EDITORIAL
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Laura Griffiths
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In May I found myself sat in a huge conference room in Las Vegas, pen poised to notepad, ready to hear what Tony Hemmelgarn, President and Chief Executive Officer at Siemens Digital Industries Software had to share about digital transformation.
When an image of a mug – its 3D printed origin given away by its strange honeycomblike texture – appeared on the huge screen behind him, I leaned in closer.
“Additive manufacturing,” he said, was “way overhyped.”
Ouch. Suddenly I was very conscious of my Additive Manufacturing User Group branded notepad.
The thing is, Hemmelgarn is right. No one could suggest that these technologies have been immune to hype and the industry is, unfortunately, still grappling with the knock-on effects of overpromising.
The context of this observation was a keynote focused on AI and industrial metaverse, two areas that, if not positioned or used properly, risk a similar fate. But Hemmelgarn believes if we get them right, it’s “on the cusp of an innovation that’s going to greatly accelerate.”
A few weeks later at RAPID + TCT in Los Angeles, I hosted 14 executives from some of AM’s leading vendors in a series of panels which wrestled with similar topics: how the AM industry can overcome the challenges of ‘overpitching’ and how AM can benefit from convergence with emerging technologies like AI. For an industry that has had its share of setbacks over the last few years, it would have been easy for these execs to rest on old laurels and dish out the same platitudes we’ve heard many times before. Instead, it was refreshing just how open many of them were to accepting and finding solutions to these challenges.
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You’ll find echoes of ideas from those panels throughout this issue: in our conversation with Additive Industries on building scalable technologies (P. 13); in the radical but practical approaches to responsible manufacturing in our sustainability feature (P. 16-23); and in a conservation story which extols the impact of collaboration (P. 30).
Concluding his thoughts, Hemmelgarn said, for Siemens’ customers “AM is making a tremendous difference” but no one’s really writing about it anymore. Well, it’s our job to write about it and as you’ll read throughout this issue, it’s not that AM technology has lost its shine, it’s just not the most exciting part of the story anymore - it's what you do with it.
That’s a good thing. Boring means acceptance, and as Hemmelgarn added, AM “is coming and will continue to come.” I'll grab my pen.
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6. THINK BIG
SPEE3D presents a giant step for making big metal parts fast, along with a new material for maritime.
9. LASER FOCUS
Laura explores the technical challenges and new developments in multi-laser metal technologies.
13. A REAL FLEX
Additive Industries’ CEO discusses its latest machine and making metal AM more accessible.
14. BLOCKBUSTER
Sam talks to Sylatech about building heat exchangers with ‘3D printingenabled’ plaster-based casting.
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16. MIND OVER MATTER
Laura meets with UK-based Atomik AM to discuss its solutionsfocused approach to responsible manufacturing.
19. FOREST FOR THE TREES
How Carbon Forest Products aims to create a sustainable alternative to finite mined materials with 3D printed carbon.
23. SUSTAINABLE PERSPECTIVES
AM executives give their take on the industry’s sustainability challenges and what action is being taken.
24. A SEA CHANGE
Laura hears how a joint venture between thyssenkrupp and Wilhelmsen plans to become the Amazon of the sea.
27. AT HOME WITH AM Westinghouse Electric Company discusses its TCT-Award winning 3D printing application for the nuclear industry.
30. GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
How global collaboration and 3D technologies brought a rare artefact to life at a small UK museum.
32. CRACK THE CODE
Sam speaks to Leela Porges about her patented robotic 3D printing process, and the importance of sustainable fashion.
34. SHIFTING WEIGHT
The story behind the development of COBRA Golf’s LIMIT3D 7-iron 3D printed golf club head.
37. GOOD VIBRATIONS
Addiblast details the capabilities of its flagship MARS 03 metal AM depowdering system.
39. THE PROMISED LAND
Sam speaks to newcomer Landr about its UK-built, low-cost industrial FDM 3D printer.
42. HOW MANUFACTURERS CAN MINIMISE THEIR PRODUCTION FOOTPRINT
Tri-Tech 3D’s Adrian Painter on how AM could help manufacturers meet their ESG goals.
In an age when the sustainability of planet Earth is in the balance, the concept of building new infrastructure on the next closest planet comes into sharp focus.
It is, as SPEE3D CTO Steven Camilleri describes, the heaviest of the heavy industries and progress in that mission simply can’t be made without additive manufacturing. “We need to use our best brains to come up with the industrialisation methodologies for getting up there,” he says. “And it’s got to be additive. It can’t be anything else. It’s got to be very efficient, very flexible, very easy to move around, and very easy to scale. And it has to be very easy to work with a range of different feedstocks.”
That’s the north star for SPEE3D and its latest innovations. But the starting point is using its brain power to provide solutions to other heavy industries, like maritime, energy and defence. If you’ve been paying even the slightest attention in recent years, you’ll know SPEE3D’s cold spray additive manufacturing technology has penetrated the defence sector, with the Australian Armed Forces, US Armed Forces and the Ukrainian Army all deploying its products in military exercises, experiments and all-tooreal war efforts.
Having established itself in that sector, it is now turning some of its focus elsewhere, introducing TitanSPEE3D, a new largeformat cold spray additive manufacturing capability, and industry-relevant materials like its Nickel Aluminium Bronze offering.
SPEE3D has applied R&D capacity in this area due to the demand from heavy industries for large, high-quality components produced in quick-time. Its LightSPEE3D, WarpSPEE3D and XSPEE3D platforms, while delivering on two of those three criterion, have been limited in terms of the size. Because of how the machines work – a fixed nozzle blowing out material
with a robot-controlled substrate moving around – they haven’t been able to cater for parts above, for example, 40 kilogrammes. There are ambitions to be manufacturing components that weight tonnes – and tens of tonnes.
That comes with its challenges, however. Camilleri references the linear cube law which recognises that something twice as big dimensionally will see its surface area squared and its mass cubed. It explains why small creatures and big creatures are treated differently by physics. In essence, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. It is the same for metal parts.
Camilleri uses the example of the Stanford bunny – the object of the first 3D scan experiment conducted by Stanford University – which, at six inches, weighs a pound and takes 12 minutes to print with SPEE3D’s cold spray process at a cost of 50 USD. A 20-inch bunny would weigh 37lbs, take 7.4 hours to print and cost 1,850 USD, while a 40-inch bunny would weigh 297lbs, take 2.5 days to print and cost 14,829 USD. At 100 inches,
SHOWN:
TitanSPEE3D being built in the Melbourne facility
the bunny would weigh 4,632lbs, costing 231,620 USD and taking more than a month to print.
“Now, let’s start thinking about how to handle those parts,” Camilleri says. “You’ve got to have overhead cranes and forklifts to carry the parts. If you want to touch up something on top, you need to build a scaffold just to get up there. You could print something that has a poor centre of gravity, it topples over and crushes someone. How do you heat treat a part like that? What does the furnace look like? How long does it take to cool down? Think about measuring it; you need a fairly detailed bit of equipment and process to deal with that. If you want to test the material, how do you destructively test something?”
SPEE3D is aware of the challenges and is in the process of coming up with the solutions. Building large parts with its largeformat cold spray additive manufacturing process will be akin to building buildings.
You wouldn’t erect a building without measuring for quality and accuracy at regular intervals, and nor will users manufacture large-scale parts without doing the same on this new platform. Software automation is another key focus of SPEE3D’s, ensuring any defects can be identified and remedied while the print commences.
Other capabilities include being able to manufacture parts in the tonnes, thanks to a robot arm now doing all the toolpath work while the part remains stationary on the ground. Similar to other SPEE3D machines, it can achieve print speeds up to 13 pounds per hour – a rate the company will continue to increase – and has a floor area of approximately 20 square-metres.
With these capabilities, SPEE3D is targeting parts that may typically be made with casting processes, offering the potential to produce parts quicker
SPEE3D has developed its Nickel Aluminium Bronze (NAB) material in collaboration with the US Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), with NAVSEA having access to a powder that meets its stringent specifications and other customers having access to a commercial grade that meets 97% of those properties. The commercial version of the material, unlike the NAVSEA grade, does not require Hot Isostatic Pressing, saving users time and cost.
The NAB material is highly corrosion resistant and tougher than SPEE3D’s traditional aluminium bronze material. It is primarily known for its lubricity, resistance to cavitation damage, and resistance to stress corrosion cracking, making it an ideal choice for maritime applications because of its ability to withstand seawater and other aggressive environments.
NAB is suitable for a host of applications, with SPEE3D using the material to print an 11.3kg prop strut in 3 hours, a 6.9kg bushing in 2 hours,
in a wide range of aluminium alloys, copper alloys and stainless steels. It is expected the large-format system will be commercially available early next year, but the company is already making headway with a selection of early access customers to develop applications, identify areas for improvement, and go about the company’s mission.
“The reason we exist is to make it easier to get metal parts,” Camilleri finishes. “Polymer just doesn’t give you the material properties, the high temperature, durable, high-strength components, so sometimes you just need metal. If you then add scale to it, you make the parts bigger. The idea of making large parts is beyond the scope of some cities, so we want to make it easier to get large parts too. It feels, in many ways, more important than being able to get small parts. So, it doesn’t really matter how you slice it, making large parts is very difficult. Even for AM it’s difficult. What we’re trying to do is make sure it’s substantially easier.”
and a 1.7kg camlock fitting in just 30 minutes. With its new large-format cold spray additive manufacturing capability, SPEE3D also believes its NAB material can facilitate the manufacture of rudders, propeller shafts and engine infrastructure.
“Most maritime nickel aluminium bronze, or equivalent, parts are all done with castings. As a general rule of thumb, and this applies to most things with cold spray, we’re typically better than a casting from a material property standpoint – our density, the elongation, our toughness,” SPEE3D Application Engineer Mark Bashor says. “It’s more cost effective and better than the alternative of casting from a property standpoint, and there’s also the lead time/ supply chain considerations where we’re not constrained to the casting supply with a process like this.”
In addition to the NAB material, SPEE3D also offers Aluminium Bronze, Copper, Stainless Steel 316L and Aluminium 6061 powders. The company’s Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing technology also works well with many other non-weldable alloys, with an open system allowing users to develop their own materials, offering greater flexibility for their industrial applications.
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First it was two, then four. Then it was eight, quickly followed by 10 and 12. A quick search for ‘multi-laser’ across TCT Magazine shows we’re now at 64, but there’s every chance we’ll have surpassed that by the time this magazine hits your desk.
The rising number of lasers inside metal additive manufacturing (AM) systems over the last five years has been a source of anticipation while serving somewhat as an indicator of the progress being made in powder bed technology. Yet, away from the productivity gains and larger build volumes, these systems are increasingly intricate beasts, with each laser or millimetre adding further complexity to the process parameters and factory floor space considerations of an already complex technology.
Nikon SLM Solutions was one of the first companies to introduce a multilaser machine when it launched its twin laser SLM 280 over a decade ago. The hardware, now in its third generation with the SLM 280 PS, has been put to work by brands such as Audi and Bugatti, but much like additive itself, the market’s acceptance wasn’t always running at the same pace as the technology.
“The market was hesitant to believe that part quality is not an issue in multi-laser systems, even if you master handling multiple lasers sharing a common space,” Benjamin Haas, Product Marketing Manager at Nikon SLM Solutions, told TCT. “Once this was understood, it enabled applications for AM to grow in size, which in return requires more lasers to still manufacture efficiently.”
Today, Nikon SLM Solutions’ flagship machine is the NXG XII 600, a 12-laser, 600 x 600 x 600 mm selective laser melting system with a combined laser power of 12kW. Adopted by the likes of Divergent Technologies and GKN Aerospace, with several users installing multiple machines, the company believes its success is owed to an understanding that productivity does not simply mean more laser power.
“We have always looked at overall productivity from build job start to finish as well as machine turnaround times,” Haas explained. “With the SLM 500, we introduced the first removable build cylinder which decreased the
time between two jobs to less than one hour. When designing the NXG, it was obvious that we would follow the same concept. Imagine a machine of that size sitting idle while you are unpacking!”
More lasers, more problems?
That end-to-end consideration is key. A big machine is great if your aim is to build large or multiple parts, but how do you store your materials? How do you remove parts? How do you maintain and service? These are the kinds of questions going through metal AM expert SJ Jones’ mind when assessing any new multi-laser technology.
“It generally terrifies me,” Jones said “How am I going to qualify that? How am I going to ensure that is accurate, laser-to-laser? If one laser goes down, can another laser cover for it? There’s a lot of things that I have to worry about when I add more lasers versus revamping an existing platform to make it more reliable or give me more capability.”
A report by the UK's Manufacturing Technology Centre positioned the effect of multiple lasers interacting with one another as one of multilaser AM 's biggest technical challenges. Failure to optimise ‘stitching’ between lasers could lead to a higher level of defects
“Our experience tells us that users need to consider how the lasers interact with each other – not only in terms of laser overlaps on a single part but also whether the gas flow would carry smoke and spatter from one melt pool and affect another laser,” Alex Hardaker, Advanced Research Engineer, AM at the MTC, told TCT. “These effects and their impact on the parts made should be taken into account when considering the qualification routes, which would increase the amount of testing required. What’s more, users need to understand how calibration drift affects their multi-laser machines
over time, and the resulting properties of the parts made, so that appropriate calibration intervals can be set."
“It's really a physics problem that we're trying to solve,” Jones said, “because you can only pump so much heat and thermal mass into that. You've got melt pools, powder physics. So, finding the optimal layout, not only of the lasers, but the number of the lasers. Do you want to use a rectangular layout? Do you want to use a circular layout? How are you going to clean the windows? Also, lasers have angles that they hit the powder bed at that are most optimal and least optimal. There’s so much physics happening in that tiny chamber!”
Rather than laser count, Jones and Hardaker are paying closer attention to incremental developments happening in areas like beam shaping and scanning strategies. They point to the collaboration between EOS and nLight, which will implement a series of complementary laser-based technologies and give EOS users access to different beam profiles to increase productivity. Similar iterative steps were made last year by Renishaw, one of the first companies to introduce a four-laser printer, which opted to forgo the trend for more lasers and introduced TEMPUS, a patented technology based on a new scanning algorithm that allows lasers inside its RenAM 500 system to fire while the powder recoater is moving.
The demand for multi-laser is largely being driven by the aerospace sector. Collins Aerospace purchased its second SLM Solutions NXG XII 600 system just two years after investing in its first, while Sintavia, a Florida-based metal AM provider to aerospace and defence, outlined plans in April for its largest investment in facilities and equipment since 2019, including its second NXG XII 600 and a third AMCM M4K-4 system. The company was also the North American launch customer for AMCM’s M8K-K, equipped with eight lasers and an 800 x 800 x 1200 mm build chamber. At the time of the announcement, Sintavia CEO Brian Neff commented: “Whoever says that there are no economies of scale in AM hasn’t been running a large enough printer.” But it takes work to ensure those levels of efficiency, and as Haas explains, more lasers does not automatically equate to lower cost-per-part, higher productivity, or the same part quality.
“First of all, the important question is: how many lasers of what type and laser
power do I need for the applications and business cases I want to target?” Haas said. “Second, a lot of technical boundary conditions come on top, such as: how do I use my lasers wisely to avoid any unnecessary laser downtime or unwanted laser interference? How do I ensure my thermal management if laser power, and therefore energy, increases to avoid structural issues and ensure consistent part quality? If more lasers, especially with higher laser power, operate at the same time, it is crucial to maintain a clean atmosphere in the chamber, so consistent gas flow quality throughout long-lasting builds is critical to part quality. In the end, a machine is only as good as its processes, so our material parameters are key enablers to ensure that our systems deliver what they promise.”
On a visit to GE Aerospace's Additive Technology Center (ATC) in Cincinnati last year, Executive Manufacturing Enablement Leader Chris Philp shared with TCT how the engine manufacturer relies on both single and multi-laser systems depending on the application. For certain large parts where confidence has already been built on a single-laser platform, it simply doesn’t make sense to add more lasers. However, with four quad-laser Concept Laser M Line systems installed, the company has been exploring how four lasers can be leveraged for parts developed on single laser machines to reduce build times from one month to two weeks, without affecting part quality. These quad-laser systems are said to be important to future growth and efficiency, according to Philp, “otherwise we’re building multiple factories instead of one.”
demand resides within the medium (200350mm) and large (350-600mm) system categories, and we are directing our research and development investments accordingly."
On an episode of the Additive Insight podcast, Sandra Poelsma, Print Process Architect at Additive Industries spoke about matching machine developments to the needs of the end-user.
Hardaker added: “One of the starting points is to look at how products built on these machines compare with those made on smaller ones, using both singlelaser as well as multi-lasers with similar build conditions/locations. It is key to understand the fundamentals of the machines before then scaling up to build bigger and bigger components.”
Additive Industries has recognised this need for ‘less is more’. The Dutch manufacturer teased its own 10-laser machine in 2020 but recently confirmed to TCT it has "decided not to pursue the MetalFAB600 at this time". Instead it is prioritising development of its 420 x 420mm system and new MetalFab 300 Flex, the latter designed to lower the barriers to AM with either two or four 500-watt laser configurations. It said: "We recognise that the majority of the market
“I personally always ask the question, why?” Poelsma said. “Why would you add more lasers? Why would you add a larger build platform? The larger build platform enables you as a customer to produce larger parts [...] and more lasers [are] needed, of course, to be able to cover all the build area. [...] I think challenges like laser-to-laser calibration, making sure that all the lasers are working simultaneously together is vital and I think that will be a bigger challenge, but I do question, is that really added value for the customer? Does it help to adopt additive manufacturing, even further lowering these barriers?”
In the laser race, there’s a sense that the AM industry is only competing with itself as opposed to the traditional processes it strives to stand alongside. But there are other areas of hardware development, away from more lasers, which could have a substantial impact for end-users and their efficiency.
“If [an OEM] made the powder hopper bigger so it could hold more powder, I'd be thrilled,” Jones said of the
developments they would favour. “If they had a qualification framework, that would be really exciting. If one of the OEMs partnered with NIST or one of the material testing bodies and said ‘we have now published all of this data to help qualify your parts, so if you print on our machines, we can guarantee you qualified material’ that would be nice. But more lasers? It's great to have because we can print faster [reigning in several hours or even days can really improve productivity] but in the grand scheme of all manufacturing, we're competing with castings and forgings, which means that I really only have to beat a lead time of 365 days For context, most of my largeformat prints range from 4 to 21 days."
Earlier this year, Eplus3D made the highest bid for laser count when it launched its EP-M2050 system at TCT Asia. The 36-laser platform can be extended to accommodate 49 or 64 lasers, while its 2050 x 2050 x 1100 mm build envelope can be extended
“There’s so much physics happening in that tiny chamber.”
up to 2000 mm in the Z-axis. Vendors like BLT and Farsoon have also been at the forefront of this multi-laser trend, with laser count ramping up in the last two years to deliver bigger parts and competitive print times. The most recent report from CONTEXT found shipments of industrial metal powder bed fusion systems were up 45% in China, with four of the top five global vendors in this category headquartered there. According to these CONTEXT figures, Eplus3D led the industrial segment in terms of shipments for the period, while Nikon SLM Solutions was also identified as a leader in large form-factor, multi-laser
systems. Still, as Eplus3D told TCT, any large concentration of lasers requires additional technical consideration, and the company has equipped its machine with a standard six-by-six laser matrix and 36 galvanometers to ensure all lasers operate in sync. For the 64-laser configuration, it’s fitted with an eight-byeight laser matrix and 64 galvanometers.
“Advancements in technology augment the feasibility of multi-laser integration, incorporating power enhancements, optical optimisations, and algorithmic breakthroughs, fuelled by the escalating demand for metal additive manufacturing in sectors like aerospace, automotive, and medical for fabricating large, intricate components,” Mary Li, General Manager, International Division at Eplus3D, told TCT. “Addressing technical hurdles like laser interference and instability is paramount. Innovative solutions and process refinement are key to achieving this. Similarly, cost containment requires a focus on production scale, technological advancements, and cost reduction.”
Li shared how operational complexity rises with more lasers, and requires close management of variables like sync, energy distribution, and cooling. It is crucial that users weigh their initial investment for extra lasers against potential operational cost hikes and conduct ROI analysis to ascertain cost-justification based on productivity gains. To assist that, Eplus3D is building customised machines where users can choose the number of lasers and build size to match their requirements. The company says these machines are being designed for ease of operation and maintenance, and to mitigate the complex learning curve and maintenance schedules for multi-laser AM.
Looking ahead, Li believes systems exceeding 64 lasers will emerge. The expectation is that this will drive ‘a new era of growth for metal AM’ with more efficient, high-quality, lower cost systems. To prepare for that future, Li suggests users should be evaluating the scalability of machinery for additional lasers to adapt to future materials, geometries, and production needs.
“The precise timeline for equipment boasting more lasers hinges on tech advancements and market demand shifts,” Li added. “At the same time, we must anticipate challenges and issues in tech development, actively pursuing solutions to foster the sustained, healthy expansion of metal additive manufacturing.”
As evidenced by the number of times the word was uttered on stage during a trio of daily keynote sessions, ‘scalability’ was one of the clear challenges at the forefront of the additive manufacturing (AM) industry’s collective mind at this year’s RAPID + TCT.
But if you ask Additive Industries, scale has always been the story.
When the Dutch metal AM company debuted its first metal powder bed fusion machine in 2016, it offered a modular concept built with levels of automation aimed at customers in serial production. Its technology has since been put to work printing end-use parts for established industrial users, such as the tooling nozzle on Volkswagen’s Tiguan and the TCT Award-winning topologically optimised Robot Dough Cutting Knife for Kaak Group. But, as Mark Massey, CEO at Additive Industries, explained on the show floor in Los Angeles where the company introduced its latest hardware, there’s another segment of users that has been left largely untapped. Until now.
“What we're seeing today is a lot of companies would like to start learning more about additive manufacturing,” Massey told TCT. “They’re coming to the additive industry, and it’s a bit overwhelming.”
High capital investment costs and business case development are just two of the often-cited barriers to AM adoption, both of which Additive Industries is aiming to overcome with the launch of its MetalFab 300 Flex, complete with a novel flexible build volume that allows users to tailor their AM capacity on the go. The company is positioning this latest machine as a more accessible and affordable option for metal AM newcomers, particularly those in industries like automotive, defence, oil and gas and semiconductor. Tagged with a lower price point of 730,000 USD (680,000 EUR), Additive
Industries believes new users will now be able to enter the market and mitigate their AM investment risk at a level that better serves their business needs.
“Sometimes companies have business cases that are not quite there. They see a risk: Am I going to be able to fill the machine with work?” Massey said. “At this price point, the company can start figuring out the printing, learning and developing their business cases. Then, once you have developed your process and you want to start scaling production, this is a machine that can grow.”
That growth can be facilitated by increasing the number of lasers to a maximum of four, which can reach every corner of a flexible build envelope, and by expanding the build volume from 11.81 x 11.81 x 15.75 inches to 16.54 x 16.54 x 15.75 inches. The flexible build volume is thought to be an industry first and is based on a ‘pay as you grow’, software-enabled, subscription model. The user can start small, and if they have an occasional need for larger parts, can expand to the larger build volume via a license key.
There was noticeable pushback on the trend to ‘go big’ - bigger build
sizes, bigger laser counts - at RAPID + TCT, as companies launched more compact versions of existing technologies alongside incremental updates through software and materials augmentations that tackle looming challenges like accessibility and cost. According to Massey, Additive Industries has done a lot of work to assess the economic model and demand for the MetalFab 300 Flex, working with an external consultancy and launch customers, one of which has already placed an order for two machines.
"We said ‘let's not follow the others, let's do something different,’” Massey added. “This whole concept is unique - you can start small, and scale as you grow.”
In this instance, scaling means being able to move from a compact machine to a larger MetalFAB system or multi-machine setup without having to go through the process of requalification. It’s the same AM technology regardless of the system. There’s also an option to add more modules, such as a storage module that can store up to eight empty build plates and then, in theory, create an automated manufacturing workflow whereby a robot could deliver plates to the core print module, depowdering and then back out. Massey shares that one of the company’s key customers, motorsport outfit Sauber, is already running four MetalFAB machines 24/7 with “the ultimate level of automation.”
“I think it's time for the industry to ask, ‘how do we make our end customers successful with their business?’” Massey concluded. “There's a lot of things that we could do: put more power in the lasers, go bigger, process monitoring. There's a lot that could be done but what is really making the most impact on our customers for them to be successful? That is the key question, I think, for the entire industry.”
It’s a metal part, measuring 22mm in diameter and 100mm in length, with a complex internal geometry inspired by the kind of diagonal interlacing patterns found in braiding.
Multiple strands are intertwined to create a continuous geometry that enhances the mixing process of this heat exchanger by incorporating conformal cooling channels within the braided structure, improving thermal management.
The part has been designed this way to ensure efficient heat transfer and maintain low shear forces. Because of these capabilities, the heat exchanger design would be suitable for applications involving viscous and immiscible fluids. This could be, for example, the food industry or energy sector, where low shear blending and mixing of raw materials or ingredients needs to be held at a constant temperature.
Its braided pattern favours mixing and provides a vast amount of surface area for heat transfer. But a field-driven computational design approach, which has seen a charge assigned to each braid, has offered an even more effective mixing of fluid, while the intertwining of an additional fluidic domain has maximised contact and improved the efficiency of heat transfer too. These geometries, design consultancy service provider Metamorphic AM says, have been created with purpose.
That purpose is to address the challenge of poor integration between mixing and heat exchange in conventionally made in-line static mixers because of manufacturing constraints.
For Sylatech, a manufacturer serving aerospace, defence, transportation and general engineering industries, it has estimated it could manufacture 20 braided mixers per run, with up to 96 runs a day providing a daily output of somewhere between 1800-2000 units. And despite Metamorphic describing its braided mixer heat exchanger as its ‘definition of design for additive manufacturing,’ that’s not how Sylatech would approach the manufacture of this component.
Rather than additively manufacturing the end-use part, it is instead opting for a ‘3D
printing-enabled’ plaster-based casting process. This approach, similar to block casting and investment casting, uses a plaster-based moulding material, with the plaster easily washing away post-casting to enable Sylatech to produce complex geometries more often associated with metal additive manufacturing. As an extreme example, the company says it can produce lattice structures with wall thicknesses of 0.4mm and wall localised sections of 0.1mm.
“Sylatech’s casting process has traditionally been seen as a ‘niche’ and may have remained a specialist casting process if not for the sudden advancement and proliferation of suitable printing materials and larger, cheaper printers,” Rupert Sexton, Business Development, Sylatech, told TCT. “This is a game changer for Sylatech and other plaster-based investment foundries in that we can now offer geometrically complex shapes way beyond the scope of traditional casting processes in high volume.”
“Our focus is very much on an AM-biased future.”
WORDS: sam davies
To do this, Sylatech either prints a wax and applies it to a wax tree, or prints the parts, tree and runner system as one shape, before submerging it in a specialist mould material ready for casting. In series production, Sylatech would likely opt for the latter.
For the 3D printing aspects of its lost wax casting method, Sylatech runs a 3D Systems ProJet MJP 2500 IC machine 24/7 for prototyping and low-volume production, and has also been working with Voxeljet and Photocentric with a view to scaling its AM-enabled casting process for mass production.
The company sees its plaster-based investment casting approach as complimentary to metal AM, suggesting
the process may be able to help fasttrack applications from R&D to series production. Though Metamorphic is a design consultancy service specific to additive manufacturing technology, it too sees Sylatech’s casting method as a way for organisations to ‘meet the growing demand for customised, highperformance components in volume.’
“Integrating AM with a wellestablished process like block casting, which has already been qualified for applications in aerospace, automotive, marine, oil and gas, provides a more straightforward pathway for AM methods to support these industries,” said Manolis Papsatavrou, Computational Design Lead, Co-Founder and Director at Metamorphic AM. “Sylatech’s process aligns perfectly with Metamorphic’s mission to drive the adoption of additive manufacturing and bring AMenabled innovations to market. It has the potential to lower the cost barrier for high-performance components, thereby making it feasible to commercialise innovations that leverage the design freedom of AM.”
According to Sylatech and Metamorphic, the cast equivalent of the braided mixer shows ‘remarkable similarities’ to the printed part that Metamorphic had produced. In an initial trial, there was no redesign of the original geometry, and the cast part not only exhibited good dimensional accuracy, but also boasted a smoother finish. As the two companies move forward, Metamorphic has said it will look to refine designs to ‘better align with the nuances’ of Sylatech’s plaster-based investment casting process to ensure ‘even greater fidelity to the original AM design.’
It means all systems are go as Sylatech pushes ahead with its casting method.
“With Voxeljet and/or Photocentric, it should be possible to produce small parts like the braided mixer at high volumes; possibly 100,000 per annum. Traditional wax-based investment casting will always have a place for simpler, more traditional parts, but for Sylatech, our focus is very much on an AM-biased future,” Sexton finished. “The challenge for Sylatech will be judging the point at which we invest in bigger printers at our factory.”
Metal AM can make a valid business case compared to conventional machining in several instances: -) when considering the “new normal” lead times of forgings and castings, -) with challenges in angles and operation required to improve design, such as shrouded/closed impellers, -) when there are advantages in saving labor and additional work by consolidating additional parts into the build, -) when material properties need to be changed within one part, vs another part welded on, -) when needing a faster time to market for production, -) when its possible to optimize part designs with lightweighting (DfAM) resulting in improved “buy to fly” ratios.
JEOL has 75yrs of core electron optics technology inside our metal 3D printer, the JAM-5200EBM. The JAM-5200EBM o ers a reduced CoO through less post processing steps, lower cost powder, and lower PPE requirements and a fast built rate compared to other metal 3D printers.
Stop by JEOL’s booth, #433221 in West Building Level 3 to learn more about our technology. We are introducing our technology at the PBF Workshop on September 11th, 2024 in West Building, Room W194B from 4-4:30PM*.
*Pre-registration is required
Laura Griffiths speaks
TCT: What is the industry missing and how is Atomik AM aiming to solve it?
Kate: Without materials, we don't have anything. If we don't control materials and look after them, we can't achieve good engineering solutions. Materials have caused many issues in the additive manufacturing industry. We haven't lived up to the hype we've created over the last 20 to 30 years because we've approached it with a one-size-fits-all mentality. This approach isn't delivering what customers need. Manufacturers often try to convince customers they need a particular product rather than listening to what they actually want. We should focus on developing manufacturing solutions that meet customer needs.
TCT: So where do you start?
Kate: Rather than focusing on problems, Atomik focuses on solutions. If we fix the problem in front of us, we can inadvertently cause a problem further along down the line because we're not considering how that system works as a whole. Our first thing to ascertain from a customer, is the thing that they think is the problem in the first place. We supply them with a solutionfocused questionnaire so that we can really understand what difference it would make to their business if we had solved the issue. Nine times out of ten, the thing they came to us with isn't the thing that they need to fix. It's giving technological solutions but also steering them in the right mindset so that we can get to the solution quicker.
TCT: How are you encouraging companies to think differently?
Kate: Our aim is agile manufacturing for a sustainable future. Who doesn't want a sustainable future? It's not hard to sell. The challenge is maintaining a solutionfocused mindset. It's easy to revert to a problem-focused approach because we're hardwired that way. It's important to realise that how we think determines the world we create. Despite having amazing technologies like additive manufacturing, AI, and machine learning, we still face many challenges because we're not thinking the right way. From my experience as an individual and a business owner, adopting a solution-focused approach pays dividends. It can be difficult to get people on board, but once they see the benefits, it's hard to go back to a problem-focused mindset.
TCT: When you meet with customers, is sustainability a priority for them?
Kate: You see people paying lip service to sustainability but they don't always live by their values. We're all on the same planet, just because you're not doing it in your plant or in your factory doesn't mean it's not having an effect somewhere else in the world. We see people manufacturing goods that don't really serve the purpose, so they throw them away after a week or a month's time. I think the biggest crime in additive manufacturing is printheads. They are thousands of pounds, and [companies] expect their customer to buy a new head in six months’ time. It's bad engineering and bad material science. We've got printheads that we've had for eight years because we put the right materials in them. Once we start putting materials first, we won't have those issues.
In the Western world, we rely on a capitalist system that emphasises consumption and growth. This approach could lead to the end of human civilization. We need to consider alternative economic models that enable humans and innovation to thrive.
TCT: What role do you think AM specifically has in shaping this sustainable future?
Kate: Additive manufacturing should be seen as a tool in the manufacturing toolbox. We shouldn't be seeing it as either or. That's where we've gone wrong. When we start to see how we can augment additive with conventional, that's when additive will really take off. If we get the materials right in the first place, and they add value, then, yes, it has a strong role to play in sustainable manufacturing. Taking high quality materials, chopping them up into small powders, using immense amounts of energy, time and money and then gluing them back together as substandard material – somebody must have been having an off day when they thought about that!
Gareth: It's the business thinking mindset again. It's, how do I make money out of this? Not, how do I provide a solution, whilst making money out of this? It's subtle, but it's important. If you have a commercial team who are solely focused on bringing revenue, they'll compromise to make things easier to bring in money, rather than provide the correct solution. Those compromises mean that the customer is never quite satisfied, which is where additive manufacturing is right now.
“We need to consider alternative economic models that enable humans and innovation to thrive.”
TCT: You also talk about being socially conscious and treating people with respect.
Kate: To be sustainable, we need to innovate quickly because we don't have the luxury of time anymore. People innovate by thinking about things differently and bringing different disciplines together. If you look at the workforce, particularly in manufacturing, it is generally white males. How do you have diversity of thought if you don't have diversity of workforce? I believe that the technology we need already exists and it's scattered around the world like a large jigsaw. It needs people to bring those pieces together, but we can't bring those pieces together when we have cultures that alienate half the population.
TCT: You’re putting materials first. Can you elaborate on why that’s a significant shift?
Kate: Once you understand how materials work at the molecular level, you can start to manipulate them to give functionality at the part level. Imagine if we could do that in additive manufacturing? Not only nice geometries, but graded and controlled microstructures across a part that does what you want it to do. We can start to lower processing temperatures, shorten processing times, manufacture materials that are very difficult to manufacture in any other way. There’s a whole world that
we haven't really explored, and with that comes new innovations, new technologies. I would urge the additive manufacturing community to put materials at the forefront of everything that you do. The machines and the characterisation should be there to liberate and facilitate the materials. Not the other way around.
Gareth: You're starting from the end. What do I need this thing to do? How do I do that? How do I create that type of material? How do I deliver that into a shape? How do I manufacture that shape? What does that infrastructure look like? You work from the end and go backwards. It doesn't necessarily look like a machine you can put several different types of powder in with either a printhead or a laser and sell as a formula and reap in the machine sales and consumable razor blade model from it.
TCT: What progress has been made so far?
Kate: We've developed a low temperature, pure aluminium process. People ask, ‘How do you do that? It oxidizes, doesn't it?’ But if you look at the chemistries and you can control the chemistries, you can get pure aluminium. That has lots of applications in thermal management systems for electric vehicles, aerospace and automotive. And because we don’t see binders as just a binder, we've managed to use starting materials that are far cheaper, which will drive down the part cost by magnitudes.
Gareth: There's likely to be some cynicism around that, especially if we can deliver 5cm parts for a couple of quid, because we're now at the point in AM where it's an established industry with 30-year veterans that think they know everything. If there is any cynicism, just come and ask us, come and find out. We'll sign an NDA, and then we'll tell you what we do. Don't look at it as cynicism, treat it as curiosity.
TCT: In 10 years, what would you define as success for Atomik AM?
Kate: I would like Atomik to be known as the global standard for manufacturing. Just as people refer to 'the Google way' or 'the Netflix way,' I'd like people to say, 'the Atomik way.' This is not about recognition for Atomik; it's about ensuring a sustainable future for ourselves and future generations. To achieve this, we must urgently change our manufacturing methods and business leadership. By leading with a focus on solutions, the business will take care of itself.
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WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS
SHOWN:
CFD printed part
Stuart Jackson has been around the additive manufacturing industry (AM) long enough to know how far the technology has come and how far it still has to go, particularly around the topic of sustainability.
“I'm a poacher turned gamekeeper,” Jackson said in a conversation with TCT last December. “I've been on the supply side, so I know the realities of that. I've done a lot of theoretical sustainability studies which are just lip service and tend to hide the fall down. In truth, additive manufacturing is defined as being environmental because you need less material but to be honest, the running costs, the economics of it, the environmental impact, even metals … a lot of it is not true.”
Jackson came to AM in 1994 via the machine tool world and until recently, had spent those three decades at prominent AM businesses in the UK and Ireland. In the weeks leading up to our call however, Jackson had started to share details of a new venture he’d been invited to join with sustainability at its core; essentially, exploring the use of forestry waste to produce high-performance 3D printed graphite.
Carbon Forest Products (CFP) was founded by Patrick Morris in 2015, a product designer at the Royal College of Art with a background in ceramics from his upbringing in New Zealand. While completing a masters project at the RCA, Morris found
himself in the UK seaside town of Whitby investigating Whitby jet, a fossilised carbon material which is dug out of the rock face from Yorkshire’s Jurassic Coast and carved into jewellery. He started to investigate what could be done with the leftover powder from this craft, namely, if it could be 3D printed.
The material, he learned, is part of the lignite family, the second most abundant polymer on the planet, and highly carbon rich. But carbon, to this day, is an unknown in 3D printing and there weren’t a lot of takers willing to put the material through their machines when the project began. When Morris presented his MA findings at the RCA, Jackson happened to be in attendance. At the time, Morris had been awarded the James Dyson Fellowship Award and with it, a grant to secure IP around additive manufacturing material innovation for renewable carbon engineering.
It was in 2019 when the two reengaged and began collaborating. Jackson was still working at Renishaw while Morris had been awarded a grant from Innovate UK’s 200 million GBP Sustainable Innovation Fund, enabling him to purchase some equipment. The R&D work continued around Jackson’s day job with all the markings of a fledgling
start-up, a printer churning away in the garden shed in the early mornings and late into the night, to get this previously unprintable material to print.
It wasn’t perfect, but they achieved it and by the end of 2020, Morris had secured a Smart grant from Innovate UK for 500,000 GBP; no small feat for a small one-person start-up and affirmation that the project had real promise. It left Jackson with a choice: stay in the comfort of a steady job or take a leap into the unknown. He leapt.
The work pushed on across development and testing of different geometries using desktop SLS machines, modified to accommodate the lignin feedstock, sourced as a byproduct from the paper pulping industry. As Jackson described, it was effectively like trying to print with “tree glue.”
“It doesn't quite work in the standard setup,” Jackson said of the process. “We take the part and put it through a multistage heat treatment cycle culminating at 3000 °C. We end up with either a carbon or graphite industrial product.”
The environmental driver behind this, according to Jackson, is huge. Lignin is typically burnt and used as low-cost fuel or as filler in food for cattle. Either way, that carbon is going directly back into the atmosphere. Instead, CFP aims to capture it for industrial product and turn it into biochar at the end of the product lifecycle, which secures the carbon underground, and can also be used in applications in water quality, soil fertility, and agriculture.
To source the material, Morris engaged with researchers at the Research Institute of Sweden (RISE), who had also been working on developing carbon fibres from lignin, and after several trials of various types, settled on one that was readily available and can be scaled to be produced anywhere that there are biorefineries pulping for paper production.
Manufacturers, customers, service providers — you name them, and chances are sustainability is a top priority. For any company choosing 3D printing for production, that makes building a digital thread with the right software and expertise more important than ever. Here are four ways integrating data across all stages of the 3D printing process can make a big difference in your production and help you tackle your sustainability goals.
1. Control and reduce waste
One of the inherent advantages of adopting 3D printing is the ability to transition to digital inventories, enabling on-demand production. Industries like eyewear can effectively eliminate excess inventory, greatly reducing storage costs and unsold stock, while others, such as automotive, can rely on just-in-time delivery.
But the advantages of going digital don’t end there — it impacts both your supply chain as a whole and the individual products you print. With software modules such as Materialise Quality & Process Control’s Layer Analysis, Materialise CO-AM’s Shopfloor Telemetry, and Materialise Magics’ Simulation, you’ll gain greater control over the amount of material you use, reduce waste by optimizing your design, identify scrap and defects earlier in the process, and make production planning more efficient.
Beyond software, our manufacturing services include several efforts to recycle excess material, such as giving new life to waste powder. Last year, this helped us cut approximately 30 tons of waste.
2. Improve production efficiency
No matter which technology you use, it’s possible to minimize how much material you use and the amount of energy your machines consume through software automation tools. Magics modules such as Nester for SLS and e-Stage for Resin for SLA technologies reduce human error, making sure you print first time right and lowering the risk of scrap or waste. These solutions also help you use your material in the best possible way, optimizing your printing processes and ultimately cutting down on energy usage — and bills!
improving performance, there are plenty of hidden advantages you can gain.
Likewise, automated monitoring tools like CO-AM Shopfloor Telemetry allow you to predict your machine’s maintenance window, reducing unnecessary downtime and ensuring optimal performance.
3. Design parts with sustainability in mind
When you work with Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) experts, you can take full advantage of 3D printing’s design freedom to reduce weight and build in complex or functional features. This unlocks endless opportunities to produce parts that contribute directly to your sustainability goals — parts that would not be possible with any other technology. See how CMB.Tech used metal 3D printing for a crucial component when converting diesel engines to their dual-fuel (hydrogendiesel) system as a perfect example.
Getting this expert advice can also help identify more applications within your organization where 3D printing can make a difference. Whether it’s fixing breakage-prone production tools like Signify, reducing the risk of obsolescence in spare parts, or
4. Empower innovation and continuous improvement
When everything is connected by a digital thread, feedback becomes continuous. You’ll receive an endless supply of data, helping you see what works and what doesn’t, ultimately fostering a culture of continuous improvement — a culture you need to drive your sustainability initiatives forward.
This data is particularly impactful when developing new materials and processes, something we’re equally committed to here at Materialise. We use solutions like CO-AM and Quality & Process Control within our own organization to centralize build, process, and quality data. By doing the same, you can identify quality gaps, anomalies, and defects within your process. Turn that data into actionable insights, and you’re on the right track.
Need advice on building your digital thread?
We’re here to help you do it. From finding the right AM software for your organization to identifying the applications that best support your sustainability goals or scaling up to series production, you can count on our experts.
www.materialise.com
SHOWN:
Parts enter
a multistage heat treatment cycle
“The first lignin that I used in my shed was a different lignin and it worked fantastically. But there was no commercial model,” Jackson said of CFP’s commercial approach. “So that's when we started looking at other lignin and we've chosen the lignin that is the most readily available. In fact, it's probably the most mature part of our supply chain.”
Lignin is the raw material but LignAM, meaning lignin for additive manufacturing, is CFP’s patented carbon material. It’s a “very complicated natural material” made up of 60% carbon and 40% chemicals. The material is also said to be 100% reusable, so any unused powder can be sieved and put back into the machine. Crucially, it’s the non-carbon component that enables the
“We're not using it because of the name ... it really does have a big impact.”
printing, acting as a natural binder which is taken away during the heat treatment cycles. Once it hits 1000°C, which is just one part of the process, you’re left with pure carbon. Now CFP’s R&D has moved on to complete its the final stage, reaching 3000°C and achieving graphitisation.
“One of the key components that's really attractive to work with lignin is graphene,” Jackson explained. “The reason for that is lignin and graphene are both carbon but they are electrically charged in different directions, which makes them very attractive together.”
Conductivity is a scale. Carbon content can turn into hard carbon, which is non-conductive; full graphite, which is potentially more conductive than copper; or somewhere in between. Just one week before Jackson presented CFP’s technology to attendees at RAPID + TCT in June, the team received confirmation it had successfully achieved graphite through testing at the University of Birmingham.
CFP exists because the world needs a sustainable alternative to finite mined materials. With over 1 million GPB from Innovate UK awarded to projects aiming to tackle such challenges, the immediate need for clean alternatives is clear. CFP is currently on board Innovate UK’s Power Electronics, Machines and Drives (PEMD) programme which is helping to drive the decarbonisation of sectors such
as automotive, aviation, rail, marine and energy generation. With a focus specifically on electrification, if CFP can achieve a similar conductivity to aluminium, pairing 3D graphite and carbon composites with the geometric advantages of 3D printing, it could provide a lightweight alternative.
CFP doesn’t plan on becoming an equipment manufacturer but rather a licencing model. The current desktop machines the technology has been developed on won’t be suitable for production, but the intention is to potentially lock IP from some of those modifications and evolve that into a pilot plant facility where it will work with designers on the integration of components.
From day one, sustainability has been at the heart of every decision made throughout CFD’s development. That hasn’t always been easy. CFP brought on board Jenna Browne as its Circuluar Economy Lead, and the company has been employing MIT’s Earthster software which calculates ‘cradle to gate’ life cycle analysis in accordance with ISO 14040/44 standards. In the lab, CFP has achieved results which are said to be equal to a “very mature aluminium process” and if it changes its primary power source to a sustainable method like wind turbines, it believes it will be on the path towards net zero.
As CFP officially emerges from stealth, with proof of graphitisation in hand, serious investment is now key to its next steps. The demand for this material and process is clear. Graphite is an essential part of the electrification of the world, and there are thought to be opportunities for high-volume 3D printed carbon applications in automotive, biomedical and consumer electronics sectors. The previous UK government listed graphite amongst the critical minerals highlighted in its strategy to create more resilient supply chains. Meanwhile, recent curbs in China on the export of some of its graphite products used widely in EV batteries, potentially leaves an even bigger gap for UK-based innovation to fill and bolster US, UK and European supply chain security.
“It's a fantastic material but nobody's really found a really effective use for it,” Jackson said. “We're not using it because of the name, we're using it because it really does have a big impact.”
At RAPID + TCT, 14 additive manufacturing executives gathered on the Main Stage in Los Angeles to provide their thoughts on some of the industry’s biggest topics. Sustainability was, of course, one of them. From green material gains to clean energy challenges, here’s what some of them had to share.
SAVI BAVEJA | President of Personalization and 3D Printing | HP
“If we're being honest, if you compare the carbon consumption of traditional injection moulding per unit of material manufactured, it's much more sustainable than additive manufacturing. It's much more energy efficient. I think that has sort of sobered us to say we've got to work much harder on this.
We worked with our ecosystem, and invite anyone to work with us on it, on a carbon calculator where you can upload a part and get the carbon footprint of that part.
One of the advantages of our parts is that you can grind them back into powder. So, we've asked all our materials partners to have programs to take back parts and grind them into powder. We're doing the same thing with machines where we are now starting to take back and refurbish MJF and Metal Jet machines for sustainability reasons.
We’ve introduced materials without charging a premium for them. So, our PA 12 material, which is now made with half the carbon consumption of PA 12 before, we sell for the same price as regular PA 12, so it's a no brainer to replace it.”
FRIED VANCRAEN Chairman of the Board | Materialise
“On one hand, [there is] the sustainability of additive manufacturing as a process itself, and on the other hand, the impact that it can have on its applications. There is a lot that can be done on the additive manufacturing process. At Materialise, we are very much concerned about sustainability. For instance, in 2019 we had a full calculation of our CO2 emissions and we have set ourselves the target for our production activities to reduce our CO2 emissions in absolute numbers [by] 50% by 2025. I’m not talking about compensation. I'm talking about real reduction.
We had in 2019 approximately 20,000 tons of CO2 emissions with our activities. Just one application where we help the construction of [a] component that introduces hydrogen in classical diesel engines of trucks will create a similar saving with a thousand trucks that are on the road. This is one [3D printed] component in a thousand trucks that is going to create a saving compensating the entire emission of additive manufacturing.”
MARIE LANGER CEO | EOS GmbH
“I think it's super important that we all do our homework in getting our common accounting tools in place to really understand the footprint that we're having so we can then, every year, improve to make sure that we all have roadmaps to have responsible products. In-house, there are sustainability teams that can really help to make sure that staff, especially on the engineering side, on the application engineering side, get trained, and there's also a lot we do on the consulting side when we look into sustainability to also develop trainings there.
This is also something where we as a network can collaborate to really make sure that we all advance here because this is homework we all have. Because I agree, it's not necessarily sustainable. There are applications that might be more sustainable, but this technology needs to be way more industrialised to really compete with conventional manufacturing and then be better for these use cases.”
YOAV ZEIF | CEO | Stratasys
“The way we look at it, on one hand it's beneficial to be honest, the customer wants it, but not less important, we are proud to do good for this world.
We have a huge program with the Navy. We are printing all over the world. We are saving on environmental footprint because there is a part being produced somewhere in the Pacific, instead of sending it from Europe or from the US. Our customer wanted it and we [invested] in it.
But also, it's the way to make this industry successful because it forced us to look [in] the mirror.
We have GRI [Global Reporting Initiative] reports, we have ISOs that we invest in. We put it into the PLCM process. We design for the environment. And when you look at the eyes of our teams, men and women, when they understand that they are doing better for the world, it’s worth everything.”
When thyssenkrupp and Wilhelmsen stood together at the 2023 NAMIC Global Additive Manufacturing Summit to announce their collaboration, it marked a possible turn of the tide for the way the maritime and energy sectors procure parts.
The joint venture, Pelagus 3D, holds an ambitious plan to serve more than 4,000 vessels and oil and gas platforms worldwide. To do that, the German steel company and Norwegian maritime firm are leveraging additive manufacturing technologies and a global network of OEMs to build a digital platform that delivers spare parts on-demand.
Pelagus, essentially, intends to become the Amazon of the sea.
The maritime and offshore sectors face much of the same logistical problems encountered by other industrial sectors hampered by the long, unbending lead times of traditional manufacturing supply chains but exacerbated by vast geographical challenges that mean spare parts can sometimes take up to two years to reach their intended vessels. This
Singapore-based collaboration, forged after years spent testing the waters of AM’s feasibility and applicability, aims to drastically reform that model and deliver parts to vessels in a matter of weeks or even days.
“The simple equation here is that if the spare part is not available it leads to downtime for the system and that means for either a maritime vessel or offshore platform, money is wasted,” Kenlip Ong, Chief Executive Officer at Pelagus 3D, told TCT.
Industries continues to stock warehouses ‘just in case’ without any guarantee that the parts stocked will ever be put to use. As shared by Professor Jennifer Johns at the University of Bristol Business School, in the UK alone, the number of business premises classified as transport and storage increased by 88% in 2021 compared to 2011, and according to Ong, for the offshore sector, studies have shown that around 80% of parts stocked in warehouses are never utilised.
“The sad truth is that you cannot stock everything,” Ong continued.
“You are committing to upfront investment costs where you're taking money that you may not have and taking loans out as a business to put
in the stocking of a warehouse. You might not even use it but you need it because you never know when your pump system for your offshore platform is going to go down. It's capital locked away, so this represents a very big opportunity for businesses to benefit from 3D printing.”
Pelagus 3D believes that opportunity could bring parts to users faster, reduce the need for large physical inventories, and deliver better, more optimised products. In a project with Kawasaki Heavy Industries, for example, a return oil standpipe was successfully redesigned, complete with internal channels and Kawasaki logo, to reduce weight by 90% and delivered to a vessel in Japan in just 15 days. Conventionally, that same part would have taken 135 days to deliver at an annual storage cost of 340 USD.
"There's a sustainability angle here too,” Ong explained. “Improvement of the design is such that the valve angles and the flow of the channels are improved so we don't have leakages. This is a good
WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS
SHOWN:
Design optimisation side by side
“If the spare part is not available - money is wasted.”
example of how we are able to add value to our customers.”
Wilhelmsen began 3D printing initiatives in 2019, working on simple polymer parts such as gears. Through a collaboration with thyssenkrupp in 2020, its business model shifted but learnings from past projects and collaborations galvanised Pelagus 3D in its belief that additive presents huge potential for the industry.
“We approach it from a big picture perspective,” Ong said. “It’s very different from five years ago when people were just trying to get one or two parts built as prestige projects. Now we're looking at this from ‘I really need to commercialise this,’ and the only way to do this is to have a big picture perspective and convince senior management that this is a viable technology that we should invest in.”
Pelagus says it is providing customers with access to the entirety of the AM technology spectrum. It is working with over 80 suppliers across the globe and makes process recommendations based on part analysis that determine the best method of manufacture, which will then be facilitated through a manufacturing partner as close to the point of need as possible. This is all done alongside OEMs and maritime certification bodies, like the DNV and ABS, to deliver parts with a full warranty and certification, and crucially, build trust with the end user.
“We are working together with the original equipment manufacturers
to provide value to them and uncover opportunities for them to select additive manufacturing as the technology of choice for specific spare parts that their customers require,” Ong said. “We basically have a way to seamlessly integrate it into the procurement processes of our customers and I think that has very big implications in terms of uptake and use because if you're just doing prestige projects, as long as you can deliver those three parts, [for example], it's fine. But for us, this is meant to be a way for them to order parts in real time, continually.”
The company is investing in building out its Pelagus software platform and engaging with ship owners, OEMs and maritime engineers to assess their data, identify high potential parts and ensure the platform is speaking the same language within this new digital infrastructure. According to the team, when it comes to the maritime industry, no feedback is good feedback but the list of companies that are already engaging with Pelagus – Hafnia, Kongsberg Maritime, Doosan, Jets, Kawasaki Heavy Industries – and the 4,000 assets that have already been onboarded, are a good indicator of the waves it’s already making. Earlier this year, Pelagus also hit a milestone by securing ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015, and ISO 45001: 2018 certifications across its global operations, validating its ability to consistently provide spare parts and services at the quality and regulatory standards required by the maritime and offshore industries. That guarantee is further fortified by the fact that
Pelagus is not trying to replace OEMs but is instead working in tandem as a partner to augment their capacity and add value by reengineering traditional parts using data from their end users and getting products back to them much faster. It is still a full OEM part, just a 3D printed one.
“For OEMs, the subcontracting or licensing of fabrication to an external supplier is not new to them,” Ong added.
“Having a supplier that's used additive manufacturing, as long as we're able to explain the risks and accommodate for those contingencies, I think that's something that they're very comfortable to do.”
The team has grand and global ambitions. In the next few years, Pelagus wants to be the first place that comes to mind when a chief engineer on board one of the 40,000 vessels sailing around the world right now is in need of a spare part. The vision is to have each of the major OEMs serving the maritime and offshore industry on board the platform, and encourage the adoption of AM technologies to solve some of their biggest challenges.
“The whole idea in the future is to make sure AM is really well known in the maritime industry, that's the focus for us right now,” Ong concluded.
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Sam Davies speaks to Westinghouse Electric Company about its TCT Awardwinning application of additive manufacturing technology.
At Westinghouse Electric Company, a significant challenge is presented.
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, the effects are being felt across Eastern Europe. Power supply is at risk, owed to the need for fuel at a series of Russian-designed VVER-440 nuclear reactors, of which Russia is the only source.
Westinghouse, an American supplier of nuclear technology, believes it has the potential to step in. The company had been working to develop a fully Western VVER-440 nuclear fuel in the background, but now there was a need to accelerate that work.
By the time Adam Travis, Westinghouse Senior Manager & Additive Manufacturing Program Leader, was accepting a TCT Award for this endeavour, the company had manufactured more than 1,000 units. Two components in every assembly – the top and bottom flow plates – are additively manufactured with laser powder bed fusion technology in Stainless Steel 316L. Westinghouse believes the two plates to be the first ever safety-related AM components to enter serial production.
“We are very proud of the achievement that this application represents,” Travis said at the TCT Awards. “That’s the first in-core commercial nuclear AM component ever to go into serial production. This would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of a global team. We were presented with a significant challenge to design, develop, qualify and deploy a safety-related AM component in 12 months to ensure continued energy security in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. The team answered that challenge and delivered something exceptional.”
That doesn’t come from nowhere. Westinghouse has been working with additive manufacturing technology now for several years, announcing in 2020 the successful installation of a 3D printed thimble plugging device inside a commercial nuclear reactor. This component is used to help lower fuel assemblies into nuclear reactor cores, and was deemed a ‘low-risk’ and low-volume’ application. At the time, it was perfect for where Westinghouse was on its AM journey.
It wouldn’t satisfy the demands of the sectors Westinghouse serves though. In 2022, the company installed its StrongHold AM 3D printed nuclear fuel debris filters in two Nordic Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) units, improving operational efficiency. The printed parts here were said to enhance capture features to prevent debris from entering fuel assembly, which could lead to expensive outages.
A year on from that and Westinghouse was delivering its VVER-440 fuel assemblies to locations in Eastern Europe. Due to Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy system, lengthy power outages had occurred at the back end of 2022, with Ukraine anticipating a similarly difficult winter in 2023. For Westinghouse to manufacture bottom flow plates the conventional way would have required the fabrication of stamping dyes which, taking up to 12 months, would have significantly overshot its deadline. According to the company, AM was a ‘critical enabler’ in getting the parts developed, qualified and delivered on time.
Produced with laser powder bed fusion technology, the top flow plates are consolidated from seven parts (six machined pins welded to a machined plate) to one, with the
• Supply chain challenges with castings and forgings
• Challenging materials such as tungsten and related alloys
• Challenging angles and operations required to improve design
• Optimizing material property changes within build
Alloy 718 Metallography on JAM-5200EBM
• New Manufacturing Capabilities with EB-PBF!
• Optimized mechanical properties to di erent areas of the same part by microstructure control
• Part consolidation
• Shorter design cycle time (faster time to market for production)
• Optimize part designs with lightweighting resulting in improved buy to fly ratio
• Celebrating 75yrs of manufacturing electron beam capital equipment
• Reduced CoO (post process, powder, PPE)
• Fast build rate
Booth Number: 433221
Hall Location: West Building, Level 3
“AM is not tomorrow’s novelty but today’s reality.”
bottom plate being consolidated from two parts (a stamped skirt welded onto a machine plate) to one. Multiple welding and strap forming processes have been eliminated, with Westinghouse reporting the assembly is stronger as a result. The bottom flow plate is also said to improve fuel rod positioning, while the top flow plate provides a greater margin of safety in accident conditions. Westinghouse also says additive manufacturing is the most cost-effective method of manufacture for these components, though it could not identify a supplier
that could commit to developing a compliant bottom flow plate manufactured with conventional methods anyway.
It has represented a significant milestone for Westinghouse.
“The [VVER-440] effort hugely impacted our organisational maturity in tolerancing for AM, as well as building operational efficiency around AM development efforts and deployment into serial production,” Travis said. “Even greater, the milestone of 1,000+ safety-related AM parts produced sends a message to the commercial nuclear industry that AM is not tomorrow’s novelty but today’s reality. It’s ready to start delivering value now.”
Westinghouse has wasted no time in proving that point. Less than a month after it was awarded the TCT Industrial Application Award for the successful development and deployment of its VVER440 fuel assemblies, the company had built on its prior debris capture progress by reporting a 30% improvement in the bottom nozzles of its Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) fuel assemblies.
These PWR fuel assembly designs had been developed with conventional manufacturing methods and met both strength and pressure drop requirements for a nuclear fuel assembly. But Westinghouse had learnt from its prior applications of AM.
“Strategically, when we think about AM, we always look for opportunities to leverage AM as a design tool, not just a manufacturing tool,” Travis explained. “When looking at how we could improve even further for the next generation of bottom nozzles, it was clear that the design freedom of AM would be a crucial enabler, especially to improve debris catching efficiency over that achievable
SHOWN:
More than 1,000 fuel plate components have been additively manufactured in the last two years
with conventional manufacturing methods – i.e. CNC.”
These nozzles, integrated into four Lead Test Assemblies and delivered to a nuclear plant operated by Southern Nuclear, were designed with a complex threedimensional filter geometry that is said to be highly efficient at debris capture and hydrodynamic. By decreasing the size of the debris that can pass through the filter by a factor of 13 and enabling the filter to retain a significant quantity of debris without clogging or affecting coolant flow characteristics, debris filtration efficiency has increased from 65% to 96%. It addresses the concern of loose debris in the closed primary coolant loop catching in the grids and wearing away the protective cladding on the fuel rods. Though rare, this could cause nuclear fuel to leak onto the coolant loop, leading to additional costs.
“When considering debris filtration in the reactor core, there is an unavoidable tradeoff between filtration efficiency – size and quantity of debris captured – and cooling loop hydrodynamics – pressure drop across the loop,” Travis explained. “Westinghouse pushed conventional bottom nozzles as far as possible in terms of maximising filtration efficiency without deleteriously affecting pressure drop. With the additively manufactured bottom nozzle, thanks to purpose-driven design enabled by AM, we were able to dramatically improve filtration efficiency even further, while delivering comparable pressure drop performance.”
With such additive manufacturing accomplishment, Westinghouse fancies itself as the leader when it comes to deploying the technology in the nuclear industry. Attention is already turning to what comes next, with the additively manufactured bottom nozzles scheduled to enter serial production once sufficient operational experience has been accumulated in the next couple of years. The company also expects a similar outcome for its Stronghold AM filters for Boiling Water Reactors, and then the company’s sights are being set on integrating AM technology into some of its most advanced products.
“The additively manufactured bottom nozzles, StrongHold AM, and VVER-440 Flow Plates are all drop-in improvements for the world’s existing fleet of Light Water Reactors (LWR),” Travis finished. “In the next few years, we’ll see more and more of those drop-in applications coming out. On a longer timescale, we’ll also see one or two truly revolutionary LWR AM applications, as well as design-enabling applications in Advanced Reactors like Westinghouse’s eVinci microreactor, the AstroVinci lunar/orbital reactor, and the AP300 Small Modular Reactor.”
It’s a story of collaboration nearly 3,000 years in the making; a solid gold arm band, passed through hands and machines the world over, and back to a small museum in Cumbria, UK.
In a first discovery of its kind for the area, The Beacon Museum’s Prehistoric and Bronze Age section in Whitehaven holds a rare gold C-shaped arm ring thought to date back to 900-700 BC, uncovered by a local detectorist in 2019, and acquired by the Beacon Museum and Tullie House in Carlisle. Now, a project that covers thousands of miles, and tools that would only arrive a few millennia later, is bringing this artefact to light for a new generation.
“The skill involved to create the solid gold arm ring dating back from 900-700 BC would have been extremely well practiced,” Alan Gillon, Learning and Exhibition Engagement Manager at The Beacon Museum told TCT. “There has been very little Bronze Age material discovered to date in the West of Cumbria making this artefact very rare.”
This unique find led Gillon to approach Zoe Crossan, Lab Engineer at The Bus Station Maker Space in Whitehaven to support the 3D scanning and 3D printing of a set of replicas that could be displayed at both museums. The piece, Crossan recognised, would require the most intricate of details to be captured, so she brought on board Andrew Allshorn, founder of AM consultancy AT 3D-SQUARED and ADD3D Solutions - the latter established to promote 3D printing in Cumbria - to help.
“When Andrew had created a successful scan, I produced a couple of high-res resin 3D prints on our ProJet MJP 2500 Pro,” Crossan said of the project’s first steps. “Andrew and I decided to make the print hollow so that we could experiment with filling it with metal powder to try and get it as close as possible to the whopping 386g weight of the original.”
The plan was to create four replica metal bangles, two per museum; one for display and a second as a hands-on tool for tactile learning.
“Tactile learning is key to bringing the past alive. Object handling allows people to get as close as possible to experience items that they wouldn’t get the chance to hold normally,” Gillon said. “From a sensory perspective, replicas help break down the barriers to access.”
The density was a crucial element of the replica's tactility. Printing directly in gold would be too costly, but tungsten, sitting at a similar weight, proved a suitable alternative. So Allshorn put a call out to the industry for a collaborator with the ability to print in this material. With no budget, it wasn’t exactly an easy win, until Olaf Diegel, Professor of Additive Manufacturing and Co-Director, Centre for Advanced Materials Manufacturing and Design at The University of Auckland, who had already been working on cultural preservation projects in New Zealand, stepped in with an idea.
“We have recreated several Maori musical instruments by CT scanning and laser scanning them, and 3D printing reproductions that kids could handle and play with so they could experience the culture first-hand,” Diegel said. “The original instruments were precious family heirlooms that could not be handled by kids because, if they dropped them, the instrument would be gone forever.
“So, when Andrew contacted me about the bronze-age bangle, this was a perfect opportunity to put our skills to the test to see if we could help to reproduce it as accurately as possible, but without having to use expensive gold, so that kids at the museums could touch and feel the bangle.”
Allshorn sought permission to send over the 3D scan data to Diegel’s lab at the university where the hollowed-out design was printed on an EOS M 290 metal powder bed fusion system in maraging steel. Several iterations were produced to get the surface finish as close to the original as possible.
“The toughest part of replicating them was actually to do with the small dimples that cover the bangle,” Diegel explained. “No matter which orientation we printed the bangles in, there was always going to be sacrificial support material at the bottom of the bangle which, in turn, made it more susceptible to accidentally losing the dimples. As it turns out, though, on the original bangle there were two areas that were more ‘worn’ than the others so, in those areas, the dimples had almost completely disappeared. We used those areas as the bottom surfaces in which to put in support material and were able to get a pretty much exact reproduction of the dimples.”
Support structures inside the bangle also needed to be carefully considered to
accommodate the tungsten filling. The hollow bangle was therefore supported during printing with a thin solid wall to the bottom. Once finished, the prints were sent back to Allshorn, filled with powder and capped off with brazing.
With the bands now successfully feeling like gold, the next step was to make them look like it. For that, Allshorn invited the help of Kadampa Art Studio, a facility inside Manjushri Kadampa Meditation Centre, home to the Kadampa Buddhist Temple in Ulverston. The centre designs and creates qualified statues and objects for modern Buddhist Temples and meditation centres around the world, sometimes using 3D printing to create new masters or prototypes. But it was the beautiful gold finishing radiating from the temple’s large Buddha statues and intricately painted exterior, which led to the bangles being finished with electro-brushing of gold by the studio’s volunteers.
“It was essential the bangle was fully degreased and with it being a hybrid metal, we weren't sure if it would be sufficiently passive to receive the gold,” explained Rabchog, Studio Manager at Kadampa Art Studio. “We often dip an object in copper and then nickel before electro-brushing with gold to provide a sufficiently stable surface. The 3D printed bangle substrate however, proved to be a suitable material for the gold solution to plate directly to and so the whole process was very quick.”
In some ways, it’s an incredibly local project but also a global one, made possible by a community effort with a shared passion for preservation and creative exploration of 3D technologies.
“The coolest part of the story is that you've got a group of people from all over the globe that have come together to help this little museum,” Allshorn said. “I think the community side of this is actually bigger than the project itself.”
“Time-zones and technologies don’t seem to play a big role in things if you have good people to work with,” Diegel said. “And, of course, it’s great to be working on projects that allow young people to experience hands-on aspects of culture and history that they, otherwise, would only be able to see locked away behind glass.”
Crossan, for example, is currently working on another project with Cumberland Council to produce fullcolour 3D printed replicas of some of the finds from a Roman bath house archaeological dig in Carlisle.
“Replicas help break down the barriers to access.”
“A member of the Uncovering Roman Carlisle volunteers said that ‘the 3D prints had made it possible for people to touch the past,’” Crossnan said. “This use of 3D printing technology is an engaging way of connecting young people to their past and hopefully helps to give them a sense of pride in where they live.”
Projects like this provide more opportunities for communities, particularly younger visitors, to engage with their local history. But they can also go beyond that and help us to uncover more stories and knowledge about our past that we might not otherwise have access to.
“Historical discoveries can sometimes only be fragments of what they once were,” Gillon concluded. “3D printing and 3D scanning can fill in the missing pieces to complete the artefact, allowing people to view and experience what the object would have once looked like whether it be from recent times or thousands of years old. These new technologies are key to unravelling the past.”
At this year’s TCT Awards, PROCODE_DRESS was among the nominations in the Creative Application Award category for the use of 3D printing in a collection of fashion pieces.
The Rollercoaster Series saw a patentpending 3D printing technology harnessed to produce a series of dresses that combined sewed fabric with extruded polymer materials, replicating the slaloming shapes of theme park rides.
After the ceremony, founder Leela Porges (LP) was welcomed onto the TCT Additive Insight podcast to tell us more about her use of 3D printing, how she celebrates the learning curves of new technology development, and what comes next for PROCODE DRESS.
TCT: With your proprietary robotic arm 3D printing technique, are you continuously advancing that capability?
LP: Yes, I think every technology is something you can always advance and improve, especially with the robotic arm because it’s so new for fashion design. I am looking to evolve with new materials, [make it] more sustainable, but also [making it] more comfortable for the body. I’m looking into some research and some projects that other companies did and trying to figure out what will be the best approach to make garments that are more comfortable. That’s the biggest challenge for me now, to make it more comfortable, closer to the body, more wearable.
TCT: Touching on some of the pieces that you have created, with the work that was shortlisted for a TCT Award this year, you had this base layer of fabric and then you printed polymer filament over it with the robotic arm. Tell us more about that design process and how these pieces are enabled by 3D printing technology.
LP: That’s the Rollercoaster collection that I did recently and showed it in February at New York fashion Week. The technology [for these pieces] is very simple. It’s the basic code of the robot following ten points in the space and connecting the points together to create this repetitive line that is coming and going, and it is 3D printing material also with a 3D pen over a dress form that is rotating in space.
So, because the dress form is rotating, the material is falling on it and staying in the same location, and you can see the repetition in the dress later as the repetition of the robot. I do that on a simple fabric, which is stretchy and makes the dress very comfortable. The fabric is just sewn regularly with a sewing machine, and I hand stitch later the material to the fabric and the end result is this thread that you can see, draping from the robotic arm. The 3D printed material, in the case of the dress I wore at the TCT
Awards event is a recycled PLA, but the other dresses in that collection, all the black dresses are made from recycled carbon fibre and bottle caps from Xtellar of Braskem, and the white dresses in that collection are made from a bio-based EVA that is based on sugar cane, also from Xtellar of Braskem.
TCT: I understand that you like to celebrate the imperfections of what a robotic arm extruding 3D printed filament can do. Can you tell us more about incorporating these perfections into your art?
LP: The first time I 3D printed with the robot and tried to 3D print something very accurate, very mathematical, based on mathematical functions, I started to see how it’s not [always] perfect. I started to look at it in a more artistic way, a bit different from the engineering way to look at it, and instead of being disappointed
CREDIT: Photographer: Paolo Lanzi for Vogue Runway NYFW
Model: Sophia Donnell
Robot: New Bedord
Research & Robotics
Material: Braskem-Xtellar
CREDIT: Photographer: Felicia Disalvo
Model: Trinity Chisolm
Makeup artist: Maggie Meza Barboza
Robot: New Bedord Research & Robotics
Material: Xtellar
“There is beauty in developing new technologies.”
in the mistakes, I saw the beauty in them. And I learned that the final piece, in this case, is showing that this is a process in the state of learning. It’s not a technology that has been used for hundreds of years, it’s a technology that we are only just working on and we’re [still] trying to make it better. So, it is beautiful to see it in the end result and to understand there is beauty in developing new technologies.
TCT: Finally Leela, in terms of the concepts and designs that you want to explore, what comes next for PROCODE_DRESS?
LP: I’m trying to develop a more accurate technique for printing accurately on the human body and trying to make something that is more comfortable. Maybe even costumes made to specific bodies and really developing it with parametric design and trying to make something that is more complex. Definitely [something that is] more complex than the Rollercoaster collection, but it will also feel better for the body, will use better materials and will be more comfortable. That’s my challenge now.
To listen to the full interview, subscribe to the Additive Insight podcast.
WORDS: sam davies
Inside the development of the LIMIT3D 7-iron, a 3D printed golf club head brought to market by COBRA Golf.
Rhuddlan, North Wales.
The bag is full. Full of metal of varying shapes, sizes, weight and condition. There’s a dozen of them in there, most of them with the COBRA brand etched into the head. But there’s an odd one out.
That particular 37-inch piece of 316L stainless steel is being shared between a handicap golfer and the local club professional as balls are clipped towards the green. It is not the customary way to play a round of golf, but there’s a new toy to play with courtesy of TCT Magazine.
Passing the new COBRA Golf LIMIT3D 7-iron – a club ‘designed for better players’ – back and forth, the pair are aiming to strike towards the green 150 yards away. But they’re falling short and pulling left. To get themselves out of this spot of bother, they’re returning to their own trusty wedges, whose weight, behaviour and feel they are much more accustomed.
Los Angeles, California.
In LA, a familiar sight. The LIMIT3D 7-iron is passed back down a lengthy queue after every swing. We’re at RAPID + TCT 2024, where nTop has allocated a sizeable amount of floor space to a golf simulator, allowing attendees to have a strike with the latest piece of sports equipment to be enabled by additive manufacturing.
For nTop, the LIMIT3D golf club head is considered among the best examples of what the nTop software can facilitate, with CEO Brad Rothenberg telling TCT: “The engineering logic that’s built into the computational model that they’ve generated is what impressed me the most. I was blown away by it.”
Carlsbad, California.
It was a year ago when COBRA Golf
President Dan Ladd tasked Mike Yagley, the company’s VP of Innovation, with using the metal 3D printing technology residing in his department to commercialise a new golf club head ‘very fast.’ Very fast, it is said, meant within 12 months.
Typically, the Innovation department gets the ball rolling on a new product creation, before handing over whatever ‘crazy stuff’ they have developed – be it materials, aerodynamics, weighting systems, or a 3D printed golf club head – over to Design and Product Creation. But because of the short turnaround, the LIMIT3D golf club head stayed in Innovation.
Innovation is where the spark was lit for the KING Supersport-35 putter, which would be manufactured with HP Metal Jet technology via Parmatech in 2020. It was a good base to start from, helping the team to ‘learn the hard way’ that additive manufacturing is ‘a lot more complicated than anybody thinks.’
COBRA, however, has deemed it worth their time and resources. For the LIMIT3D 7-iron, it was decided early on that COBRA would switch to a Direct Metal Laser Sintering process for the production of this club head because it intended to incorporate a complex internal lattice structure.
“If you think about the binder jet process,” COBRA Golf Director of Innovation Ryan Roach explains, “you have to take the printed part and sinter it, and the part isn’t super strong before you sinter it, so if you have an enclosed volume and want to get the powder out, it’s very difficult. With the DMLS process, that part is strong, layer by layer, melted into place, and we can be a little more rough with it afterwards. And we can make more intricate structures because we don’t have to worry about being careful getting the powder out.”
The internal lattice structure – more
complex than the one visible on the blade's surface – was a key focus during product iteration. COBRA had started with a body-centred cubic lattice cell, which was ‘saving so much weight’, and gradually moved towards a dodecahedron cell that weighed more but provided the stiffness COBRA was looking for.
“People skilled in the art,” Yagley borrows a phrase from the IP world, “would say, ‘wow, look at what COBRA did to make this happen!’. Subtle, but nerds would really nerd out on it. Our marketing people talk about magic tricks, there’s a magic trick in there.”
Los Angeles, California.
Given its nascency, there are few people more skilled in the art than the founder and CEO of the company enabling this computational lattice optimisation.
nTop, Roach and Yagley agreed, ‘jumpstarted’ the LIMIT3D project, allowing COBRA’s Innovation team to ‘very easily, very quickly’ switch and analyse lattice structures.
At RAPID + TCT, Rothenberg is effusive with praise for the way COBRA has implemented the nTop software.
“It’s just so impressive,” Rothenberg tells TCT. “They were building this incredibly complex computational model of the club head so that they can change the parameters, ‘let’s move the centre of gravity, let’s see what happens if the moment of inertia is further out, let’s optimise the location of weights in this club head, let’s optimise the wall thickness of it.’ It goes way beyond taking a dumb solid and filling it with a lattice. They built in the requirements for the club into a computational model and they could change those constraints and generate a new club.”
Carlsbad, California.
“If there is a demand for this, we can scale it up.”
The lattice that COBRA landed on is printed with the rest of the body, touching the base and back of the club head to maintain the required stiffness, while also delivering on the desired impact feel.
How the club feels is of paramount importance to any golfer, from those improving their swing at the driving range, to those competing in the Majors. As such, it needed to be considered right alongside the high loads a 7-iron will experience through the swing and connection with the ball.
It’s a question of shape and weight. Any golfer is going to have their preferences, many deciding within seconds whether a particular club is for them, and many taking several rounds of a course to get used to their new clubs if they persevere. From the manufacturer’s side, there are specific weight ranges that need to be conformed to, so what COBRA embarked on with the LIMIT3D 7-iron was a mission of weight redistribution.
With nTop’s computational design capabilities, COBRA was able to additively manufacture a club that boasted a 33% weight optimisation, with discretionary weight being repositioned to optimise the feel, centre of gravity and moment of inertia. These discretionary weight savings allowed for up to 100g of tungsten to be positioned low in the heel and toe to enable a compact blade shape and deliver on those performance gains.
“The advantage of taking the weight out is we can then put it back and concentrate it in places where you can’t normally because you need all that weight to make the form,”
Roach says. “When we talk about [taking out] 100 grams of weight in the head, the head weighs between 240 and 300 grams, so you’re talking about roughly a third of the weight that you’re now repositioning. That’s why you’re seeing this performance difference.”
“It’s more about weight movement than weight reduction,” Yagley summarises, before explaining: “If you put more mass on the perimeter, you are increasing its resistance to twisting [or its moment of inertia]. If you hit the middle, you hit a 175-yard shot. Hit it on a toe, normally for a 7-iron, you lose 20 yards. With the LIMIT3D, they only lose five or ten. Decent golfers should notice pretty quickly, it flies like a 7-iron, it feels like a 7-iron, but when I ‘miss’, it does not go as short as I think, because of that moment of inertia increase that’s invisible to the player.”
Rhuddlan, North Wales.
Over the course of a few weeks, the handicap golfer and club professional continue to trial the LIMIT3D golf club. They take it to the driving range, use it on a simulator, and hand it off to a variety of scratch players too. There is variance in the experience, but they all come back to the same point of contention.
“With the single club, it didn’t work. But with a full set and more time to get used to the weight, you’d probably see the improvement.”
Carlsbad, California.
So, it’s back over to COBRA Golf. After launching the LIMIT3D 7-iron, is there a will to keep going with this technology? And to scale should the demand be there?
“Definitely. What we are dreaming of right now is so exciting. And we are just scratching the surface,” notes Yagley.
“This process scales nicely,” added Roach. “We’re very close to being able to do that. When we have something that we feel is a superior product that people are going to want, we look into that.”
“If there is a demand for this, we can scale it up,” finished Yagley. “We will work with vendors to scale this up. Will it replace casting and forging? I doubt it. You can make a lot of those fast and it is still a lot less expensive. But 3D printing has its purpose and you can do things with 3D printing that you cannot with forging and casting. So, if the demand is there, we’ll be able to do it.”
Based on our experience in processing tantalum and niobium, we have developed AMtrinsic® Ta/Nb-containing spherical metal powders with properties especially adopted to the requirements of Additive Manufacturing, including attuned morphology, high purity, low oxygen content and optimized flow and handling properties.
Our AMtrinsic® powder portfolio includes elemental Ta/Nb powders and range from binary over complex multinary to high-entropy alloys, incorporating additional alloying elements such Ti, Zr, Hf, Mo, W, V, Sn or Al. Our powder portfolio has been continuously expanded to provide alloy compositions with unique intrinsic properties that are inherent in Ta/Nb and their alloys creating the next generation of materials for AM. Our production set up allows to provide customized alloys even in small batch sizes.
We provide powders pre-conditioned for application in Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF, 10 – 63 µm), Electron Powder Bed Fusion (EPBF, 63 – 105 µm), Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) or
Laser Cladding (LC) (105 - 150 µm) or according to customer requests. The purity of our powders exceeds 99%. Thanks to our in-house developed deoxidation process we provide powders with extremely low oxygen content which is a beneficial feature for AM processes and properties of printed parts.
Among others, fields of applications of AMtrinsic® powders include chemical process engineering, superconductive and aerospace applications as well as medical implants. In close cooperation with our customers, we develop alloy compositions perfectly adjusted to their specific needs. We are also supporting our customers in their research and development phase of new applications by incrementally optimizing key properties of the AM powders. For supporting our customers, we rely on an extensive network of research institutes and cooperation partners.
With our international sales set up including branch offices in Europe, North America and Asia we can serve markets on a global scale and provide sales support in our customer’s regional market.
Our current AMtrinsic® portfolio: Ta, Nb, Nb alloys like C-103, FS-85, Cb-752 and Cb-291, Ta10W and Ta2.5W, Ti42Nb as well as Ti/Nb/Ta alloys.
Sam Davies speaks to Addiblast to understand the capabilities of its flagship MARS 03 depowdering system for metal AM.
Inside a manufacturing a facility, an engineer has in their hands a 60 kilogramme Inconel part, attempting to remove unfused powder from the component additively manufactured (AM) with laser powder bed fusion technology.
Their method is to turn it around manually, before taking a hammer to it to shake more powder loose. For the folks at Addiblast, it represents, at once, a head-in-hands moment, but also somewhat of an open goal.
“That is not the most effective and efficient way to do it,” Simon Berkopec, Addiblast Technical Sales Representative, says diplomatically.
And diplomacy is the approach to take for a business seeking to walk into these environments and change the way industrial companies are removing excess materials from their 3D printed parts. Because, as Berkopec suggests, there are definitely better ways.
It’s about convincing these engineers, and their superiors, of that fact. That’s what Addiblast is at TCT 3Sixty for, to engage, educate and, essentially, show off.
The focus of its booth is the MARS 03, a fully automated solution for the removal of excess powder, with capacity to perform its primary function on extremely complex metal structures. To match the build volumes of most metal AM systems on the market, it boasts a build plate volume of 400 x 400 x 400 mm, a load capacity of 200kg, and can utilise compressed air, argon and nitrogen. And its powder removal method is much more sophisticated than turning and hammering.
“The main idea,” Berkopec explains, “is to perform programmable two-axis rotations to turn the part upside down, clockwise, counterclockwise, and simultaneously we apply different kinds of vibrations and we are blowing the parts with compressed air, or inert gas, depending on the part material.”
Users of Addiblast’s MARS 03 can set up different recipes, which dictates how the swivel arm of the machine is moving, which rotations are applied and
how strong the vibrations are. The force of the vibration depends on the part material, part size, geometry and weight. Lower frequency vibrations will be used for lower density parts, penumatic vibration might be needed for higher density parts, and for titanium or aluminium parts, Addiblast suggests a 70-Hertz electric vibration. The only manual operation required to remove powder is transporting the build plate from printer to MARS 03 and then removal of the plate once the process is complete.
Addiblast has equipped its MARS 03 with a series of smart measurement analytics capabilities to supplement its powder removal prowess. With these sensors, oxygen levels, working chamber pressure, temperature and humidity, consumption of compressed air, inert gas and electricity, and the speed of vibrations can all be measured.
“End users need bigger machines. We’re following this trend.”
“They give us a lot of insight into our process,” Berkopec says of the smart analytics capabilities. “If we’re calculating the cost per part, for example, you need to know how much you spend on compressed air, inert gas and electricity for each job. And, for vibrations, we always want to avoid the resonance frequencies. Every part has its own natural frequencies and if we vibrate with the same frequency on the rotary table, we can get into resonance. That way, we may damage the parts and we need to avoid it.”
MARS 03 is considered to be Addiblast’s flagship product, owed to its matching the build volumes of the 3D printers most adaptors of metal additive currently run. It sits in the middle of a portfolio of five MARS depowdering systems, with the MARS 01 platform a more compact unit that caters for 300 x 300 x 400 mm build volumes, and its MARS 05 catering for 1000 x 1000 x 1000 mm build volumes.
So far, Addiblast is pleased with the product development progress it has made in the four years since the company launched, but it is not ignorant to the fact that the trajectory of additive manufacturing machine size is only going one way. As it sketches out its product evolution roadmap, it is looking to be bigger and be better.
“One direction is that each year there are new, bigger printers on the market,” Berkopec finishes. “End users need bigger machines. Just making bigger machines isn’t that simple because the weight limits and machines grow exponentially, it’s kind of crazy, but we’re following this trend. On the other hand, we are constantly trying to develop our solutions to make the depowdering process more effective; so, what different tools can we implement to really make sure there is no more powder inside? This is our main challenge.”
Sam Davies speaks to LANDR CEO Mitchell Barnes company’s UK-manufactured low-cost industrial FDM 3D printing system.
Honestly, don’t worry about it. I live and breathe this,” Mitchell Barnes reassures.
It is take two of an interview that originally happened on the TCT 3Sixty show floor; the LANDR booth so busy, barely a sentence could be made out when listening back to the recording.
That footfall stemmed from the launch of a new 3D printing system, and a new company entirely as LANDR spun out from the RYSE3D contract manufacturing business based in Warwickshire. The LANDR 500 machine debuted at TCT 3Sixty and was being pitched at a price point up to ten times cheaper than some competitive machines on the market.
No wonder, then, it drew so much interest. Six weeks on, that interest hasn’t waned, but Barnes is familiar with things not exactly going to plan, so joins this Microsoft Teams meeting to repeat a story he first told in early June.
“Effectively, LANDR was born out of necessity,” he begins. “At RYSE3D, we won a number of manufacturing contracts to utilise FDM 3D printing. Those contracts grew a lot larger than expected and continue to grow. Customers are taking a lot more FDM parts than we ever thought was going to be the case.”
Looking at the capital expenditure requirements to make this kind of investment, RYSE3D couldn’t find a suitable product on the market. Considering the electricity requirements,
materials sourcing and speed of the machines gave the company only two options.
“The answer was either cancel all your contracts, pat yourself on the back, you tried, like everybody else who has faced the same scalability issues, or instead, bite the bullet and develop your own machine,” Barnes explains. “That’s where LANDR was born from, and we realised what we developed was really interesting and exciting.”
What had been developed was the LANDR 500 FDM 3D printer, which boasts a 500 x 500 x 500 mm build volume, a heated chamber that can reach 100°C, no material lock, and a heated filament storage unit. It is being made available for just over 11,000 GBP – inclusive of both VAT and the filament storage unit – with LANDR building out the machine with the ‘best components available.’
Those components include a Phaetus Repido Two Plus ultra-high flow hotend, Bondtech LGX Extruder, 140°C print bed, and Double Skin Gold Reflective Insulation. The latter of which utilises ‘non-active heat management’ by using reflectivity and insulation of the gold sheet to control the thermals and ensure the machine doesn’t get too hot.
The machine also features an array of 3D printed components – including motor mounts, the hot end assembly, the gantry system, rear cabling bracket, and electronics enclosures – with LANDR keen to control the supply of parts as much as it can. Its sister company, RYSE3D, has been running ten LANDR 500 platforms 24/7, racking up more than 30,000 hours of utilisation time.
coolant flow parts, structural supports for different trip components, interior vehicle parts, carbon fibre tooling, vacuum form tooling, inspection fixtures, jigs, hand tools,” Barnes listed. “They are being punished in terms of the parts that we’re manufacturing; they are the guts of automotive products. They are parts that are abused on a dayto-day basis, and you just expect them to work.”
According to Barnes, those parts have performed ‘exceptionally,’ with the company now readying to ship printers to external users this summer. Already, the company has hundreds of pre-orders worth around 200,000 GBP, and used TCT 3Sixty to gather early feedback. Having spent the interim implementing some small tweaks to the design and componentry of the machine, LANDR is just about ready to launch.
While that initial shipment commences later this year, an eye has already been cast on the company’s next steps. An expansion into the US market is on the cards, likely through a resale channel, and the release of a larger, pellet-fed extrusion printer with a one metre cubed build volume will follow at some point too.
But first, the UK launch.
“We don’t want to run too quickly,” Barnes finished. “We need to nail the UK launch and the UK market and make sure our customers on home soil are happy with the product. We need to let the market find out what works and what doesn’t work, and work with those key customers, the first cluster, to make sure they have the best experience possible. And we make that product even better going forward.”
“LANDR was born out of necessity.”
“The parts that we’re using the LANDRs to manufacture are really highperformance polymer components that have to sit in really tough areas: engine bays, turbo intake pipes, high pressure
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Adrian Painter, Managing Director at Tri-Tech 3D, UK provider of Stratasys 3D printing solutions, explores how AM could help manufacturers meet their environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals.
It's easy to understand why more manufacturers are now investing in sustainability as part of ESG goals.
In November 2022, the European Council introduced a new requirement for European companies to report any indirect emissions across their value chains — what’s become known as Scope 3 emissions. Consequently, manufacturers will soon need to report on the greenhouse gas emissions from factors such as product waste, and the transportation and distribution of goods.
Once manufacturers understand their current Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, they may look for ways to make improvements as part of sustainability plans. One option is to invest in additive technology, which can help manufacturers reduce waste, consume less energy and produce parts more sustainably than traditional production methods. Just look at how a 3D printer builds an object by adding several layers of material on top of each other rather than carving away at a solid block — the material discarded is minimal compared to machining and injection moulding.
More manufacturers are now installing AM systems on the factory floor as a means of producing end-use parts — a testament to this technology’s flexibility, accuracy and efficiency. Once the technology is in place, carefully organising the production process to achieve the smallest possible footprint can make a real difference to sustainability efforts.
Design for additive manufacturing is key to optimising a part’s features and orientation for production, but mastering this skill requires overcoming a steep learning curve. So, sometimes manufacturers that are new to AM may find that a part looks good in a CAD file during a print, only to realise that it is unstable when they remove it from the printer. In highly regulated markets, such as aerospace, medical and automotive, errors can’t be tolerated and even the slightest inaccuracy could result in a part being scrapped. From a sustainability perspective, more errors means more waste — and this means more material going to landfill.
3D printing workflow software has come on leaps and bounds in recent years and is making it easier for manufacturers to correct any potential errors before builds commence. Consequently, software can help manufacturers stay one step ahead when planning their printing jobs and avoid frustrating reworks after printing — as well as the material waste that comes with them.
As AM has become more popular, there are also more materials for manufacturers to choose from. This includes a growing selection of sustainable materials, including biodegradable and compostable options, such as polylactic acid (PLA), derived from renewable resources. PLA has been lauded because of its ability to break down naturally over time — avoiding the waste and pollution we often associate with plastic. When selecting eco-friendly materials, manufacturers must check that they can run on their system, ensuring they have equipment and materials that best serve the application and production requirements.
When using traditional manufacturing methods, manufacturers would typically store any spares or replacements from production runs on the shelves of their warehouses, shutting them away until customers requested them. Producing and storing these parts often requires significant energy usage, only for the parts to go unused. Manufacturers can avoid this storage issue by replacing physical warehouses with a virtual digital inventory. By storing design and CAD files digitally and making them available, manufacturers can print the required parts on demand, accurately, and with the required geometries and surface finishes. Digital inventories reduce lead times because manufacturers can print the parts from several distributed locations, as close as possible to the customer. They can also minimise the carbon
footprint associated with ferrying components to and from the warehouse.
The commitment to sustainability is clear — the number of companies setting ESG targets has already increased by nearly half, and this trend shows no signs of stopping. AM can help improve production sustainability by reducing waste and energy consumption, and there are specific things that users can do to minimise their footprint, such as selecting bio-based materials and optimising parts to reduce waste.
“More errors mean more waste.”
As one of the leading experts on additive manufacturing, we live to craft the impossible, time and time again.
