaranteed. If we are not saving you money or time in some way then we're probably not interested.”

Another big part of Dyndrite’s growth plan is its Developer Council which has already on-boarded an impressive roster of AM leaders. The council is part of the Dyndrite Developer Program which

The company says it wants to be friends with everyone in the room. “There's no reason why we couldn't licence ourselves to everyone here,” Goel says, alluding to bigger ambitions of having a Dyndrite sticker on every machine (I spot several Dyndrite logos already dotted around on various booths on the show floor) but he asserts that while there is a lot of scope for this technology, Dyndrite is staying focused, honing in on five market segments: aerospace, automotive, energy, medical and service bureau.

27 28 29

It is clearly doing something right.

Two major metal additive manufacturing players, Renishaw and EOS, recently teamed up with Dyndrite to adopt the AMT into their respective workflows.

For Renishaw, that means integrating AMT into its QuantAM build processor to accelerate slicing, latticing and lightweighting while also speeding up the overall CAD-to-print process. For EOS, it will support the build processor for its direct metal laser sintering portfolio to increase performance, portability and repeatability.

After just under a year in beta mode, Goel says the company is getting close to having a product that’s ready for a full release. It also recently launched its limited-time Magic Amnesty Programme that will close in April. Until then, it's continuing to push the platform, bring in more developers, and excited to see what those first users do with the technology.

“As you can probably tell, we're pretty paranoid about making something perfect," Goel concludes. "We think that we're going to be flipping the switch sometime this year.”

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28.1 / www.tctmagazine.com / 025

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SOFTWARE INSPEX & SIMULATION WORDS: Sam Davies

P

iling suitcases, laptops and sample parts into the back of a van.

Progressing from microscopically small plankton organisms to bionic lightweight construction. ELISE GmbH, embarking on an eight-hour road trip in November 2019 from Bremerhaven to Frankfurt, having previously spent ten years inside The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, is in the mood to talk about its journey.

The company’s origins are in the research of single-cell plankton organisms called diatoms which need to float to get maximum intake via photosynthesis and require a permeable structure to take in nutrients. Over the years, Daniel Seigel, Sebastian Möller and Dr Moritz Maier, the eventual co-founders of ELISE, would study plankton organisms, seeking to harness the lightweight construction principles of these microscopic entities and apply them in the fields of automotive, aerospace and more.

ELISE (Evolutionary Light Structure Engineering) started as a design service, with the co-founders deciding to pursue commercialisation in 2018 after positive feedback from clients.

A six-month beta phase then attracted some of Germany’s most renowned manufacturers, each of which extended their usage of the software while more early access customers came on board too.

Weeks before Formnext 2019, where the start-up was showcasing applications from

SOFTWARE & SIMULATION FEATURE sponsored by

Premium Aerotec, Volkswagen and Brose, ELISE had joined the likes of Carbon, Desktop Metal and Xometry in being backed by BMW i Ventures.

A sum of 3 million EUR was raised in the seed funding round led by the automotive giant’s venture capital arm after the Group’s Motorsport division had successfully deployed the ELISE platform during the beta programme.

MAKING HEADWAY

The software that has caused such a stir as to result in BMW’s backing at this early stage combines generative design capabilities with process automation to create a single platform that houses tools for topology optimisation, stress analysis, fatigue analysis and more.

ELISE calls it ‘Generative Engineering’.

“Let’s try to imagine a world where all the necessary steps and people needed for such a huge production are in one place and if you change something in the design you would instantly know the costs of the production, the weight, the simulation resolves, the displacement, the energy absorption; it’s all in one place and instantly available. This is the vision we have in mind,” Maier tells TCT. It’s a vision, so far at least, enjoyed by the likes of Volkswagen Osnabrück GmbH and Premium Aerotec, whose applications of the technology were presented at Formnext. The VW component on show is an A-pillar inlay manufactured with Selective Laser Melting (SLM) technology.

It boasts a reduction in weight of 74% and a reduction in the number of parts by 67%. Premium Aerotec’s application, meanwhile, is an auxiliary stabilising4

“IT’S A COMPLETELY NEW WAY OF THINKING.”

SHOWN:

ROCKET BRACKET DESIGNED

BY ARIANE GROUP USING ELISE

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SOFTWARE INSPEX & SIMULATION

3 LEFT:

ELISE’S GENERATIVE ENGINEERING PLATFORM

potential gets dropped when it comes to additive manufacturing.”

ARRIVING AT A SOLUTION

point which is installed between two frames in the lower shell at the rear side of an Airbus A320 passenger aircraft. Again combining ELISE with 3D printing, there is an 80% reduction in time and a 40% reduction in weight.

Both of these components have been designed from what ELISE calls their ‘technical DNA’. This incorporates input cells like manufacturing constraints, material properties, load case data and cost data; generative cells made up of bionic design algorithms and design templates; and evaluative cells, which take into account multiphysics simulations, support generation and printing analysis. This technical DNA then goes through modelling and design phases, then meshing and AM preparation, before finite element analysis and cost evaluations take the user to a view of the fully designed component.

According to Maier, the implementation of Generative Engineering is leading some companies to reconsider how they approach the designs of parts.

“It’s a completely new way of thinking,” he says. “This was the feedback that we got: ‘If we are using Elise, what we do is throw away our construction department, now we are all like process designers’. The teams come together and sit on the table: there’s the purchasing department, stress department, the development department and they are discussing their workflow, their product development process, and what it should look like.”

While bigger companies might have different departments for each step of the product development process, in plenty of firms one person will be responsible for the entire design workflow, suffering the multiple file imports and exports that go with it. ELISE’s software isn’t just designed to assist additive manufacturing users, but taking these processes as an example, the company believes this back and forth can impede the design freedom that 3D printing technology promises.

“We’ve done engineering services for eight years now – for seven years in additive manufacturing – and what we experienced is that it is a field where this design freedom comes along with complex design steps. We have tried out nearly every software on the market, starting from CAD tools, simulation tools, pre-processing tools, and it was a mess of software conversion and import and export steps. This process takes forever,” Maier bemoans. “If there’s a project timeframe of two or three months, then you can do little iterations and then the time is up.

You cannot come up with new designs, you cannot create new ideas, you cannot explore design spaces. You get stuck in your old design and, therefore, a huge

ELISE’s Generative Engineering platform is still in development, with early access available on request and most of the seed funding set to be used to further enhance the product. The company is not looking to add ‘super fancy’ features but instead make sure the platform is robust and easy to use. Indeed, the group hasn’t come this far to underwhelm visitors to its trade show stands nor disappoint the likes of Brose, BMW or MAN, all of whom had testimonials plastered on ELISE’s walls at Formnext.

The company is determined to provide these companies, and more once its Generative Engineering software is fully commercialised, with a platform that is simple, effective and doesn’t require them to carry out work in another software, unless they wish to.

How the company differentiates itself from the generative design solutions on the market is by giving users access to the entire product development workflow, rather than just the design phase. One thing they have in common, however, is that the value of the technology is not so much in the destination, but instead in the journey.

“The most critical point of this product is not the result in the end, it’s the way to the part,” Maier says. “If you design an aluminium part, you optimise the thicknesses and overhanging areas for the specific manufacturing technique, and somebody raises the question, ‘would it be cheaper in titanium?’ I have to redo the whole project to find that out. [But with ELISE,] you simply can change the parameter of the material and the rest of the process is 100% identical; all the cross-section optimisation, all the fatigue analysis is already there and recalculated automatically with the new material properties and you instantly know [the price].

“The final part you could do with a classical CAD system by hand, but the design possibilities behind it, this is the interesting part.”

3 LEFT:

VOLKSWAGEN A-PILLAR INLAY

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CREATIVE INSPEX

WORDS: Sam Davies

A

s a leading manufacturer and supplier of precious metals, the figureheads of Cooksongold get pitched technologies aplenty as they sample trade shows and conferences across the globe.

Such is the frequency of these conversations for Managing Director Martin Bach, he plays them straight, offering an honest appraisal of what has been put before him. Take Vicenzaoro 2020 in January, for instance, where he was being told all about a fully automated, ‘all singing, all dancing’ CNC machine, which was being used to make rings and other jewellery pieces in a number of different materials. “That’s not the right way to go,” Bach determined. “It doesn’t matter how good your machine is. It can be the most incredible machine, totally robot loaded with zero labour cost, if it’s not dedicated to a given alloy, my system’s cheaper.”

His assessment of 3DLab’s ATO Noble powder atomiser device at another trade show, meanwhile, was the polar opposite. So impressed were he and his colleagues of the Polish company’s patent-pending Ultrasonic Atomization technology, they agreed to optimise the parameters and enhance the performance of the machine, before readying to make it commercially available at some point this year. Customers will be able to either buy powders atomised on the ATO Noble or buy the machine outright and begin to produce the powders themselves in-house.

The ATO Noble uses plasma arc melting to turn wire material into molten material, which is then subjected to vibrations with a specifically chosen frequency, atomising the liquid metal before it solidifies to form a powder. 3D Labs says this resulting powder – which could be reactive alloys like aluminium and titanium or, more pertinently for Cooksongold, precious ones like gold, silver or platinum – will boast excellent flowability, perfect sphericity and narrow particle size. The 760 x 1100 x 2000 mm machine also promises 100% material atomisation and a minimising of material loss thanks to a filtration system that recovers it for reuse. Despite having powder atomisation capability already in-house, for a manufacturer like Cooksongold, these

capabilities and features proved too good to ignore.

“We think this technology has the potential to offer better quality powder, more tightly controlled distribution and therefore lower costs because yield is better. And with a piece of equipment which is much smaller, losses are going to be less” Bach explained.

“It’s not rocket science. Precious metal is all about not losing precious metal and refining it as little as possible. Otherwise, it’s fiendishly expensive.”

Hence, much of Cooksongold’s parameter development on the ATO Noble is focused on making sure the machine is easy to clean down and ensuring material doesn’t get stuck in joints or caught up in filters.

“It’s a fantastic technology, ideally placed for our sort of market,” Bach assessed.

“Conventional machines for producing atomized powder are big, big things. They’re not designed for low quantity and so your losses are significant. [The ATO Noble] is much more flexible. It has the potential disadvantage of being a low volume approach, but you very rarely talk about high volumes of precious metals, so you don’t need to worry about it. You’re not producing tonnes a day; it just doesn’t happen.

“So, the fact that it’s a small, self-controlled, enclosed system is perfect for precious metals. Perfect.”

“IT’S A FANTASTIC TECHNOLOGY, IDEALLY PLACED FOR OUR SORT OF MARKET.” The cost of precious alloys, plus the potential need to refine the material, is what inhibits the more frequent application of the materials in 3D printing, despite them being safer to process than reactive materials. But for Cooksongold, who’s invested big in 3D printing and has launched and deployed the Precious M 080 metal laser sintering machine with EOS, printing precious metals like gold is almost unavoidable. “It looks pretty, it won’t tarnish, and everybody wants a gold piece of jewellery,” Bach explained.

So, when Cooksongold send Bach and his colleagues to places like Vicenzaoro, it’s in the hope that they come across technologies that can facilitate high-quality parts printed in precious metal and do so more efficiently. In the ATO Noble, the company believes it has found just what it was looking for.

SHOWN: 3D LAB’S ATO NOBLE

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ENGINEERING THE EXQUISITE WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS

T

opologically designed brackets for aeroplanes, latticed heat exchangers for racing vehicles, medical implants with organic architectures; these are the sorts of applications we’ve come to expect from additive manufacturing. But additive innovation can come in many different forms, as FIT AG recently discovered in a project commissioned by a small parish church in Altmühldorf, Upper Bavaria.

“Inside our own company, we opened up a lot of eyes. It doesn’t always need to be a purely technical application so that 3D printing shines,” says Bruno Knychalla, Project Engineer at FIT AG, who led the technical development for a unique retable sculpture at St. Laurentius parish church.

“Sometimes this new form of freedom can open up new possibilities that you yourself didn’t even think of.”

The structure, an impressive, topology optimised 8-metre-high golden lattice which sits as the focal point of the church altar, was developed by Oliver Tessin and artist duo Corbinian Böhm and Michael Gruber, known as Empfangshalle, as part of the church’s renovation project last Spring.

The design is influenced by the underlying philosophy of Gothic architecture adapting nature’s design principles which can be found in the church’s pointed arches and ribbed vault. Rather than being a case of technology meeting the traditional, the artists saw the retable as more of a continuation of a centuries-old tradition around sites of cultural heritage using the latest architectural methodologies.

With a clear vision and additive already in mind, specifically Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM), Tessin came to FIT following a talk Knychalla gave at the Technical University of Munich. Drawn to WAAM’s unique appearance and haptic properties, the artists had already approached a number of service providers, but there were questions around the feasibility of cost, geometric restrictions and the longevity of WAAM parts. Working with FIT AG’s team in Germany, they

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were able to test a number of the AM provider’s in-house processes, including hybrid manufacturing strategies but, laser sintering, with a sizeable build platform offering strong mechanical properties, reduced weight and design freedom, came out on top.

SHOWN: CLOSE-UP SHOWING DETAILED, TEXTURED AESTHETIC (CREDIT: ANDREAS HEDDERGOTT)

“[WAAM] has a really fascinating surface […] but we showed them that through coating technologies we can also achieve a completely novel look,” Knychalla told TCT. “We knew that there was no way to fabricate the design in one piece. We had to look at which is the most effective and economic way to fabricate it. We developed a concept, where an optimised core was generated, representing the geometry, that was then coated with a structural coating.”

While initially metal and ceramic materials were thought to be the best choice for this type of architectural project, the team opted to manufacture the structure in a white polyamide powder on an EOS P 700. A total of 60 individual parts were printed and stacked to maximise space in the build chamber.

Once assembled together, they were then coated in a structural bronze-aluminium alloy using a thermal spraying technique and a metallic lacquer to create a glowing metallic finish.

The next challenge was construction.

Working with the artists, architects and structural engineers, the team went to great lengths to build a framework around the 350 kg structure so that they could assemble the final pieces together on-site and give it one final layer of coating.

“We had to build a small building to coat it,” Knychalla explained. “There were a lot of skilled people involved, like our model makers, they really gave it their all to assemble this big thing.”

The project took around six months to complete, but Knychalla says the printing itself was the most effortless part of the process.

5 ABOVE:

STRUCTURAL COATING PROCESS (CREDIT: FIT AG)

“THIS NEW FORM OF FREEDOM CAN OPEN UP NEW POSSIBILITIES.”

CREATIVE INSPEX

SHOWN: SCULPTURE AT ST. LAURENTIUS PARISH CHURCH (CREDIT: ANDREAS HEDDERGOTT)

For this type of project, AM is a very new process and crucially, it wasn’t just the designer or the architect that the team needed to get final approval from. They also needed to convince the people of the town, who were leading the church renovations, that this technology was going to work.

“New technologies and spiritual artefacts are not combined so often,” Knychalla commented. “I think our broad range of technological understanding and our interdisciplinary team convinced people that we can make something bold and new with a certain masterful quality that leaves an impression like high handicraft with timeless elegance. I think that people were really astonished.”

The final seals of approval came in the form of a blessing from highest member of the German Catholic church, Cardinal Marx, and from peers in the AM industry who selected the retable as the Highly Commended winner in the Creative Applications category at last year’s TCT Awards. For that, Knychalla says, the success of the project is all down to collaboration.

“We had to speak the same language as our clients, so we adjusted our workflow to be able to do a back and forth inside the digital designto-construction workflow. It was a computationally cutting-edge project,” says Knychalla, acknowledging how FIT AG’s internal design and architecture specialists played an imperative role in communicating new ideas with the studio and artists.

For example, if you look closely, you will see the lattice also features a unique textured aesthetic, the result of a collaborative process between both teams of designers and engineers. It drives home Knychalla’s comments that often, the most creative possibilities are the ones that no single person or team could even imagine.

“We proposed functional surface structures that we could put on top of the structure,” Knychalla adds. “From this proposal, the architect and artists developed their own way of expressing it. We basically exchanged algorithms back and forth to come up with a good solution because this surface had to also be a carrier for the aluminium coating, which acted as the dominant load carrying layer. We basically gave them computational input and they developed it perfectly into a surface that was not just beautiful, but also technically important.”

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ELECTRON BEAM TIME TO SHINE WORDS: DANIEL O'CONNOR

W

ayland was a master smith of Germanic folklore; such was the fame of his prowess at forging that one of the greatest warriors in literature, Beowulf, had Wayland make his breastplate. Wayland was said to be able to manufacture an arsenal that no other man could. As far as additive manufacturing company naming conventions go, it is a pretty strong start.

Wayland Additive is a new British company with a technology that recently secured £3m in funding from Longwall Ventures after a period of Innovate UK plus industry R&D development funding. Fundamentally, it is a metal electron beam powder bed fusion technology, but its backstory is a classic case of the mother of the invention being necessity.

Ian Laidler, CTO at Wayland Additive, was tasked by bosses at Reliance Precision - a one-hundred-year-old engineering firm - to investigate metal 3D printing technology.

The then Technical Director examined the current technologies on offer with the eye of somebody who has spent three decades mastering semiconductor manufacturing. For Ian, the current metal additive manufacturing technologies didn't have the repeatability or reliability he’d come to expect.

"I have a background in electron-beam lithography from the semiconductor industry and realised that there were things in current electron-beam additive manufacturing that could be improved," explained Ian during a meeting at Formnext 2019. "I recruited my old team from the lithography world and first set upon resolving the Achilles heel of current electron beam AM - charging of the powder."

The charging of the powder is the reason for what is known as a smoke event or 'smoking'; which can ruin both builds and require machine cleandown. To minimise smoking, current systems pre-sinter the surface layer with rapid scanning of the beam before the actual melting. This presintering workaround means de-powdering is difficult (parts with complex internal channels are virtually impossible to process with electron beam), processing options, materials and recyclability are restricted.

It is the opinion of the Wayland Additive team, including Director of Business Development, Peter Hansford - a man with decades of AM experience - that the charging of the powder has been electron beam manufacturing's rate-limiting step.

According to Peter, from a metallurgy perspective, the electron beam is the superior

SHOWN: NEUBEAM IN ACTION

SHOWN: METALLURGY OF PART UNDER INSPECTION

SHOWN: A FAN BLADE MANUFACTURED ON WAYLAND’S TECHNOLOGY

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through INSPEX the doors

M'S

“POWDER CHARGING NO LONGER EXISTS IN OUR MACHINE.”

company working on improvements. The GE acquired Arcam technology is the most well-known and lists companies like Stryker as superusers. GE Additive unveiled its latest Spectra machine under the Arcam brand at Formnext 2019. There's also Freemelt, which is based in the same city as Arcam and employs several former Arcam staff, and then there's JEOL working with the Japanese Technology Research Association for Future Additive Manufacturing (TRAFAM).

JEOL is an expert in electron beam microscopy and during 3D Printing Tokyo 2017 (Now TCT Japan), revealed that it was working on an electron beam powder bed fusion system. An update from TRAFAM in July 2019 said that JEOL was currently analysing the effects of using a surface oxide layer to suppress the smoke phenomena but is yet to reveal timeframe of a machine's potential release.

THE ROADMAP

After an initial meeting at Formnext, the Wayland team invited TCT to its new HQ in Huddersfield UK, just as it was moving in - literally - the floors were still being laid with the entire team mucking in.

In many aspects Wayland is entrepreneurial in its spirit (this project only started three years ago), but the vast experience in the room makes one hesitant to call it a start-up. A start-up conjures images of astroturf, slides, with fresh-faced t-shirts and trainers types on fixie bikes - this is a start-up Yorkshire style. There are, refreshingly, no frills to the Wayland team, it is experience and expertise with frugality and functionality at the forefront.

SHOWN: WAYLAND ADDITIVE’S HUDDERSFIELD HQ

process, but because builds exist on a knife-edge of potential smoking, adoption has proved slower.

LEADING THE WAY

The answer, developed by Ian and his team, is what Wayland is calling Neutral Beam Technology (NeuBeam). By addressing the fundamental physics of the electron beam additive process, NeuBeam technology allows printing of fully dense parts without creating a hard sinter-cake.

"Powder charging no longer exists in our machine," CEO Will Richardson revealed. "We still heat the parts so that they are stressfree, but the user chooses the temperature based on metallurgy requirements, not based on trying to get the process to work.

"NeuBeam is a best of both worlds situation; you still have the ease of use you get with laser-sintering while maintaining the advantages in the productivity and metallurgy you expect from electron beam. You also have fewer supports so you don't need Wire EDM to remove your parts from a build plate, you don't need a stress-relieving furnace, you don't need a complicated powder recovery system. And because we've removed the heating step from the layer build, there's a speed advantage too."

From an electron beam powder bed fusion perspective (there are companies like Sciaky and Norsk Titanium using electron beam wire melting additive processes), Wayland is not the only

TCT was given an exclusive look at the prototype machine that had only recently been installed at the new dedicated facility. There's not a great deal to report on what the machine looks like, but that is precisely the point; the team including software engineers, materials scientists, as well as Ian Laidler's aforementioned electron beam experts, are there to make the process repeatedly work, not look great from a marketing perspective.

The next steps for Wayland are building in-process monitoring tools, which, according to Ian Laidler, have the potential to be far superior to anything else on the market.

"Electron beam technology has a better suite of tools for in-process monitoring because we have the electrons, we have optical, we're a true thermal process. You can monitor everything in that chamber. We can actually give you the true temperature of your whole powder bed in-process as it happens. We can tell you about the thermal history of your material during the process. We can tell you about the topography of the surface so you can look to defects as they occur. We're trying to cover all the bases, make sure that we've got information someone needs to make that process reliable, as well as making it more stable and more capable from the outset. There's quite a lot of development options available from our system which hasn't been there on the market to date."

In 2021 the Wayland team expects to build and sell just six machines, each machine and customer will have a dedicated team working on applications, material and repeatability.

"The worst advert is a machine sitting idle," said CEO Will Richardson. Just as the tools Wayland the Smith made for the folklore warriors, Wayland Additive is building machines to be used.

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STANDARDS FOR ADDITIVE MANUFACT LATEST DEVELOPMEN T o accelerate the broader adoption of additive manufacturing (AM) technology, widely accepted and globally recognized standards must be developed.

AUTHOR BIO: Dr. Mohsen Seifi joined ASTM International in 2016 as a director of additive manufacturing (AM) programmes, in which he facilitates’ standardisation activities across all ASTM AM related technical committees, and building new partnerships as well as development of new AM standards related programmes within diverse ASTM portfolios. He has also been appointed as an adjunct assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University in OH, USA. He has co-authored more than 30 peerreviewed publications and has presented more than 50 invited and keynote talks at various countries, technical meetings, industries and government agencies while also receiving a number of technical society honours and awards. He is currently serving as a global director of AM programmes at ASTM International Washington DC office responsible for ASTM AM center of excellence (CoE) initiative.

ASTM AM CoE has four founding partners and two strategic partners at this point with about eight different locations across the globe.

He holds MS and PhD degrees from Case Western Reserve University in materials science and engineering with emphasis on metal AM qualification and standardisation and has conducted extensive work on the field funded by various organisations.

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AM is a rapidly growing manufacturing technology that many industry sectors have now begun using to produce end-use functional parts. Over the past few years, AM has captured tremendous interest from small, medium, and large-scale industry due to the advancement in the technology. However, the rate of adoption remains slow compared to the maturity level of the technology. Industry has been cautious about embracing AM, largely due to the lack of acceptable standards that they can rely on in moving from prototyping to industrial production at scale.

Understanding the need for standards to drive AM industrialisation, ASTM International took the lead and formed the ASTM F42 Committee for Additive Manufacturing Technologies in 2009 to develop standards specific to AM. In 2011, ISO created its own committee for AM standards development, ISO/TC 261. To align the efforts of the two organisations, ASTM and ISO signed a PSDO agreement in 2013 to jointly develop globally accepted standards for AM. This was a strategic move to effectively utilise and harness the inputs from the best minds in AM, which would otherwise end up diluted across multiple overlapping initiatives. In addition to ASTM and ISO, other standard development organisations (SDOs) are also developing standards for specific domains in AM. Together, ASTM and ISO have been coordinating global efforts to develop and promote the standards most needed by the AM community by leveraging the technical expertise from more than 1,000 leading AM technology practitioners around the world. With this collaboration, around 25 standards have been published so far, and another 40+ standards are under development. These have included: • General AM standards • Standards for feedstock materials • AM process and equipment standards • Standards for finished AM parts • Application-specific standards

STANDARDS INSPEX

TURING: NTS WORDS: Dr Mohsen Seifi

Recently, in order to meet the specific requirements from different industry sectors, ASTM has formed a new subcommittee to develop standards specific to applications (e.g., aviation, spaceflight, medical, transportation/ heavy machinery, maritime, oil/gas).

The adoption of these standards will enable rapid qualification and certification of the AM products.

GAPS IN AM STANDARDISATION

While the standards published so far represent crucial progress, these standards alone are not enough to meet the industry’s needs. To assess remaining standards gaps and focus the effort of the community on the highest priority standards needs, the Additive Manufacturing Standardization Collaborative (AMSC), an initiative

by America Makes and ANSI, developed a standardisation roadmap for AM. The roadmap identifies about 90 gaps; close to 65 of these gaps need additional prestandardisation research and development (R&D).

A NEW CONCEPT: RESEARCH FOCUSING ON FILLING STANDARDISATION GAPS

Standard development has always been a slow process for many reasons.

It is voluntary and consensus-based, and it can be time-consuming for the busy experts involved in standards development to come to agreement on complex technical details. However, considering the pace at which AM technology is maturing, the industry can’t wait years for critical standards to come out. To address this challenge, ASTM came with a unique initiative; the ASTM AM Center of Excellence (AM CoE). The primary role of AM CoE is

“AROUND 25 [AM] STANDARDS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED SO FAR, AND ANOTHER 40+ STANDARDS ARE UNDER DEVELOPMENT.” to initiate rapid-turnaround R&D projects that tie directly to standardisation gaps by collaborating with its partners—global leaders in AM research. The AM CoE is the first organization in the standard development world to expedite the standardisation process by supporting research. By coupling standard development with R&D, the AM CoE can reduce the timeto-market for AM parts and materials and obtain a faster consensus for standards among the AM community with credible results from high-quality research. This has already been demonstrated through the first and 2nd rounds of AM CoE R&D projects. So far, close to 10 new standard work items have been registered and initiated by this research and are progressing rapidly via the consensus-based F42 process.

INDUSTRY-RECOGNISED EDUCATION AND TRAINING WITH A FOCUS ON UTILISATION OF AM STANDARDS

Another way to accelerate standardisation is through increasing AM community engagement in the process. To that end, the AM CoE has initiated a comprehensive education and training program that emphasises standardisation.

These programmes highlight the importance of standards, address the challenges in using standards, demonstrate how standards can be used in technical protocols, and bridge the gap between standardisation and certification. To further support the development of a skilled AM workforce, the AM CoE is launching a personnel certification programme, which will kick off with an AM General Certificate course. This course covers all the fundamental stages of the AM value chain, accompanying the instruction on each stage in the chain with up-to-date information about the applicable standards.

The AM CoE will complement this effort with an ongoing series of workshops, webinars, seminars, and conferences to continue to engage and support AM community to develop their understanding of standardisation in AM.

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Q&A: INCUS GMBH DISCUSSES METAL PHOTOPOLYMERISATION TECHNOLOGY WORDS: SAM DAVIES

I

t was two weeks out from Formnext when the additive manufacturing industry was introduced to Incus, a company spun out from ceramic 3D printing vendor Lithoz.

In late October, Incus announced the launch of its metal photopolymerisation technology, which has been developed within Lithoz’ R&D facilities in Vienna over the last few years, and promises ‘the finest of surface structures’ using materials with similar properties to metal injection moulding. As the company debuted at Formnext, TCT Magazine dropped by the stand to pose a few questions to CEO Dr Gerald Mitteramskogler (GM).

Can you explain how your metal photopolymerisation process works?

GM: We’re using a lithography-based approach for the production of metal powders. Similar to Lithoz, we have photopolymer resin that is filled with metal powder. We use finer powder, so basically all of the powders that are possible for metal injection moulding are possible with our approach as well.

So, using the principle of stereolithography or vat photopolymerisation or DLP, we are creating, layer by layer, a 3D printed green part. The green part is the mixture of the photopolymer that’s holding together the metal powder and then we put the green part into the sintering furnace for debinding and sintering. And because we use stereolithography instead of a laser beam or melt pool or inkjet print head, we can achieve the highest possible resolution in the additive manufacturing of metals.

How does your process achieve good surface quality of parts?

GM: We’re using a liquid feedstock instead of the powder bed because the biggest problem in powder bed processes, binder jetting and powder bed fusion, is that they spread the powder on the powder bed [and you can] create streaks and flaws in the coating process. And this is what we don’t get when we coat the liquid layer on a solid surface because our feedstock has a butter-like behaviour.

At room temperature, it’s solid, and at our coating temperature, it’s liquid. So we are always coating a liquid layer on a solid surface and this is what creates this homogenous coating quality and, together with the projector, that’s the essential thing in creating the high surface aesthetics we see in our parts.

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What materials can you process on the Hammer Lab35 machine?

GM: We have the most experience with stainless steel 316L, but we’re also working with titanium 64 right now and developing the debinding and sintering cycle. We have industry cooperations going on in tungsten carbide-cobalt for cutting tools or cutting tool holders. We’re also working with pure tungsten, copper, we have also printed magnesium before so it’s as I said, any material that is possible in metal injection moulding can be processed on our printer so we’re just looking for customers that are willing to develop the debinding and sintering for us because our core competence is from powder to green part, but after green part, we require partners that know debinding and sintering or at least have experience in that.

GM: So, if we have a customer from metal injection moulding, we only need to offer them the 3D printer, they have all the debinding and sintering [equipment] in-house, they don’t need our experience there.

But if we have a customer that wants to have a turnkey solution, we have competent partners, for instance MetShape. Their background is metal injection moulding, they can provide the next steps after the green part for debinding and sintering. We also have collaborations with furnace suppliers so if the customer wants we can really provide them a turnkey solution. We give them our printer, we provide the materials, we provide the furnace and we provide the furnace parameters so we can guarantee the customers will get proper material properties at the end.

The Hammer Lab35 forms part of a modular package that can be tailored per customer. What else can users access through this package?

And, of course, we have training and support along the printing process and debinding and sintering as well. We want to make sure that the customer

TECHNOLOGY LAUNCH

4 RIGHT:

METAL PARTS PRINTED WITH INCUS' METAL PHOTOPOLYMERISATION TECHNOLOGY

6 BELOW:

THE HAMMER LAB35 IS INTENDED FOR SMALL SCALE PRODUCTION

is actually able to produce parts. We want that our technologies are used on the market and we create some really nice products out of it.

How long has the technology been in research and development?

GM: I joined Lithoz four and a half years ago through a research project called REProMAG. There, we tried to print the metal powder. So, in this case it was magnetic powders on the Lithoz machine and this is when we figured out Lithoz is great for ceramic materials but with metal powders it’s a little bit tricky. After two years playing around with the Lithoz machines, we decided we needed to change something and come up with something new.

It took us about four prototypes to come up with the final system at the end. About a year ago, we decided we needed another push to get it out from the research level within Lithoz out to market and decided to found Incus.

Can you explain the decision to spin out Incus as an independent company, rather than just expanding the Lithoz portfolio?

GM: The decision was because when Lithoz was founded in 2011, there was basically no ceramic printing out so Lithoz had always had to pull the market and develop the ceramic 3D printing market. The situation with metals, as you can see around here at Formnext, is completely different. We have so many different companies out there doing similar stuff. You have a lot of indirect methods or two-stage processes like binder jetting, the powder fusion guys, so we have a different market and we decided we needed a different approach in growing the company. Also, in terms of target companies, there’s hardly any companies that are doing ceramic and metal so we have a different target group.

We will work with Lithoz where synergies are possible.

We are licensing the Lithoz software package, because why develop our own software if Lithoz already has the perfect solution? Also, we’re using similar components [in the Hammer Lab35] that have been proven in the Lithoz product – why should we do anything different in engineering? We will try to use synergies like in marketing, trade fairs, sales partnerships. There will be close ties but Incus will still be an independent company.

What can you tell us about the company’s product roadmap?

GM: What we presented this year at Formnext is our laboratory scale machine. As the name suggests [Hammer Lab35], it’s intended for small scale production, for material development on the laboratory scale. We have ideas, concepts that are the same as the others are doing in terms of binder jetting, go big in terms of platform size to increase the productivity, lower the cost per parts. And we are also working with our beta customers and early customers to figure out what they actually need in terms of platform sizes and parts sizes, what they actually need to be efficient.

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Expert Advisory Column

A FLY IN THE OINTMENT WORDS: GRAHAM TROMANS

GRAHAM TROMANS IS ONE OF THE FOREMOST INDUSTRY CONSULTANTS, HIS HISTORY AND EXPERTISE HAVING INSTALLED ONE OF THE FIRST SLA MACHINES IN THE UK IS SECOND TO NONE. AS A MEMBER OF THE TCT EXPERT ADVISORY BOARD WE’VE ASKED GRAHAM TO TELL US A CAUTIONARY TALE FROM 3D PRINTING’S DAYS GONE BY.

T

he year is 1990, I - a Principal Engineer at Rover - am installing one of the UK’s first 3D Systems SLA-500 machines in the Canley site, Coventry. I’m in the process of calibrating the machine having just returned from training in Valencia, U.S.A. when there’s a knock on the door.

It’s a director come to take a look at the rapid prototyping machine. “Can you build this?” He shows me a picture of an intake manifold, which I had no idea if we were capable of. Naturally I said, ‘yes.’

He wanted the print for a missionary meeting to convince the board of the benefits of solid CAD packages. Rover was using wireframe and advanced surface finish CAD packages, which were tricky to learn and bulky, and he was to prove how a switch to solids, despite being hugely expensive, would be worth it in the long run. The print was a key point in the argument.

No pressure then.

I’d had the machine barely a couple of days when the CAD file landed on my desk. The first snag was supports; in 1990 3D Systems required you to have third-party software to generate supports, which was another £10,000. My boss said, 'absolutely no chance.'

I sat for hours on end making these generic shapes like cubes, cones and spheres; then I had to position the model on top of these shapes, I’d then open up the scan-spacing to about five millimetres to create almost an egg box underneath the parts. Each one of those was an STL file, so imagine how many shapes you need to create on an intake manifold; you have to look for all the downfacing surfaces, you have to look for anywhere you thought the part might collapse.

I put it in to build on the Tuesday morning, the SLA-500 informed me that the part would be finished in the early hours of Friday morning.

The meeting to decide the CAD fate of Rover was 10.30am on Friday, not only that but the venue was 30 miles away in Longbridge. No margin for error.

An anxious 60-hour build saw me get into the office at four o’clock in the morning, watching

042 / www.tctmagazine.com / 28.1

this part rise from the vat. By hook or by crook, the part was complete. I washed it, broke all the supports off, flashed it in the PCA oven and hoped for the best. With the clock ticking and the traffic between the two sites notoriously heavy, I got it out of the oven, shoved it into a box and raced to the meeting.

I plonked this part on the desk, and said, “you’ll need these,” handing over a box of rubber gloves.

The intake manifold had not cured and was still wholly tacky, touching it probably wasn’t wise.

With this being the biggest and most successful build in the SLA-500’s short lifespan, I knew I’d need it again and had to cure the thing. Looking out the window, with the sun shining, I was taken back to my time in Valencia, CA, where during our training we’d regularly cure parts in the sunlight. I took it home, put it on my patio table and went out with the wife.

Upon returning to my crown and glory, on the approach I could tell that the part was cured, but that it was also covered in little black specks. Closer inspection revealed those specks to be flies; like a roll of sticky fly tape, the engine manifold had attracted and killed thousands of the pests.

With a scalpel and some tweezers, I removed as many as I could but those that made it into the internal channels remained as a warning to always cure your parts correctly.

Nevertheless, the Rover directors agreed, thanks to this part, that solid CAD packages were the way forward.

The Event for 3D PRINTING & ADDITIVE INTELLIGENCE TCT 3Sixty is our successful flagship event re-imagined for 2020.

360-degree (Adjective) comprehensive; incorporating all points of view on a subject

TCT 3Sixty goes beyond simply raising awareness and adoption. It is focused on developing a real understanding across industry of the potential of additive manufacturing and 3D printing technology, this deeper 360-degree understanding will increase adoption at all levels of design, engineering and manufacturing.

Join us for TCT 3Sixty!

Exhibit with us

www.tct3sixty.com

30 01 SEPT/OCT 2020 NEC, Birmingham, UK

As the UK's premier showcase of additive manufacturing & 3D printing technology it is the perfect place to talk to an engaged audience eager for real insights, advice and to acquire technology solutions.

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The Pioneer of Selective Laser Melting

Redesigned SLM®500 - The highest, safest performance available in its class with cost reduction

Build envelope of 500 x 280 x 365 mm Real build rate up to 171 cm3/h Multi-laser SLM® technology increases productivity Focus on repeatability and machine uptime Industry-leading gas flow for consistent quality Fully automated powder management for safe part production

Visit us at TCT Asia, Booth N1-G27 February 19 - 21, 2020 AM Forum Berlin, Booth G05 March 11 - 12, 2020

For more information on the new SLM®500 visit: www.slm-solutions.com/en/slm500 EQUIPMENT EQUIPMENT

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POWDER POWDER

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