TCT Europe 22.1

22|1 FEB 14

ISSUE The Oakley Angel — DSM delivers the unexpected in the heart of London Also in this issue: Metals AM — Are we at an inflection point?

CEO Connect — Jim Woodcock talks to Al Siblani TCT @ CES 2014 — 3D printing makes waves in Vegas ADOBE — Delivering the power of 3D printing to creatives 3D Printing | Additive Manufacturing | Product Development

3D printing, additive manufacturing and product development

ISSN 1751-0333

GROUP EDITOR James Woodcock | james@rapidnews.com

DIGITAL AND COMMUNITY EDITORS Rose Brooke | rose.brooke@rapidnews.com Daniel O’Connor | daniel.oconnor@rapidnews.com

NEWSDESK +44 (0) 1244 680222

REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS Todd Grimm | T. A. Grimm & Associates | tgrimm@tagrimm.com Joris Peels | www.voxelfab.com | joris@voxelfab.com

GROUP ADVERTISING MANAGER Carol Hardy | carol@rapidnews.com t: + 44 (0) 1244 680222

DESIGN Sam Hamlyn Tracey Roberts

C.O.O. / PUBLISHER Duncan Wood

C.E.O. Mark Blezard

SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION http://www.tctmagazine.com/subscriptions Published Prices Print Subscriptions - Qualifying Criteria UK - Free Europe - Free US/Canada - £79 ROW - £99 Print Subscriptions - Non Qualifying Criteria UK - £79 Europe - £89 US/Canada - £99 ROW - £119 FREE on iOS and Android devices — including back catalogue and Buyers’ Guides.

The TCT Magazine is published bi-monthly by Rapid News Publications Ltd Carlton House, Sandpiper Way, Chester Business Park, Chester CH4 9QE, UK. t: + 44 (0) 1244 680222 f: + 44 (0) 1244 671074 © 2014 Rapid News Publications Ltd While every attempt has been made to ensure that the information contained within this publication is accurate, the publisher accepts no liability for information published in error, or for views expressed. All rights for The TCT Magazine are reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without prior written permission from the publisher is strictly prohibited.

BPA Worldwide Membership

3

REGULARS

COVER STAR

7. From the Editorʼs desk

8. Creating a striking

centrepiece for Oakley’s flagship London store required some creative thinking, and a helping hand from DSM Somos’ stereolithography resins.

FEATURES 19. AMUG Preview — Our roundup of the 26th conference in Tucson, AZ. 20. ExOne — A glimpse into how the binder jetting experts plan to innovate metals AM materials.

22. Arcam — a brief look at Arcamʼs latest release, the Q20.

24. LayerWise — Rose Brooke brings news of substantial expansion at this Belgium-based AM production centre.

27. LPW — as metals AM machines and processes develop quickly, itʼs time for materials to catch up, as Jim Woodcock discovers.

11. Todd Grimm — Is constant innovation the only way 3D printing can make an impact?

15. Joris Peels — 3D printing could be a gift to the worldʼs poorest, but will the technology trap them in poverty?

66. Ctrl-Alt-Del — Dan OʼConnor reflects on ʻ3D Printing 2.0ʼ, and what it really means for the industry.

31. ARRK — Consolidate doesnʼt always mean shrink, as ARRK hope to prove for the second time.

35. Romans CAD — Niche 3D design software can streamline design and development processes.

36. GRM — Optimising railway seating using cutting edge methods.

39. Adobe — 3D printing comes to Photoshop CC in a development that could revolutionise access.

41. Asiga — Jewellery and 3D printing go hand in hand, and they have done for a long time.

43. RPD — Allowing more staff access to product development is the name of this startupʼs game.

CONTENTS

TCT VOLUME 22 | 1

47. Local Motors — Bre Pettis may just have joined the board, but LM has had its sights on AM for auto manufacture for a while.

48. EnvisionTEC — TCT travelled to Los Angeles to speak with Al Siblani about the companyʼs recent developments and bright future plans.

55. SolidWorks World — One of the most active 3D printing shows this year was... not a 3D printing show.

57. Dassault Systeme — New business opportunities enabled by 3D printing.

61. TCT @ Intl CES — A roundup of the conference and TechZone from TCTʼs inaugural partnership with International CES. 5

tct [22:1]

THE EDITOR The ‘cool’ conundrum Since the last issue went to press I have spent a week in Germany for Euromold, a week in Las Vegas for CES and a week in San Diego for SolidWorks World. Hardly surprising then that the deadline seemed to appear from nowhere for this, the first issue of our 22nd volume.

The pace of development in all aspects of the 3D printing, AM and product development industries is truly astonishing at the moment and the gaps between issues seems to get wider and wider.

Luckily we have the websites (www.tctmagazine.com and www.prsnlz.me) that are updated daily with the breaking news that matters, leaving space in the magazine for a more in-depth look into the companies, technologies and stories that are shaping our industry If you’re not a regular visitor to our website, you’re missing out on exclusive content from our editorial team there too. Digital and Community Editor Rose Brooke recently asked: “Will 3D printing fall victim to its own popularity?” It all comes down to being cool, and being cool is not cool. In fact cool is deeply uncool. “Everyone says they know what ‘cool’ is, but we wanted to get at the core of what ‘cool’ actually is, because there’s a different connotation to what ‘cool’ actually means in the tech world,” Distinguished Professor of Communications at Penn State and Co-Director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory S Shyam Sundar explained. “It appears to be a process. Once

A ‘cool’ cat — NOTE: Not Jim Woodcock

the product loses its subculture appeal, for example, it becomes less cool, and therein lies the challenge.”

For the whole analysis, visit http://mytct.co/deathbysuccess This print issue contains a wealth of its own exclusive content from leading companies in 3D printing, additive manufacturing, CAD, materials development, jewellery and more. From an interview with EnvisionTEC CEO Al Siblani, to a ‘love song to shoe design’ with Romans CAD and the low down from UK-based powder metallurgy experts LPW. If you need to know a little more about the trends, this is the issue for you.

Finally a warm welcome to all our new readers who have subscribed following the shows we have attended, many of whom have taken advantage of TCT’s decision to make the magazine free, globally, on iOS and Android devices.

Keep on creating,

Jim Woodcock Group Editor james@rapidnews.com

Design today... ...build tomorrow Unlock the potential for Additive Manufacturing Renishaw’s laser melting system is a pioneering process capable of producing fully dense metal parts direct from 3D CAD. Find out more at www.renishaw.com/additive

6

www.renishaw.com

[Quill Vogue]

Can POST PROCESSING become...

One of the less sexy subjects in the 3D printing world is that of post processing. It has always received significantly fewer column inches in the press, but is this all set to change? Many of the 3D industry’s largest players recognise the importance of post processing and the part it has to play in helping customers achieve professionally processed printed parts.

i

I

n late 2011, the Quill International Group was approached by a major UK reseller of the Objet printer systems. The reseller was looking for a faster more effective post processing product and collaborated with Quill in designing and producing an innovative and robust engineering solution.

Quill has more than 30 years experience in providing engineering and chemical engineering solutions across the globe for blue chip customers and saw this new challenge as a rather exciting opportunity to serve new and emerging markets. By early 2012 the first Quill Vogue Wash Stations were rolling off the production line and being supplied into industries which include aerospace, defence, automotive, electronic and medical to name but a few.

The majority of 3D printers and their consumables are high value items, however in many cases until the model has been through post processing it cannot be used or evaluated fully.

Historically, the range of post processing systems was limited, with options ranging from homemade devices of hosepipes over kitchen sinks to more commercial but often slower and less user friendly machines. By listening and learning from customers feedback, Quill developed the Quill Vogue Wash Station to be a fast, effective, quiet yet robust answer to 3D designer’s post processing problems.

Many of Quill’s customers have spoken of their frustration at not being able to use their printed parts straight away and at the hours and sometimes days they have to spend in cleaning acrylic support material from their models in order to be able to use them. In today’s world that is simply not good enough, customers want to be able to use their printed parts virtually instantly and that is where the Quill Vogue comes in, slashing cleaning times from days and hours to minutes thereby saving customer’s time, money and labour.

The Vogue has been designed to be fast, easy to use, robust in build quality yet quiet in operation. The first Quill Vogue is a static system which is plumbed into the mains water and drainage just like a washing machine. The second Quill Vogue is a self contained mobile version designed for facilities where there is no mains water or alternatively for when there is a need to wheel the system around site. Recently, this mobile version with its own onboard water supply proved to be the system of choice for the American Military at their new design facility.

So all this sounds great as long as you have an Stratasys/Objet printer system right? Wrong. Due to customer demand Quill are currently manufacturing a Quill Vogue Wash Station which uses hot water and hot air to clean wax support material from parts

Quill Vogue www.quillvogue.com

printed in the 3D Systems Projet printer. This hot, patent-appliedfor Vogue system is as clever as its cold patented counterpart, and has again slashed post processing times allowing customers to use their parts within minutes rather than hours or days thereby saving time, money and labour. Hot water melts the wax support material from the printed part. Vogues heated air is then used to gently blow away any remaining wax globules. Interest in this machine has been high and the first machines are due to be delivered into customers late February.

But why stop there? Quills most recent development is the patent applied for Quill Vogue Soak Box designed for customers with FDM printed parts. The Soak Box soon to be released to the main market allows the customer to control the temperature, the type of solution and the amount of agitation the printed part receives, there is even an ultrasonic option which allows the customer to switch on or off or change the frequency of the ultrasonic waves as they see fit. The Soak Box can be made to almost any dimension the customer wishes and as Quill manufacture the system from beginning to end any bespoke customer modifications can easily be accommodated.

So that’s acrylic, wax and FDM support material that can be removed using the Quill Vogue range of systems...so what’s next?

3D printing technology is developing at a rapid rate and the Quill Vogue range of post processing solutions will continue to evolve and grow alongside your exciting industry, meeting 3D printer users needs with simple design and intelligent engineering.

7

On the Wings of

an Angel

8

tct [22:1]

[DSM Somos]

In the heart of London, Covent Garden stands as a long-time centre of commerce for this thriving metropolis. While the products being sold in the area are ever evolving, so are the many shop windows.

When Oakley — recognised as one of the most coveted brands in performance technology and fashion — decided to refresh the look of their Covent Garden flagship store, they contacted the design team of Tony Kern and Hans Moritz to create a piece for their shop that would “deliver the unexpected.”

Kern and Mortiz did just that — in the form of an angel — the Oakley Angel.

i

DSM Functional Materials | Somos Materials Group www.dsm.com

T

he design consisted of a twelve-foot-tall angel with a twenty-five-foot wingspan, however the challenge remained on how to best construct the sculpture. Oakley, headquartered in Orange County, California, turned to local rapid manufacturing experts Dinsmore and Associates, Inc. to help them create a show-stopping piece of art.

The design contains many separate pieces with intricate details and it needed to be completed quickly, so Jay Dinsmore, President and CEO of Dinsmore and Associates, Inc., suggested using stereolithography as the main method for production.

Stereolithography would provide the speed and precision for the project, while pairing the technology with the right material would give it the strength and longevity it required.

Dinsmore recommended DSM’s Somos ProtoGen 18420 as the material for the job. With its high heat deflection, low moisture absorption and stability over time, Somos ProtoGen 18420 creates parts that can last for years.

“We determined early on that the only way to make this design work was to use stereolithography. After many years of working with Somos materials by DSM, we are extremely pleased with the high performance, high quality materials they deliver,” said Dinsmore. “This was the only product out there that could handle this project.”

Seventy per cent of the sculpture was created using Somos ProtoGen 18420. Parts were made on stereolithography machines, cleaned and painted to resemble metal. The remaining thirty percent of parts were made with other technologies, including carbon fibre for the wings. All of the pieces were first assembled in California, broken down and then re-assembled in London.

The Oakley Angel greeted visitors at the grand re-opening of the Covent Garden O Store in April 2011. After three years of watching over the store from above, the fifteen hundred pound angel still keeps its shine and remains a popular attraction.

“The Oakley Angel has brought a lot of foot traffic through our doors resulting in increased sales of 20-30 per cent,” said Gareth Potter, Manager of the Covent Garden Oakley Store. “We couldn’t be happier with the success of this project and look forward to many more.”

9

[Grimm Column]

GOOD ENOUGH

Insight to 3D Printing’s Past and Future WORDS | TODD GRIMM, PRESIDENT, T. A. GRIMM ASSOCIATES

a About the author: Todd Grimm is tive addi stalwart of the manufacturing industry, having held positions across sales and s marketing in some of the industrie the ntly curre is Todd es. nam biggest AM Industry Advisor with the AMUG. You can contact him on tgrimm@tagrimm.com

I have discovered that my 3D printing reality has been directed by the same forces that guide established players in any market. My reality was based on the premise that advancement and improvement is the only way to succeed. What I have learned is that growth is also spurred by lesser solutions that open previously underserved market segments. The catalyst for this discovery is a book by Clayton Christensen titled “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” This interesting read opened my eyes to the concept of ‘good enough’.

C

hristensen’s good-enough insight explains how low-cost desktop 3D printers have taken hold and provides insight to their potential. Yet, good enough must have a payoff and a purpose. It must address a need, want or desire, otherwise there would be no incentive to accept a less capable offering.

Looking into the future, their concept predicts growth on all fronts with a convergence that can nibble away at the markets for the better-than-good-enough products.

Sustain or Disrupt The core concept of “The Innovator’s Dilemma” is that there are two types of innovation: sustaining and disruptive. The former is the path for incumbents’ growth, and the latter is the path for new entrants to a market. In 3D printing, the incumbents are companies like 3D Systems, EOS and Stratasys. The entrants are companies like MakerBot, Ultimaker and Formlabs.

Sustaining innovation is about making better products that better serve existing, attractive market segments. Attractive means that the market opportunity is large, quantifiable and lucrative.

Disruptive innovation addresses simpler, cheaper or more convenient solutions for a new or unattractive market segment.

The new market segment is tiny or non-existent, and therefore cannot be depended on to produce results. The unattractive segment often consumes the production capacity of an incumbent while producing marginal profits.

Because of financial forces, the incumbents allow the entrants to provide a good-enough solution. They don’t even bother competing with them, which gives the entrants a foothold in the industry. According to the book, an entrant that battles incumbents in the known market usually fails. But the entrant that enters with a disruptive innovation is positioned to win; at least until the cycle repeats.

3D Printing & the Dilemma Looking back, I can clearly see that the innovator’s dilemma played out across the 3D printing industry. For printers, it is obvious: RepRap introduced a kit for the maker market. Sure it was far from being competitive with a Stratasys Dimension. Yet it was good enough in light of the advantage of being able to afford one for personal use. It made 3D printing cheaper and more convenient. When I weighed the low-cost options against the standards I held for good solutions, RepRap and the dozens of others that followed in its wake did not make sense. But this was because I was thinking as a user in the established market; a user that wants more than what is currently available to advance prototyping and manufacturing capabilities.

With so many different technologies, each with its own set of advantages, the dilemma is and will continue to play out in other platforms beyond plastic extrusion. We are already seeing it for DLP and stereolithography printers.

In the future, it will also transpire for laser sintering, direct metals 3D Systems and material jetting and material binding.

Continued on p13

EOS STRATASYS

ULTIMAKER

FORMLABS

MAKERBOT

11

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[Grimm Column]

Continued from p11

The new, yet-to-be-defined markets with marginal profits were in the personal realm, not the corporate dominion. As an artist, craftsperson, hobbyist or gadget enthusiast, the low-cost offerings made 3D printing convenient and accessible. This trumped demands for tight tolerances, predictable performance and advanced materials. These low-cost products were simply good enough to serve the needs of those that previously were denied the solution.

Another new market segment was the individuals in a corporate setting. I was a bit surprised by the adoption of what I viewed to be inferior products. But the dilemma proved true for the engineer’s desk. Having direct access and ownership of a 3D printer proved more alluring than meeting the usual specifications for precision and performance. The low-cost option doesn’t replace the demand for more capable printers. Instead, it satisfies previously underserved demands for a self-serve, print-whenever-Iwant operational mode.

Looking a bit deeper, it is also clear that the dilemma has been proven out in materials, software and services.

Netfabb didn’t take on Materialise in software. It made a name for itself with basic tools for free. Third-party material suppliers took on the incumbents with lower prices. And Shapeways was born as a service bureau for consumers, a lowprofit-margin segment that industrial service bureaux were not structured to serve profitably.

Why Let it Happen?

It is not fair to blame the incumbents for allowing entrants to take hold. According to the book, their success traps them into the dilemma. Success means that the business is built to serve the established market and is ill-prepared to do the same for the new market. Success is measured in profitability. Investors want betterthan-the past returns, which means investing in a future that addresses sizable, quantifiable markets with good profit potential.

There simply is no incentive for a corporation, or all the individuals it employees, to throw its resources at a speculative market with less profit-per-sale.

Yet, Christensen and Michael Raynor have recommendations for the incumbents in the follow-on book “The Innovator’s Solution.” Chief among them is to set up new businesses built to thrive on lower profits and serve a less demanding customer. This move also frees the enterprise from investors’’ performance expectations. If these gents are right, Stratasys made a wise move by making MakerBot an independent subsidiary, and 3D Systems may be forced to divest or spin-off its consumer oriented interests.

To the overachievers and perfectionist of the world, the concept of good enough may seem laughable. Thankfully, my eyes are now open to the reality that good enough is a powerful market force and a strategy for success. I now view “inferior” products through the filter of new markets.

PERFORMANCE

Crossover is Coming According to the book, there is another dimension to the innovator’s dilemma that will influence 3D printing’s future.

There will come a time when the entrants’ pace of technology change crosses the threshold of the wants and needs of the established market.

Over time, incumbents and entrants will continue to advance their technologies to grow and improve profits. At some point in time, the incumbents will deliver more than their customer bases can use. Basically, capability overshoots demand. Meanwhile, the entrants advance to the point that they are able to satisfy the demands of this established market. Although less capable, the entrants now have an attractive proposition that does everything that a user wants.

The illustration reflects an average for the good-enough line for product performance. So, as the previously disruptive innovation pursues its own sustainable growth, it will continually nibble away at the low end of the established market. Because the low end is not attractive to the incumbents, they often do not put up a fight. This growth fuels advancement that allows them to cross the threshold of established market demands.

Should this disruption model prove true for 3D printing, which it most likely will, Formlabs and the like will shift from niche players to formidable forces. But don’t count out the likes of 3D Systems and Stratasys. There are plenty of up-market opportunities where they become the entrant to an established market. Although the driving force to pursue manufacturing is market potential — there is a lot more money in manufacturing when compared to prototyping — the book predicts that production applications will be the key to continued success. To make that happen, these companies need to find the underserved niches where today’s 3D printing capabilities are good enough when contrasted against established manufacturing technologies.

Source “The Innovator’s Dilemma” Light blue — Sustaining innovation Orange —Disruptive innovation Dark blue — ‘Good enough’, established market

TIME 13

[Joris Column]

3D printing

the poor WORDS | JORIS PEELS

I

know what you’re thinking. Joris, why would we 3D print poor people? We have enough of them already. A lot of people have supposed that for the bottom of the pyramid, the 4,000,000,000 people who live on less than $2.50 a day, 3D printing may prove to be a panacea. 3D printers would provide them with all they would need. The thinking goes that “give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day”, give him a 3D printer and he’ll make what he needs, forever. I want to believe in this, I really do. But, I have my doubts.

Moving I was eight when we moved to Kenya. The red earth permeated all. Unwashable it seeped and soaked into all clothing giving shoes, shorts and socks a crimson brown or pink hue. I never thought there would be so many clouds. I never knew there to be so many stars. There were weekly trips to spot hyenas, gazelle and zebras.

Giraffes striding elegantly, left two legs forward, right two legs forward. A steadfast parade. Gnus’ confusedly swarming, a stink of a million locker rooms, braying, turning about in panicky bedlam. The Great Rift Valley opening before us, a gorgeous gouge into the earth.

The sky above somehow bigger, more open and wider than I could ever have imagined it to be. Sunsets comprised of all the reds. More reds than you thought could ever exist. Male lions languidly yawning while females hunted. A hippo closing the distance between her young and my friend with improbable speed, her mouth snapping shut louder than the biggest book in the world, closing. Flamingos improbably perched in otherworldly pink. A hummingbird hovering helicoper-like in front of the fruit trees in our yard.

Kenya I constantly ate passion fruit, fried chicken encased in yesterdays newspapers and explored a yard bigger than we thought a yard could be.

Mongooses and a slum abutted our far too large home. More bars on the windows than a Verdi opera. The gardener burned our trash at the bottom of our yard, light bulbs popping

indolently in the early evening while he was unmoved by my plea that burning batteries was not a sound idea. I cycled to my friend’s house a few miles away as a Dutch kid is wont to do.

Impervious to my Mother’s check up phone calls to see if I had arrived. Shots rang out in the night. A colleague of my father once got picked up and tortured by the police because they did not believe that a Kenyan guy unconnected to the government could drive a Mercedes. Another colleague murdered a co-worker and once he had served his sentence asked my dad for his job back.

At one point I went to visit my father’s work, servers encased in a cold cloud, humming diligently behind glass doors. We walked, my hand in his, along the main thoroughfare in Nairobi. A man across the street from us ran, having stolen something. A guard chased him with a wooden club. As he passed another store another guard joined the chase. A third followed. Perhaps a fourth, I can’t be sure. The three (or maybe four) of them started beating him with the clubs as my father veered off into an alley with me. Once our silent alarm went off. We were in the living room sitting with guests. Around 40 men scaled our bougainvillea clad walls carrying machetes and clubs adorned with nails. They had parked two lorries next to our walls and with ladders ascended the 3m obstacle keeping us from the outside world. Our parents stayed calm and aloof downplaying the incident but I couldn’t escape the thought that “if the Group4 alarm people sent 40 guys with machetes and spiked clubs, what are the robbers like, exactly.” When the Pope came the government was so embarrassed about the beggars that they took them all away in trucks depositing them 100 kilometers from Nairobi.

The thinking was that by the time they had, crippled selves, hobbled or walked back, the TV cameras and Pope would be gone.

Many of my classmates had parents who worked in aid and development. It seemed like a fun gig, Landcruiser in hand saving the world, home by 3. Even though I was young their failures didn’t escape me. We saw fields of parked and unused tractors, fallow for lack of

About the author: Joris Peels is a business development, strategy, product development and marketing consultant to the 3D printing indu stry you can read his blog at http://voxelfab.com/blog/, follow him on Twitter @voxelfab or email him joris@voxelfab.com

maintenance. “And then we told them to plant on all of the fields, not using terrace farming but using our methods, but it turns out that if there is a rainstorm the fields all wash away, and this is why the people have always had terraces, who knew?”

Beggars The beggars. Dented, bent and folded into improbable shapes sat crushed next to the roads.

I’d love to tell you that this affected me, melted my heart and turned into to pure love. But, these kids, many of whom were either lepers or had their bones broken into implausible shapes by gangs in order to provide for more revenue were only an initial shock to me.

A Dutch kid wandering out of the InterContinental into his new country together with his family confronted by scattered heaps was indeed jolted. But, like the yellow cabs of New York they melted into the scenery. Apart from those few initial KLM stewardess-infused months in Kenya. I have no memory of the beggars. They simply became a part of the scenery. Like cherry trees in Japan, canals in Amsterdam, you don’t notice them after a while.

Poverty Poverty, the slums, the poor conditions just become an everyday part of reality. And while we did visit the slums and many poor peoples homes, it just didn’t hit home to me. Poverty was something that happened to other people.

Continued on p17

15

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[Joris Column] Continued from p15

Until we visited Lucy’s house. The visit to Lucy’s house is probably the most important thing to ever happen to me. It has occupied almost all of my thoughts since then. It is the reason why I am in this industry. So Lucy was our maid and was, on all accounts, paid well.

She didn’t, like many, have seasonal employment but had a year round job with my parents. She was kind, nice and made an amazing lemon cake using the lemons that grew next to our kitchen, from the trees hummingbirds used to hang around.

I knew about poverty but my assumption was that she’d be ahead of most. I knew that people in Kenya were poor but assumed that people such as Lucy were doing OK. We went to her house, a double room below a corrugated iron roof. She did have a job but at 39 supported around 30 members of her family with that job.

Is your life one moment? Because mine is.

I only think of this moment. I only think of a solution to this problem. If I’m on an airplane with nothing to do, I think of this. If I’m biking somewhere, I think of this. If I’m in a cab, I think of this. If I’m in my bed at night I think of this. Any time my mind is not engaged with the here and now I think of this one thing: the visit to Lucy’s house and a solution to her and many other people’s problems.

Lucy’s House So we walk in to her house. And there is a KLM calendar on her wall. Our old KLM calendar. It’s one of those typical airline calendar jobs set to a particular month “Kyoto at sunset” or whatever. And immediately, I think what the likelihood is of Lucy visiting Kyoto. And even in my childhood naïveté I could conclude that this would be zero. Air travel for me was commonplace, it is how you visited grandma and I did at least four flights a year. But, I intuited that for her to have the disposable income to visit Kyoto would be something she would be unable to accomplish in her lifetime.

This is something I may be able to accept due to temporary economic differences. But, a much more horrifying conclusion was that her children would not be able to do so either. As I walk into her house I realise that the chances are slim to none that her kids will attend the right schools, be able to accumulate the capital, be able to start businesses or at all be in a position to go to Kyoto. Flying to Kyoto is something that for me would be well within the realm of the possible, but for them would not be possible.

Table Runner The second main decorative item in her home would be even more shattering to me.

Across her sparsely furnished mud walled dining room/kitchen/living room/bedroom she in addition to the KLM calendar had a table runner. This was a laminated paper table runner my mom got at the Blokker. It had an Easter themed pattern on it and once it had been covered in egg stains and coffee rings we crumpled it up put it in the trash. Lucy had smoothed it out as much as was possible and hung it across her living room as the main decorative item in her home. Recognising this thing somehow disassembled me, broke me into a thousand pieces, and ever since I’ve been seeking to resemble myself.

My life since that moment has been concerned with trying to discern how to equalise capital allocation, how to make assets available to all and how to reuse things in a logical way.

I’ve never really told anyone this. I never wanted to be the idealistic sap, the wanton dreamer. But, I’ve also never really spent a moment’s thought on a subject other than this. Solving this equation always seemed to be something that would be beyond my reach. It seemed to be a hobby in desperate disparate thought, considering an unanswerable problem. An amateur mulling Fermat or a casual pianist plunking away at Rachmaninoff. A doodling of the mind.

I hate 3D printing I hate 3D printing. Despise it. Loathe it.

Abhor it. Here I am, just idly going about my life. This abstract distraction mulling, mixing and bouncing in my head. A milkshake of possibility. A smoothie of unadulterated promise. An impossible problem that permeates my waking hours. It’s a thing to consider: what could equalise the world? What would let anyone make anything they wanted? What could give people access to the technologies that they needed? What could let people reuse and recycle while building what they required? A thought experiment sloshing around in my brain. But, crucially just this, a thought experiment without any possible answer. And then I happen upon it, 3D printing. For me, a paper by Hod Lipson.

F***, F***, F***. Is my initial response. I no longer have a choice, because this is what I will need to spend my life on.

It all clicks in the ensuing months. Super obvious really. Simple and self-evident in retrospect. There are a lot of problems affecting the Bottom of the Pyramid: lack of access to markets, higher taxation of their products, lack of capital, lack of machines, lack of information, lack of skills, remoteness, higher costs of imputs etc. So how to provide a solution for most of those?

SoWa Container Super obvious of course. Lease them two shipping containers, SoWa containers (SolarWater) One with a reverse osmosis water plant in it powered by solar panels so they can make their own electricity and water. Another filled with instructions and machinery to make whatever they needed to make. A container filled with a lathe, 3 axis CNC, 3D printer, filament maker etc. That would also enable them to use these machines to make more machines that could make almost all they needed.

Lower costs for them, less labour spent gathering or buying wood, charcoal, batteries and kerosine. Lower environmental cost and health benefits would provide these people who because they are off the grid pay more for water and energy with something to save money and improve their lives. And at its core, a 3D printer, would enable them to make many of the goods they would need to ameliorate their lives.

A fishhook slung into my brain. Caught, I was unable to escape this technology and the ramifications it has. But, there are downsides as well. A creeping worry that keeps me up at night.

Downsides If we look at societies such as South Korea, Japan, HK, Singapore and post-WWII Europe that have gone from destruction to prosperity they have all meandered up the tech tree.

Grandad was a factory labourer making plastic flowers, Dad was a maintenance engineer maintaining a semi-automated factory making radios and the granddaughter was a designer designing cell phones. Stable employment and investments in education increase the skill set, GDP, stability and value of an economy over time. Low paid peoples work their way up through higher skilled, higher quality manufacturing that penetrates more export markets as they develop their own businesses.

This lets the middle class emerge and brings about political stability and (in some cases) democracy. But, what of a world where everything would be manufactured locally? If we use 3D printing to make everything in our own homes and cities, what opportunities would be left for those not yet wealthy? What we risk is a permanent separation between the rich and the poor with us making all of our own things here while not giving the poor an opportunity to make anything. They would simply never be able to catch up because in addition to tariffs, distance, lack of infrastructure and other issues these peoples will simply not be given the opportunity to sell to us. And even though they may have their own 3D printers these will be less capable than the machines on offer in the “North.” So they may never catch up. So even though theoretically the poor could make many of the things they need with 3D printers, the development of 3D printers may make them permanently poor. I don’t have an answer or way out of this conundrum and would be very appreciative if any reader could give me any insight into it.

17

HIGH TECH INDUSTRIES

AEROSPACE

Metal 3D Printing High End AM for High End Applications

ORTHOPEDICS

DENTAL Jonas Van Vaerenbergh, LayerWise CEO 44,000 sq ft

www.layerwise.com

+32 16 94 64 00

info@layerwise.com NEW HEADQUARTERS

WORLDWIDE SUBSIDIARIES Cologne , DE

Eindhoven, NL

Connecticut, US

Leuven, BE

[AMUG Preview]

AMUG 2014: 100 Presentations, 4½ days,

1 opportunity C

ontent. Focus. Experience. Expertise. Enthusiasm. Value.

These are just some of the factors you should consider if you’re looking to get out and about to some AM and 3D printing events this year. There’s more choice than ever, and with the hyperbole and… well, let’s just stick with hyperbole of some of the new events, it’s easy to get blinded to the real value (or lack thereof ) you may be letting yourself in for.

If you’re serious about AM, AMUG is the conference for you. With over 100 presentations over the course of four-and-ahalf days, you’re bound to learn something. Equal to the opportunities unleashed by the presentations is the networking, which is simply unparalleled. Everyone at the AMUG is a user of additive manufacturing equipment, which means that every conversation you have over lunch or during one of the many organised events is an opportunity to share and learn with your peers. At all opportunities you will be sustained by a food and drink spread that has to be seen to be believed — and all for the smallest on-site expenses report you’ll ever file.

See the full conference agenda via: http://mytct.co/amug-agenda-2014 And don’t for a minute think you’ll be sat in silence in a conference hall all day. The activities start on Saturday the 5th of April and run through to Thursday the 10th and include something different every day. Past events have included a night at a theme park (closed to the public, open to the AMUG!), a trip to the Jacksonville Jaguars and more — I have no idea what this year will bring, and nor does anyone outside of the organising committee, but I am confident it will be worth the trip alone.

The hands-on training and workshops provide tangible immediate benefits to the trip and allow you to implement what you learn straight away. 2014 will include the Additive Manufacturing Certificate Program as well as Basic and Advanced training from Materialise. If you’re already confident to show off your applications and finishing skills, the Technical

It’s time to start looking at you diaries for April again as the AMUG Conference starts to gear up to it’s 26th outing, this time in Tucson Arizona. What sets this veteran event apart from the razzamatazz of the new school of ‘3D printing’ events?

Competition is one of the annual highlights you should look into. AM users can submit an ‘Advanced Concepts’ entry or ‘Advanced Finishing’ entry, each used as a platform to demonstrate your superior skills to the community. Entries are available to be viewed throughout the AMUGexpo and will be judged by five DINOs — members of the community that have been recognised for the experience in a given technology.

Keynote speakers for this years event include Dr. Mike North (founder and chair of Reallocate and founder of North Design Labs), Jason Lopes (Legacy Effect, back by popular demand!) and Todd Grimm (T. A. Grimm & Associates and columnist for TCT).

For more information on registration, conference agenda, the AMUGexpo, travel, accommodation and more, visit http://www.additivemanufacturingusersgroup.com/

i

Additive Manufacturing Users Group www.am-ug.com

19

[ExOne]

B

ExOne

proves its mettle as Binder Jetting

3D printing

CHAMPION i

The ExOne Company www.exone.com

ExOne is considered a world leader in metal additive manufacturing and it’s the company’s extensive expertise in metallurgy and material development that ensure its success. Rose Brooke spoke to Chief Technology Officer Rick Lucas about the drivers behind new material development and why customers should choose binder jetting over laser techniques.

20

tct [22:1]

inder jetting champion of the 3D printing sector and leader in metal additive manufacturing solutions ExOne was the obvious choice for a feature on what drives new material development in this increasingly crucial arena.

TCT Magazine spoke to Chief Technology Officer of the NASDAQ-listed company Rick Lucas, an expert in nextgeneration material development and member of America Makes, about the drivers behind new materials and instances where they have been put to excellent use, saving customers time and money without compromising on quality.

“When it comes to case studies,” Lucas said, “stainless steel infiltrated with bronze is the best candidate. We print a stainless steel and what you end up with is about 60 per cent powder packing in the green state, and what we do is centre that with the metal and infiltrate with a bronze, then you get a near-full density part that is durable.”

Lucas went on to explain matrix materials, where the material is composed of at least two parts - one being metal.

“This means the skeleton is made up of one material and we incorporate a lower melting metal into it to fill up the porosity.

Full density materials present us with the most opportunities, so single alloy or alloys that are familiar to industry, but getting those alloys to full density from, for example, a nickel alloy like Inconel 625 is something we’ve been working on.

“Our goal is to print a part at full density. Customers want full density products and what’s driving that is the development of materials people are familiar with.”

“Leading the industry” ExOne’s extensive research and development looks into both new materials and more established compounds.

“On the R&D side we have been working on new materials that can form full density parts. Historically the major materials we’ve made are matrix materials, like 430 stainless steel infiltrated with bronze. Our customers are pushing us towards full density alloys people are accustomed to using in specific applications,” Lucas said.

“ExOne is leading the industry when it comes to 3D printing binder jetting techniques, which is essentially gluing powders together with a binder, it’s really powder metallurgy.

Instead of compacting it, we’re binding it and so in terms of that particular technology, ExOne is the world leader by far. We’re really the only company that does binder jetting that I’m aware of, other than universities and other experimental folks.”

Lucas believes this 3D printing technique is truly better than other methods of fusing metal powders and indeed additive manufacturing in general. He stated - while reiterating that his expertise is with tech, not marketing - that binder jetting offers the best total value to the customer across the widest range of industries with the broadest range of materials.

“There’s processes out there like powder injection moulding where they compact these powders with a binder and have a separate process to get the product to full density. What we’re saying is instead of sintering the powder as we print it, let’s just use a binder and glue it together really fast in really large pieces, so in terms of speed and size, this technique is the best technology for making large pieces within this timeframe.”

ExOne’s 420 stainless steel infiltrated with bronze has been put to numerous uses. Lucas raised the prosthetic hand case study as a good example of where 3D printing has made the same product more quickly and cheaply than using traditional methods.

[AM in Metals]

Cost and speed One of the main reasons the client approached ExOne was cost. They needed to produce these components faster and cheaper than conventional subtractive machining methods like casting, or something faster and cheaper than that. They were paying $250-$1,500 “depending on the complexity” and on average, it would take a couple of months to get the part.

“You are no longer Lucas said: “We actually printed this in the 420 stainless limited” infiltrated with bronze and the cost to them was $25-$100, so Lucas basically ten-times savings and of course we were able to produce explained that these and ship them off in two-to-three weeks. this technology is “The speed at which you can make parts is obviously a major ideal for advantage to 3D printing technology.” numerous Another example Lucas used was mud pump rotors. In the industries but case study he gave, the customer was looking for a particularly manufacturing technology that could offer the necessary those where precision, along with faster production times and cost savings. speed is of great “These parts are used for down hole drilling equipment and importance. they were paying anything from $400-$500 per unit. They were Additionally, the usual made in China with long lead times and they didn’t have suspects of aerospace, significant wear and basically they wore out really quickly. So, we medical, oil and gas, and of began printing a matrix material that can work very effectively in course industrial are sectors ExOne’s clients work within, as well erosion-type applications, so we used as mining and government initiatives which a stainless steel bronze matrix and typically look for “fast turnaround and quick The speed at which charged then $75-$100 per unit. So delivery”. again, about four or five-times savings you can make parts is It can be used in any industry, he said. “Really over what they were paying originally in terms of what 3D printing does for you, any obviously a major and we were able to ship them in complex shape you can draw in digital space, you advantage to 3D around 15-20 days getting three or are no longer limited when you think ‘how do I printing technology. four times the wear resistance.” make this’?”

Lucas explained that being able to Lucas continued: “Look at some of the laser offer customers these 3D printing solutions makes it a very easy techniques like EBM and there’s been a lot of materials being decision for the client, particularly with matrix materials that introduced there. Well, we’ve been working on - I don’t know the have certain properties making the material cheaper and quick to exact number - but it’s greater than 15 alloys and materials for print, as well as offering excellent performance in certain binder jetting and it really isn’t limited. That’s the beautiful thing environments. about it. And it’s not just metals, it’s ceramics and other materials “Our goal as a company with the binder jetting technology is a laser would struggle with. On the metals side, we’re just using to increase the number of materials available to out customers, conventional metallurgy to densify those materials - it’s really a particularly with materials they are familiar with. So in terms of technology that doesn’t limit us in any way. different metals, stainless steels 316 and 174, Inconel 625 and “We have high expectations this year in terms of a large 718, titanium, CP titanium and there’s a number of tool steels, number of materials to be released to the market. Publically we’ve M2, E2, E13 - these are all things that would be familiar to stated we wish to release a new class of materials every six months, people making parts. We provide those materials at full density but obviously we’re going to try and do even better than that.” and configurations they want so in terms of parts that are ExOne is nine years old and in that time has gathered generally complex or need fast lead times, this technology is very expertise and experience by the armful, using this group well suited.” Lucas stated. knowledge to problem solve and bring about new advancements in “There’s a number of techniques out there of powder material developments and what its machines are capable of doing. metallurgy,” he continued. “In terms of post-processing and “We use that knowledge to speed up that part of the getting parts to full density, what we do is instead of compacting process,” Lucas said. that initial preform, we actually print it.

“We really believe if you’re making large parts inexpensively, “What’s nice about this is a lot of the knowledge base that this is the way to go. The other technologies, even though you already exists out there in terms of processing powder materials is are getting full density parts, there’s so much residual stresses in well understood and so for us obviously we’ve been working on those materials that they still have to be put through thermal different binders and printers that can print other materials and treatment to get the densities they need, so the question is why this is actually the easy part for us. It’s a case of matching our even do that? Why melt the powder if you’re going to use these printing technology and techniques with conventional powder post-processes anyway? All you’re doing is adding cost. metallurgy and pulling those two together to create a much “I really think if you look in terms of total value to the better solution.” customer, the speed and size of making parts and the material options that you have with this technology, if you’re looking for one technology that applies across the largest number of industries it’s going to be binder jetting.”

“

“

21

[Arcam]

EBM — Electron Beam Melting (EBM), speciality of Swedish AM machine maker Arcam, is a pioneering process that tends to be somewhat overlooked in the mainstream Acetabular cup with SEM magnification coverage of ‘3D printing’. The company’s most recent addition to its line up — the Q20 — especially designed for the manufacturin rcam CEO Magnus René told TCT: “This is the third g and aerospace industries — has been develope generation of EBM machines from Arcam. The first was d by launched back in 2003, then the second in 2007 and we Arcam with the support of leading launched Q10 in March of this year which is a smaller version of manufacturers in the aerospace sector and the Q20. With the Q Series, it’s an entirely new E-Beam system. builds on the Q-series of Arcam machine It’s faster than the previous generation. This system is designed to s. be more of a manufacturing tool.”

That statement of intent towards production echoes the sentiments from the major laser-based metals melting technologies, which are all making moves towards making AM a true manufacturing technology.

Magnus explained that the machine is capable of increased productivity, a higher-resolution print and new software, Arcam LayerQam - a camera-based monitoring system to verify part quality by recording every layer as it is built.

This, Abed explained, is crucial for continuity and part verification, which is of particular importance in aerospace and medical applications. Many “closed” systems are therefore of no use to companies who need proof that every part is the right size and shape and so the Q20 could potentially convince many potential customers that this technology is the most efficient and accurate way of creating parts that meet the manufacturer’s requirements.

“We are really focused now,” he said, adding that more potential customers are likely to take an interest because the number of people “speaking the same language” when it comes to additive manufacturing has improved greatly compared to three years ago.

i

Arcam www.arcam.com

Jet engine hinge

A

Seeing the light, and the beam French AM specialists Poly-Shape were the first company to invest in the new Q20. “It’s fantastic to launch this big product at EuroMold and to have a first customer,” he said, adding, “We have a saying, he has not only seen the light, but also the beam.”

Poly-Shape MD Stéphane Abed explained that Poly-Shape is a young company, having launched in 2007, but already its reputation throughout Europe as specialists in SLM, laser technology and metal additive manufacturing and Arcam’s expertise has been of great interest to PolyShape for quite some time.

“Today our market is focused on dental and for five years now we’ve been working on products such as precise implants made of titanium. It’s an expensive material and this is one side of what we do. Another side is motorsport and aerospace, so F1 and parts for fighter jets — making parts that have to withstand extreme conditions.”

Arcam Q20

23

LayerWise:

erials at m w ne s, rie st du in w ne , es is em pr New WORDS | ROSE BROOKE

Rose Brooke spoke to LayerWise’s Peter Mercelis and Rob Snoeijs about the company’s accelerated growth, its new facility and its competitive edge in this fastpaced additive manufacturing world

T

he industrial additive manufacturing sector in Europe is continuing to grow, but the businesses that will thrive in what is becoming an increasingly crowded marketplace are the ones who know how to steer their growth and target the industries they work within.

Belgium-based LayerWise - the country’s first production centre to work exclusively with metal additive manufacturing - is making the most of its growth trajectory, recently relocating to new premises still within striking distance of the University of Leuven, with whom the organisation collaborates frequently. In addition, the business knows it cannot rely on the current growth trend in additive manufacturing alone to keep itself going - instead it must specialise.

TCT Magazine spoke to LayerWise’s Managing Director Peter Mercelis and Marketing Manager Rob Snoeijs about the company’s move to new premises, the industries the company works within and its new developments.

Snoeijs explained that right at the beginning, LayerWise only employed two or three people and was based at a facility dedicated to growing startups. That was fine in 2008 when the company started, but as the years passed and the number of people working for LayerWise grew and grew, the company was taking up half of this facility.

Evolving and improving “Our move to the new location has two important reasons,” said Mercelis. “One obvious reason is to increase the capacity of LayerWise and increase the number of printing machines, but another equally important reason is to further improve the quality of service to our clients. We now have the capability within this new building to evolve in terms of capacity and to further improve product quality, service and quality management systems.

“In our new premises, we not only have more space to grow our production division, but we are also installing the machines in controlled environments. While this may seem like overkill at first, it’s a fundamental choice to guarantee material integrity. As we are growing at such a fast pace, we almost double our capacity on a yearly basis - so we really needed more space.”

“Our old office was useful because it was literally next to the University of Leuven - LayerWise was spun out of this university - so it was very practical to be there, but it’s normal to move away given this growth,” Snoeijs said. “We have a lot going on 24

tct [22:1]

with the university with PhD students and engineers who graduate and work afterwards for LayerWise, which is one of the reasons why LayerWise’s new facility is in the Leuven area.”

Snoeijs explained that in the last year LayerWise has expanded its workforce by 20 people, which is a massive investment for a company that has barely had its fifth birthday. LayerWise gets many of its new recruits from the University of Leuven, at first just recruiting one or two a year, but with this number growing as the pace of additive manufacturing has picked up.

“Most of our people studied engineering, some of whom holding a PhD and some don’t have these backgrounds fulfilling technical roles especially with the 3D printing machines,” Snoeijs explained.

LayerWise relies on its additive manufacturing technology and made the decision early on to be both active as a technology developer and as a technology user, because it wished to deliver premium quality products and research in order to stretch the limits of metal 3D printing.

“Controlling our own production infrastructure gives us an important competitive advantage, we have the absolute flexibility to develop our own technology,” Mercelis said, adding that this side of their operation is tied into their close work with the University who are specialists in metallurgical development. “We are not limited by the off-the-shelf options in this marketplace for 3D printing,” he noted.

“We recognised that a lot of in-depth material and manufacturing research is instrumental in order to deliver and validate high-end series production,” Snoeijs added. “It takes less time to develop and process new materials when you have full control over the layered manufacturing technology.

Understanding the additive manufacturing process and validating what happens during the powder-to-solid transformation is key to the validation of additive manufactured parts. While additive manufacturing creates the part shape, LayerWise generates premium solid material.

[LayerWise]

“Additive manufacturing research is a division within LayerWise. The key driver of the success is that our developments are directly tested on real applications.

This makes our technology progress both very applicable and effective.”

High-precision manufacturing LayerWise’s precise and cutting-edge advances in additive manufacturing have forked into three major sectors; industry, medical and dental, with medical growing at the fastest pace. More recently, the company has added a fourth string to this bow in the form of high-tech mechatronics.

As a customer-driven company, LayerWise’s clients drive its innovation and application development, as it is the clients who ultimately choose to apply LayerWise’s technology for their additive manufacturing solutions. As such, LayerWise has always strived to serve its customers as an additive manufacturing partner.

“In the medical device industry we are involved in producing patient-specific implants and mass-produced medical implants for orthopaedics applications, facial surgery, orthodontics and so on,” Mercelis stated.

“Our dental business unit is really active in producing patient-specific dental implant prosthesis. Whereas many companies make crowns and bridges with 3D printers, we focus on implant-supported restorations involving accuracy better than 20 microns.

“In the industrial field, the application reach is very high.

Market feedback shows that we create customer value through the opportunities offered by freeform additive manufacturing as well as our co-engineering and project management approach.”

Building business in 2014 LayerWise knows it needs to be at the cutting edge to maintain the competitive advantage and it has identified areas in all its target markets where it can offer advanced manufacturing solutions, which is why the company is still working closely with researchers at the University of Leuven and other institutions to collaborate and maintain that technological edge.

Moreover, the company’s drive to expand and recruit its workforce is on-going, with this investment running in parallel with heavy investments across the pond.

“As all our business units have major potential in the US, we are establishing a subsidiary there right now and we’ve done two major trade shows there recently, including RAPID in Pittsburgh,” Snoeijs remarked.

Mercelis added that the US market is extremely important to LayerWise, with the company working with clients in the US for a number of years now. It therefore became apparent that LayerWise needed a permanent local presence there.

“We have established a full daughter company recently that will operate from Connecticut,” he revealed. “We have attracted highly-experienced professionals to lead the US business development and plan to add a local manufacturing unit at a later stage.”

i

LayerWise www.layerwise.com

New materials By developing the technology to manufacture parts for clients, LayerWise understands the manufacturing process, giving the company the capacity to test new materials and expand its capabilities. In recent years LayerWise has introduced tantalum and tungsten materials into its portfolio, as well as numerous high temperature alloys that, once introduced, can open up new submarkets for LayerWise, keeping the organisation ahead of the curve.

Snoeijs explained that LayerWise’s material and technology development includes upping the capabilities of the hardware to build finer details such as thinner walls and more accurate features.

“With thinner freeform walls, for example, and through function integration, you get more compact and reliable monolithic mechanical parts delivering higher performance and lower weight,” Snoeijs explained.

But while performance gains delivered by additive manufacturing are key to LayerWise’s successes, the true enabler, Mercelis said, is the company’s focus on quality control and process validation.

“Material quality comes first,” he stated. “3D printing is a hype and in the midst of the enthusiasm, it’s easy to forget how critical and difficult metal additive manufacturing processes really are.

“That is also why we partner with clients, because we know that good additive manufacturing applications require a good understanding of the technology, both by ourselves and our clients.”

LayerWise, in a nutshell, offers high-end additive manufacturing for high-end applications and it continues to raise the bar one layer of a time.

With subsidiaries in the Netherlands, Germany and now the US, and with an expansion trajectory that has taken it from 25 staff to more than 50 in the space of one year, LayerWise almost seems untouchable, but it knows that it has to remember its roots at the University of Leuven and with academia if it wants to remain in such a position.

“R&D is in our genes and partnering with the University is therefore both very natural and synergetic. It’s one of our key strengths,” Snoeijs concluded.

25

Selective Laser Melting for Precision Metal Parts SLM SOLUTIONS produces high quality, accurate homogenous metal components directly from 3D CAD data in a wide variety of metal powders. SLM Solutions offers a range of systems to suit a wide spectrum of metal part applications.

SLM 125 HL

The new compact Selective Laser Melting System 125 HL produces highly complex metal components using fine metal powders from 3D CAD-data files. This extremely economical system is suitable for R&D environments as well as for small lot production areas.

SLM 250 HL

The SLM 250HL is a Fibre Laser driven Generative Process which produces homogeneous metal components with a density of up to 99.9% using powder base materials.

SLM 280 HL

The generative Selective Laser Melting System 280 HL provides a build chamber of 280 x 280 x 350 mm and was the first in the market place to utilise a double laser beam to further increase the quality and accuracy of the components. This will improve not only the laser beam profile but also the quality factor of components.

SLM 500 HL The SLM 500 HL provides a build chamber of 500 x 280 x 325 cm and also utilises the double beam technology unique to SLM Solutions. Each of the two fibre lasers (400 +1000W) operate simultaneously on the powder bed using a 3D scanning unit. Included in the SLM 500 HL is the shell-core-imaging process with two different beam profiles. These profiles may be used independently, but also in parallel and simultaneously in the process, this significantly increases productivity.

To find out more about how the SLM Solutions systems, please contact the UK distributor, Laser Lines Ltd.

Beaumont Close | Banbury |Oxon OX16 1TH | UK Tel: +44 (0)1295 672500 | www.laserlines.co.uk

[LPW]

Intelligence in

METALS i

LPW Technology www.lpwtechnology.com

The recent increase in interest in metals-based AM as means of making end-use parts has once again focused the industry towards ensuring the processes are production ready. As the core technologies stabilise and gain wider acceptance, machine makers can focus on the ancillary equipment and processes needed to see AM on the shop floor. In a vast majority of other production technologies machine makers make machines, and materials suppliers supply materials — companies like LPW are starting to make the same true for AM.

T

he last 24-36 months has, as well we know by now, seen an explosion in coverage of ‘3D printing’, a term used to describe everything from FDM and its clones through to selective laser melting. For industrial users, the ability to produce end use parts through additive means has long held a fascination, though has been regarded by many as an exciting future prospect rather than a real alternative to traditional means.

In part this has been because of the rapid development of the processes with major changes to the laser or electron beam systems, process chamber control, ancillaries and software — and part of this has been down to the structure of the AM ecosystem.

A company looking at a new CNC machine is likely to buy the machine from company A, the controller from company B, the servicing from companies C and D, and materials from companies E, F, G and H. In the AM ecosystem, it has been expected that the entire needs of the client can be met by company A, the machine supplier.

Whether the machine manufacturer can actually fulfil all of these roles is a moot point, because single-supplier chains don’t work (or are not allowed to work) in the real world — especially once you start getting into production. It is natural therefore that users of AM machines will start to look for third party organisations to offer service contracts, control software and materials.

And here’s the rub; because metals AM is still so niche, the expertise required for service, maintenance and materials is largely siloed within the machine suppliers themselves, meaning that third parties are hard to come by.

In the materials sector, this manifests itself through non-AM focussed materials suppliers — that mostly already sell powdered metals for other industries —deciding to target the AM user community. If you want metal powder to process in your machine, there are tens of suppliers in whichever country you are based that will sell them to you. The problem is that these materials may or may not be validated for AM and are highly unlikely to be validated for the specific parameters you are running on your specific machine for that specific part.

For other processes that use metal powders (MIM, HIP) the size and shape distribution of the powder may be less of an issue than for AM, and it’s certainly true that not all powders are made equal. The properties required for accurate, reliable and repeatable processing in an AM system require bespoke production, sieving, measurement and handling — something that LPW are at the forefront of.

Continued on p29

27

[LPW] BELOW: The Freeman FT4 powder rheometer in action

ABOVE: LPW’s team outside the Cheshire HQ

Continued from p27

Rising to the challenge The demand for a supplier of metal powders that understands not only powder metallurgy, but also AM in all guises has driven Cheshire, UK-based LPW to have developed a full range of AMspecific materials defined by how powders are required to behave for Selective Laser Melting (SLM), Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) and Electron Beam Melting (EBM). The powders are optimised in terms of chemistry and sizing specific to a machine type or application in conjunction with the end user. Core powders are supplied from stock, but rather than simply reselling, the stock powders are the first step in readying the material for use in AM. TCT was able to visit LPW’s headquarters near Warrington — where the company has been based since February 2012 — to see first hand how the company achieves its aims.

Quality is ensured by strictly adhering to ISO 9001 and AS 9120 certified procedures. All powder is supplied with a certificate of conformance that contains test data for chemistry and sizing, with chemical data generated at an independent ISO 17025 certified laboratory. In addition to certificates of conformance, LPW has assembled a comprehensive range of equipment to size, blend, package and characterise its powders in-house, offering enhanced testing reports. Internal characterisation includes rheology, hall flow, angle of repose, tap density, apparent density, scanning electron microscopy including EDX, entrapped porosity by scanning electron, optical microscopy, or helium pycnometry, laser size diffraction, sieve analysis, chemical analysis and moisture determination by thermogravitational analysis.

Combined with the company’s knowledge of powders and AM processes, this technology can be applied to help the user understand their powder, resulting in more intelligent powder specification leading to a more stable production process.

Transport Having the right powder, with the right morphology, flow characteristics and chemistry at the point of manufacture is half of the battle. The other half, especially with more reactive compounds, the transfer and packaging of the product to the point of use. Dr Phil Carroll, MD at LPW explained: “We carried out internal testing of all packaging by transporting containers to worldwide locations to test environmental extremes (temperature and humidity) and the effect on powders and packaging suitability.

As a result as standard powders are packaged in HDPE containers chosen for robustness and resistance to moisture ingress with

capability to package under Argon. We have identified potential for contamination from traditional silica gel packed in a waxed paper sachet and that this traditional product reaches capacity and stops absorbing moisture. LPW has developed a sachet made from a medical-grade plastic guaranteed not to contaminate powder, and prior to use are optimally stored in sealed boxes (guaranteeing that moisture will stay beneath 70 per cent for two years from date of packing if container is stored in an environment of less that 90 per cent RH and 40°C.” AM is often touted as a ‘green’ alternative to traditional manufacturing, and while there are elements of truth to that the greatest savings tend to come from the efficiencies of the final part in use, rather than the process of producing. Once lasers and their ancillary systems, the energy required to create the powder and post-processing are taken into account, the act of making a part via AM can be very energy intensive.

Phil explained how LPW believes in developing favourable waste management solutions that will help users minimise their environmental footprint whilst maximising the value of their scrap raw material: “Through use, recovery and recycle LPW provides a complete life-cycle management for powders. The PowderSolve online software has been developed to provide an unparalleled level of multi-powder information for tracking the life-cycle of AM powder for example. With full traceability of the powder, from production through repeated use, including after blending, PowderSolve offers the most comprehensive database for powder and trend analysis data, which helps to maximise powder value. It enables material users to analyse physical properties, technical characteristics and chemical composition through a user-defined reporting tool.”

Given the rate of change within the company (they’ve taken on a member of staff a month for the last six months, and expect that to continue at at least this rate in the future) I asked Ben Ferrar, General Manager, what the future held: “We will be implementing ISO 13485 quality management system specifically for the design and manufacture of medical devices and for the aerospace industry we are working towards the AS9100 quality management standard, with an audit scheduled for Q2 2014.

More generally the goal for the end of 2014 is to become an ISO 17025 test lab tailored specifically for the needs of AM production users, which will make us the first of a kind. In addition the company has major expansion plans and will be launching LPW USA in Q2 2014, including a new distribution facility for the North American market.”

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[ARRK]

All aboard the ARRK —

h t w o gr

In the world of product development, few companies have the breadth of technical expertise and availability of associated technologies as ARRK — and they’re still growing at a rate of knots.

ARRK is a global entity that is familiar to anyone in ARRK i consumer and industrial product development, www.arrk.com prototyping, composites, tooling, moulding, largeong-time readers of TCT will recognise the ARRK name CNC work... the list goes on. Given the pace of from the earliest days of the magazine in the early 1990s. change, TCT thought it about time to draw a line in The organisation’s roots however go back much, much the sand and find out exactly what ARRK is today, further. Back as far as to 1940s Osaka, Japan, where Tatsuhide and where this trajectory Araki established a woodworking business called Araki Seisakusho.

Since then the company has expanded and consolidated more than is going to take it.

destination:

L

once, each consolidation spurring growth of the business into new markets. The first example of this was back in the period between 1987 and 1989, when 13 separately managed companies were brought together to form a single company, ARRK Corporation.

At the same time as this consolidation was completing, ARRK Europe was established in London, UK. Since its inception in 1989, ARRK Europe has demonstrated a growth by acquisition style, first buying Formation Ltd in 1999, then Styles RPD and PTS Europe Ltd in 2000. Since 2000 the division’s acquisitions and partnerships grew into Europe with Hungary, France, Spain, Germany, Poland and more all targetted.

Fun Fact — The ARRK name was chosen by the employees of the Japanese parent company in 1989 and derives from the Noah’s Ark of the Old Testament. It refers to the new company being an ‘ark’ of creativity as the disparate group of companies first came together as one. According to the company’s Japanese website: ‘The extra “R” stands for “Romanticism,” apropos of a people-based organisation.’

In a series of moves that mirror the late 1980s in Japan, the European arm of ARRK’s RP has been undergoing its own consolidation and reorganisation, with the RP side being under the watchful eye of Craig Vickers.

Consolidate for growth TCT visited the company’s Gloucester Technical Centre where Craig explained: “In the past ARRK were guilty of being over 200 isolated companies that only occasionally collaborated, shared information and were quite protective of their specialisms. In the last few years we have sold some companies and merged others where it made sense, and the European division specifically is now seen as the leaders of integration within the whole ARRK organisation.

Above: Craig Vickers

“One of the areas that we have made real progress in particular has been with the prototyping side of the business where the relationships throughout Europe were already formed to a degree,” Craig continued.

“I was tasked with helping the change and bringing the disparate teams, facilities and capabilities together. One of the truths of change is that everyone wants to change by letting everyone else become like them, so the strategy to ensure a real, tight and lasting bonding of the individual teams was to give everyone some quick wins. The easiest win was to sit down with key suppliers and strike a deal to buy materials centrally, which made the materials cheaper for some of our mainland European operations and allowed them to see the benefits straight away. The suppliers were able to see our strategy for growth and that they would eventually be able to sell more materials in total by selling centrally,” stated Craig.

As Craig explained, it was a simple and common sense approach that had a profound impact on the business: “The same approach to the materials was expanded with the sharing of machine capacity across the ‘network’. For example, we recently won a contract for a very large PU moulding job that would have been too big for any of the individual ARRK sites globally. By Continued on p33

31

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[ARRK]

Continued from p31

demonstrating how the integration worked we were able to share the work across at least three ARRK sites with the client’s blessing — again everyone benefits from the integration in a tangible way.”

New markets As successful as the integration has been, the company still has more to achieve, including finally breaking into one of Europe’s largest markets, Germany. Although ARRK has significant capacity in Germany, the brand is relatively unknown and the market share still very small. Craig explained how the group will line itself up for the move: “At the moment, ARRK prototyping in Germany is virtually nil — not quite, but it’s a line on a pie chart rather than a nice slice. We have significant presence in Germany with our design company P+Z, who don’t have ARRK anywhere on their logo, but they’re 800+ people across eight offices throughout Germany. Within the next couple of months we aim to have people in three of those offices trying to integrate the rest of the European prototyping operations into the German market. Part of this change will also to start letting people know that companies like P+Z are ARRK companies — something that might take years to build the brand awareness.”

As we started our tour of the Gloucester facility, it became obvious that things there already ran with ‘teutonic efficiency’. The first port of call was the projects office, staffed from 0600-1800 as a minimum, but often for longer.

“The projects office does around 1,000 quotations per month, every month and each of them within eight working hours,” explained Craig. “If we drop below 100 per cent we get annoyed; if we lose an order because we’re too expensive we can maybe do something about it, if we lose an order because we have no capacity that’s a nice problem to have and something we can look at addressing, but if we lose an order because we haven’t quoted quickly enough that’s unforgivable in such a competitive industry.

Every customer gets their quotation in the same order that they come in, we don’t cherry-pick what we think will be the big orders at the expense of the smaller companies and one-man bands.”

Unparalelled capacity As we move through the facility the range of machines and materials is staggering, especially when the ‘external’ capacity is brought into the equation. The number of machines allows for machines to be paired with the most popular materials, reducing lead times and increasing the efficiency of operations. As an example, Craig estimates that the Gloucester site processes some 20 tonnes of powder for laser sintering every year.

The stereolithography room is equally impressive, with machines old and new processing up to seven different resins at a time.

With access to such a range of technologies, it’s not surprising that continuing to offer the current range is part of the growth plan for ARRK, but equally Craig is determined to be at the cutting edge with new technology offerings too.

“We will continue to sell what we already do but we will be upgrading, replacing and ensuring that we’re up to date and pushing new capabilities wherever we can and where is makes business sense to do so,” explained Craig.

“I’m an anorak when it comes to prototyping technologies and I love to keep informed about what’s going on so that I can make the recommendation to bring new technology into ARRK as soon as we feel it’s ready. For example we spent around six months in 2007 looking at additive manufacturing in metals, all the systems and materials and associated processing with a view to seeing if it was ready for ARRK. At that time we decided that the technologies and the market — especially in the UK — weren’t mature enough to be able to guarantee a return on investment. As it turned out, by 2008 the entire landscape had changed and it proved to be great decision not to have made a huge capital investment at the end of 2007.

“Now it’s time to look at the technologies again — ARRK never wants to be the first with new technologies, we don’t mind occasional beta testing but never alpha testing; the technology has to be right for us and most importantly our customers. We have some fairly major investment on the cards starting in the first quarter of this year.”

Locations and specialisms of ARRK in the UK: Basildon Technical Centre: Nuneaton Technical Centre:

Design & Recruitment Services Composites, CNC Machining, Jigs & Fixtures Gloucester Technical Centre: Prototyping ARRK Europe Ltd – Teesside: Prototyping Petersfield Technical Centre: Tooling & Low Volume Manufacturing ARRK Product Development Group Ltd – Barcelona: Prototyping

33

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34

tct [22:1]

[Romans CAD]

A love song to 3D shoe design WORDS | LILIANA POP, MARKETING MANAGER @ STRATÉGIES

New 3D universes open up new frontiers in innovation. 3D technology is all around us.

It’s changing the way we design, develop, manufacture products and interact with the world.

Faster than ever before, 3D technology is transforming our world.

W

ith a combination of technology and business expertise, Romans CAD represents a complete 3D/2D Design and DM software suite that helps companies across the footwear and bag industries to design and simulate so that they can optimise the development and the sales of their products.

The suite is comprised of four modules — RCS 3D Last, RCS Scan Line, RCS 3D Sketch, 3CS 3D — with each module addressing a different aspect of the product development process.

RCS 3D Last provides a rapid way to produce 3D digital lasts (virtual models that have a shape similar to a human foot) while allowing unlimited changes to be made, such as transformations, copy/paste tips and graduations. 3D digital lasts reduce the need to create physical lasts manufacture before designing your shoes. You will no longer have to wait for your last to be handcrafted and modified because all changes are made digitally.

RCS Scan Line is a native reverse engineering environment created especially to work in conjunction with 3D design environment. Designers can capture and automatically drape a creation on to a last and then define 3D virtual prototypes.

RCS 3D Sketch allows designers that use an electronic pen and a graphic tablet to produce textured sketches directly on a 3D digital last. In practice, this method remains very similar to traditional hand drawing so, it does not impede designers’ creativity. Designers are in total control of their design with virtually no restrictions. They can view their models in 3D, modify variants and generate virtual prototypes that will be used directly by development teams.

RCS 3D Design enables designers to build a wide range of footwear variants before producing a physical prototype. It delivers greater consistency between designers’ intentions and the finished product.

The challenge of Romans CAD now is to help companies in their efforts to replace cost-intensive physical prototypes with virtual or computer generated equivalents. Instead of doing a physical prototype, RCS users can generate high-speed, lifelike,

visually threedimensional and fully-automated models more cheaply, more quickly and more accurately than the ‘real life’ equivalents. They can speed up decision-making process in design and development, dramatic reduction in design and product development time and cost and stage products even more attractively for end customers.

RCS can be seamlessly incorporated in any IT architecture and process environment and facilitates the sustainable use of product data across the whole lifecycle. Digitisation, virtualisation and interactivity are essential trends in shoe process design and we are optimally positioned not only to serve this trends but to shape them. Romans CAD technology represents the fruits of close collaboration between the company’s R&D department and RCS users that offers a new infrastructure model for design innovation — an ideal enterprise, working off a single, global data model that facilitate collaborative design and product development. This infrastructure is able to engage all internal designers and product developers, as well as suppliers and partners, in a co-design / co-development process.

Romans CAD was developed by Stratégies, a French company that develops CAD/CAM software projects for the shoe and bag industries. The scientific challenge is to implement and validate 3D technology throughout the complete product development process, with multi-disciplinary teams from design to product development and manufacturers. We want to provide more 3D experiences to our customers, to push the limits of designing, modelling and simulating and to add extensive information capture and presentation technologies. Innovation is not only about coming up on the market with something that nobody had seen before, it is also about taking something that already exist and pushing it farther or doing it better than anyone else. i

Romans CAD www.romans-cad.com 35

Leveraging Optimisation Software to

Deliver a 21st Century

Rail Seat

Fig 1: Seat impact render

On the 18th of December 2013, a fully refurbished class 321 demonstrator train was launched from Liverpool Street station in London, containing two carriages of prototype seats developed by Automotive Trim Developments (ATD) in conjunction with GRM Consulting Ltd (GRM). These prototype seats were the culmination of six months of innovative design and development work undertaken by ATD and GRM over a year earlier.

I

n order to deliver the seats within a very tight six month timescale, ATD engaged with GRM Consulting for design, CAE and engineering development work. Utilising GRM’s expertise in advanced CAE and optimisation methods allowed for the implementation of an optimised design process where CAE could lead the design from concept, all the way through to manufacture. In addition to the optimised design process, by using their finite element optimisation tool VR&D GENESIS, GRM was able to minimise weight and cost, while at the same time improve the overall performance.

As well as the strict time constraints, the challenge was to use advanced simulation and optimisation techniques (methods GRM has developed and used extensively in the automotive, aerospace and defence arenas) to develop a seat with a weight target of 25 kg, something that had never before been achieved in the rail industry.

Complicating matters further was the fact that the seats then needed to pass 15 different safety and durability load-cases before they could be fitted to a train.

To meet the tight packaging limits within the strict timescales, product designers and CAE consultants had to work in unison, adopting a CAE-led – as opposed to a more traditional CAD-led – design process. Adopting a CAE-led approach allowed GRM to influence the concept design based on advanced non-linear simulation (widely used in the automotive industry but less so in the rail industry), and utilise their finite element optimisation tool VR&D GENESIS to optimise the design at key points during the design process.

Fig 2: Development plan

36

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In order to achieve the ambitious targets, the design and development work was split into three clearly defined stages: • Stage 1, concept generation and assessment: Fig 3: CAE-led design During the initial stage GRM utilised advanced non-linear simulation to lead the design process and ensure that the concept was likely to meet the crash-worthiness targets of GM/RT 2100, as well as the strict cost and weight targets set out at the beginning of the project. Using advanced simulation allowed GRM and ATD to develop a detailed understanding of injury mechanics and design changes.

• Stage 2, engineering development: As the design matured, GRM was able to continually assess and refine the FE model, therefore maintaining the seat’s performance against all GM/RT 2100 structural requirements. At this stage of the design process GRM used its extensive experience of optimisation, using VR&D GENESIS to determine the most efficient solutions to structural problems. In order to establish the preferred placement of reinforcing material between the seatback and the extrusion, a topometry (thickness-based) optimisation was performed on the mature seat design. The objective of this optimisation was to achieve a first mode above 30 Hz (initial mode of 25 Hz) thereby ensuring an efficient usage of mass and producing a quieter structure (reduced vibration at low frequencies). The optimisation highlighted areas where adding reinforcing material would increase the frequency of the first mode. Based on these results two changes were made to the design: thickening of a local area on the seatback to support the grab handle mass and thickening of the extrusion outer wall and central web, as well as the seatback to stiffen the whole structure. Following these updates the new design had a first mode of 30.1 Hz with a 0.7 kg increase in mass. Using VR&D GENESIS to optimise the first mode and therefore improve performance is a technique GRM has developed and is used extensively in the automotive industry for body structures. By applying these techniques in an industry where they are not widely used, GRM and ATD were able to adhere to strict packaging specifications, which are a priority in the rail industry.

• Stage 3, detail engineering: In the final stage of the project

[GRM Consulting]

Fig 4: Topometry Optimisation

the design was starting to reach full maturity with accurate representation of the chosen manufacturing processes. At this stage GRM was able to create an FE model representing the final design intent and assess it against all the requirements of GM/RT 2100.

GRM was again able to utilise the optimisation techniques available in VR&D GENESIS to design small, localised shape changes to achieve the targets and reduce mass. To determine the ideal shape for the pedestal, for example, and ensure an efficient use of mass, a series of topology optimisations were conducted.

Topology optimisation is a method in which a linear finite element analysis code, such as VR&D GENESIS, is given a solid block of material (the design space) as a starting point and, based on the loads applied, it calculates the most efficient usage of that material to achieve the desired objectives. Topology was the first type of finite element analysis optimisation developed for engineers and it is still the most widely used. Traditionally there are two ways to approach a topology optimisation problem: the first is to use a fixed amount of material, say 30 per cent of the design space, and maximise stiffness. The second is to minimise the mass (i.e. use as little material as possible), while maintaining performance of a particular parameter (usually stiffness). With the release of VR&D GENESIS 13.0, however, users will be able to perform strength-based topology optimisations, dramatically increasing the number of problems which topology can be applied to.

In the case of the pedestal, it was important that seat integrity Fig 5: Topometry Optimisation

Fig 5a: Topometry region

Fig 5b: Topometry result

and injury performance were maintained by a stable and strong mounting structure. The mounting structure needed to meet strength for integrity, be stiff for modal and injury, and be adaptable between different train designs at minimum weight. The final pedestal design, based on the optimisation results, met all of these requirements.

Due to the power of the optimsed design process the seat successfully passed all dynamic injury and strength (static and dynamic) tests at its first attempt, without any need for prototypes and prior testing. The closest injury result to the legal limit was 60 per cent, indicating a highly robust design. By utilising advanced simulation techniques and using optimisation software methods at key stages to deliver solutions and refine performance, ATD and GRM were able to design, manufacture and certify a rail seat in six months. The final system weight, including pedestal, underframe and wall bracket was 26 kg, making it the lightest seat in its class.

Fig 6: Test results

VR&D GENESIS Developed by Vanderplaats Research & Development (VR&D), GENESIS is a leading finite element based analysis and optimisation tool. GENESIS utilises NASTRAN’s bulk data format and supports all the traditional structural optimisation methods: topology, size and shape, topometry, topography and composites. GENESIS can be used on its own or coupled to another analysis code such as ABAQUS (TRU PRODUCTS) or ANSYS (GTAM). This allows experienced engineers who are already familiar with an existing FEA tool to easily gain the benefits of optimisation for their design and development work.

In partnership with VR&D, GRM has developed a number of add-ons for GENESIS’ front end that increase functionality and make the advanced optimisation methods more accessible to the end-user.

GRM Consulting GRM Consulting Ltd is a leading engineering consultancy, providing analysis, design, and optimisation services to the engineering community. Started in 2003 by Martin Gambling, now managing director, GRM has gained experience across a wide range of industries including automotive, medical, rail, aerospace and defence. In addition to its consulting activities, GRM develops analysis and design optimisation tools, focussed around the optimisation code VR&D GENESIS. GRM is established as expert in the field of optimisation, pioneering new methods and enabling OEM’s to find innovative solutions to their engineering problems.

i

GRM Consulting Ltd www.grm-consulting.co.uk 37

PUSHING THE ENVELOPE FOR ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING

The Arcam Q20 represents the 3rd generation EBM technology.

It is a manufacturing equipment specifically designed for production of components for the aerospace industry.

Key Features: r Arcam LayerQamâ„¢ for build verification r Latest generation EB gun r Closed powder handling

www.arcam.com

38

tct [22:1]

[ADOBE Photoshop 3D Printing]

Major Update to Adobe Photoshop CC Brings 3D Printing to the Design World

WORDS | JIM WOODCOCK

Following the announcement last month, TCT caught up with Andy Lauta, Photoshop Product Manager at Adobe for a demo and run through of where this release could lead.

S

o often in the tech world a new development only occurs because of the aligning of several planets, the confluence of several ideas. And the recent announcement of native 3D printing support within Adobe’s Photoshop line of products is no different. For one, the company’s push towards cloud-based, subscription applications in the form of the Creative Cloud (CC) lineup means that updates are constant, seamless and reactive to changes in the industry like never before. And if you’re going to get involved in the 3D printing space you need to be agile, such is the rate of development at the moment.

The second stream is the unbelievable interest surrounding all things 3D printing at the moment, making the timing of the announcement almost perfect. Thirdly, 3D printing itself is moving into spaces that Adobe can comfortably claim to have serious expertise — consumer printing and colour. For decades Adobe has been at the forefront of the technology we today take entirely for granted, namely hitting print and receiving a print out. No worrying about what type of file is being sent, no processing postscript files or matching colour spaces, etc. The 2D printing world once seemed as alien and complicated to the vast majority of us as 3D printing does to others today, and Adobe was one of the companies that helped to make 2D printing quick, easy and reliable.

It should come as no surprise then that Adobe’s mission in 3D printing follows the same path. According to the press release that announced the news, ‘… the new 3D printing capabilities integrated in Photoshop CC enable Creative Cloud members to easily and reliably build, refine, preview, prepare and print 3D designs, setting the stage for explosive growth in the 3D printing market.’ Given its past performance, few would argue against the company’s ability to pull that off.

“At the highest level we think the integration of 3D printing capabilities into Photoshop is important because Photoshop is probably the most mainstream of the creative applications, with over 90% of creatives worldwide using it,” explained Andy Lauta, adding, “By packaging 3D printing integration in a way that is accessible to a more mainstream

creative we really think that we are making the opportunities of 3D printing available to them. At the same time we hope to benefit the 3D printing industry because there is this huge pool of creative talent that can apply themselves more easily to 3D printing.”

And creatives will create, which is why the content is as important as the 3D printing itself, especially to Adobe as Andy explained: “The part of the market that we are most excited about is actually the uptake of 3D printing by consumers, part of that uptake is going to be consumers printing their own content in their own homes, but even more importantly sales of 3D printing content will be a major source of growth. The content is the piece of the business that Adobe is most interested in driving; even people that aren’t interested in printing at home can benefit from 3D printing through trends like mass customisation and mass personalisation. We are really thinking about the 3D printing business as a 3D content business and if we can enable creatives to produce compelling content that consumers actually care about — high-aesthetic, high-quality, highresolution — we believe that will lead to a significant inflection point for the market.”

With the updates to Photoshop CC, designs can be printed to a locally connected 3D printer or via built-in access to popular online 3D print services. Photoshop CC supports the most popular desktop 3D printers, such as the MakerBot Replicator, and also supports the full range of materials available on Shapeways, including ceramics, metals, and colour ‘sandstone’. Additionally, Photoshop users can now

i

Adobe www.adobe.com

directly upload their 3D models to the Sketchfab 3D publishing service, and embed them in their Behance profile using Sketchfab’s interactive 3D viewer.

Veronica De La Rosa, industrial designer at FATHOM, a product development company and 3D printing specialist explained how the Photoshop CC features are useful for file checking and workflows, as well as creation: “At FATHOM, we work with some of the most innovative companies to help produce their next generation of products. Using Photoshop CC, the new 3D printing features reduce file troubleshooting and ensure that our client’s 3D models are accurately represented before final printing. This is extremely helpful to us as it will speed up customer communication, saving time and money for both us and more importantly our clients.”

39

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[Asiga]

Which profession was the first to widely adopt 3D printing for direct manufacturing? You may be surprised to learn that it was one of the oldest professions in the world: jewellery making.

R

eaders of this magazine would be familiar with the almost 30 year evolution of 3D printing, from a tool that was used predominantly for prototyping to one that now builds replacement body parts. So why was it jewellers who first embraced 3D printing on an industrial scale?

Digital manufacturing has to overcome at least two barriers in order to achieve critical value in any industry. Firstly, productive CAD software is required. Secondly, the digital output device (either additive or subtractive) needs to make parts in usable materials with acceptable quality. In some industries a third hurdle exists: a real-world part must be 3D scanned and imported into CAD software for further manipulation. This is required, for example, when designing dental restorations.

Jewellery, by chance, fell into a sweet spot. CAD tools existed in the 1990s that could be used to draw jewellery. Furthermore, some of the first 3D printers built parts in wax, which is not only an ideal ink-jetting material but is also perfect for investment casting. While jewellery manufacture requires fine detail and artistry, the overall requirements are not so stringent. If the swirl on a ring is half a millimetre out of place the wearer’s finger won’t fall off and artistic intent is arguable. In comparison, a dental patient is likely to experience infection and tooth loss if a similar discrepancy occurs in the manufacture of a dental crown.

Since the productivity of CAD/CAM in jewellery was proven in the late 1990s, the 2000s saw broad acceptance of CAD/CAM in the jewellery industry and growth in specialised jewellery CAD software and 3D printer adaption. In fact, it led to the birth of our company Asiga. When we launched the Freeform Pico in 2011 our primary objective was to make an affordable high-resolution 3D printer for jewellers. Of course, the dental and hearing-aid industries are significant other focus markets for Asiga. However, we recognise the extraordinary debt we owe to jewellers for creating an industry that is responsible in many ways for driving 3D printer technology development and creating the excitement we presently see in the world of 3D printing.

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Asiga www.asiga.com

41

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ISO 9001:2008 Certified

[RPD International]

Product

Development for the

MASSES 18 months ago Josh Valman founded Miproto — a way to make product design and development accessible to everyone — a website where you could upload all of your product ideas and have them developed and manufactured ready for market. The platform proved a success not only for the general public to which it was aimed, but also with small and large companies alike. This realisation lead to further research and the development of a new, commercially biased platform — RPD International.

Make yourself accessible At 17 years old, Josh Valman was working in freelance product design, when he noticed a trend: “Many people were coming to me with their product ideas because I was accessible,” he explained. “It struck me that it was easier for them to come to a ‘kid’ and have him take on the work, than it was to sit down in front of a panel of designers at a firm and have their idea scrutinised to the Nth degree. It was that spirit of accessibility that we embodied into the new company.

When the company went to raise further funding, the use by commercial users became more apparent. Josh realised that the same problems Miproto encountered when dealing with the general public were still going on in a professional environment — even big companies were dealing with terrible supply chains.

“It would be taking them months and months to get things on the table. So by using the engineers and factories we had brought together for Miproto we created a platform for companies.”

i

“RPD powers design and manufacturing departments for companies around the world. It’s a platform for any company to integrate into their firm — for example TCT could run tct.rpdintl.com — anyone at TCT could log in and start working on a product they wanted to develop, have it priced, have it made into 3D drawings, rapid prototyped, or manufactured all the way up to a million units.

Many companies have in-house facilities and systems for product development already, but they’re complex and wrestling with legacy issues. Plus not everyone in that company can use them, as Josh explained: “One of the companies that is using the RPD platform has over 10,000 employees but only the ‘top’ 1,000 employees has access to the manufacturing facilities. If one of the other 9,000 employees has an idea, it’s very difficult for them to interrupt the system and experiment.

“In that situation, they’re using RPD to power lower level teams. By validating ideas externally, before dedicating expensive internal resources, companies can greatly expand the number of minds contributing to corporate innovation. An idea doesn’t always come from experience. That’s 9,000 new contributors, with zero new hires.”

Continued on p45

RPD International www.rpdintl.com

43

Life’s a lot more colourful with the new Connex3 Introducing the Objet500 Connex3 from Stratasys, the world’s only multi-colour multi-material 3D printer. ( VIVID COLOUR + FLEXIBLE + TRANSPARENT + RIGID )

To find out more call Tri-Tech 3D – the leading distributor of Stratasys 3D printers.

TELEPHONE: 01782 814551 VISIT: WWW.TRITECH3D.CO.UK

44

tct [22:1]

[RPD International]

Continued from p43

The platform is also used extensively by creative branding and marketing industries. Creative firms are using RPD to power ‘IDEO’-like departments, producing and delivering physical prototypes and products as part of their service. The simplified process takes the expense out of manufacturing for these companies, allowing them to upload simple hand sketches and deliver physical products in a matter of days and weeks.

Process flow The Miproto and RPD platforms empower non-technical users to realise their products with the knowledge that the engineers and manufacturers they are tapping into are qualified and vetted.

“Technically everything done on the RPD platform is done ‘in-house’ by us. We have teams of engineers all over the world that are specialised in different areas — from a nuclear submarine engineer to graduate and undergraduate designers and engineers that are building a portfolio. We can associate the right designers with the right projects.

In terms of actually getting products made, Josh explained: “We have nine factories - five in the UK, four in China — that are specialised in different aspects of production, different materials, different production run lengths etc., we are expanding that network at the moment and looking for more international facilities for a global client base.

“At its core the RPD platform is an accessible closed network of expertise in engineering and manufacturing. Each engineer is personally interviewed and the output of each factory is assessed to ensure it meets the standards people need and expect. We have around 300 applicants per position and would recruit maybe five people from that pool, so the quality is very high.”

Augment, don’t replace For larger companies and OEM, the platform offers the ability to expand their capabilities, rather than replace exiting facilities. “The end-game for the RPD platform is that any company could customise the experience with their branding, releasing it to their internal teams or even to end customers,” explained Josh.

“We found that a lot of companies were using Miproto — which was intended to be a consumer platform — just to have access to these facilities. We spoke to them and realised that something like RPD would make their life a lot easier. Big name brands really value their designers but a lot of them work in 2D and outsource the work of turning those designs into viable 3D CAD and prototypes. This outsourcing is done with multiple companies, taking excessive time and money. RPD doesn’t replace any designer; it is simply a more efficient way to execute ideas.”

“RPD differs from the Miproto platform in that there are local project managers — if you pay the enterprise rate you will have a dedicated person at RPD who knows all of the projects undertaken by your company and who can act as a liaison between RPD, the company using the platform and the departments involved in each project. The Miproto platform is more guided for individual people who have an idea and want help to get it made — there’s more hand holding.”

RPD is available with plans starting from a £100+VAT monthly deposit. Each project is then priced and billed individually, based on an hourly rate and manufacturing costs.

Josh explained: “The monthly deposit is a way for us to make sure we always have enough project managers. That way, there’s always somebody you can call and say ‘help!’” He continued: “Effectively, the larger the monthly deposit, the more projects you can do in a month and the cheaper they are. We also have several corporate plans that include things such as dedicated internal project managers for the customer.”

Conclusion The potential of the RPD platform is obvious for SMEs and larger OEMs alike. Specifically, the ability to either follow through an entire development cycle or just pick sketch-to-CAD, 2D-to3D, CAD-to–prototype or prototype-to-production assistance could be invaluable in relieving bottlenecks for established organisations, as well as helping to push startups forward.

Accessibility and ‘democratisation’ are buzz words in the product development space at the moment, as manufacturing becomes more versatile and consumer demand for bespoke, personalised or customised products — across everything from fashion to healthcare — grows.

45

46

tct [22:1]

“A good tool is a good tool” -

[Local Motors]

Local Motors talks 3D printing and its open source philosophy i

WORDS | ROSE BROOKE

T

Local Motors www.localmotors.com

Local Motors’ recently-signed R&D agreement to explore making automotive more efficient using advanced manufacturing brings 3D printing firmly in line with its mission. Rose Brooke caught up with the Arizona-headquartered company.

CT Magazine last covered Local Motors back in 2012 but a recent announcement from the innovative design and mobility organisation brought this Arizona-headquartered business right back into the additive manufacturing industry spotlight.

In January, Local Motors revealed it has signed a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee to enable the world’s first 3D-printed vehicle.

The CRADA between Local Motors and ORNL will explore making vehicle construction more efficient in terms of part count, cost and production time, maintaining standards of control, safety, aesthetics and mechanical flexibility using advanced manufacturing techniques that are both additive and subtractive.

This project fits seamlessly with Local Motors’ mission to empower individuals and companies to change every aspect of mobility by harnessing the creativity and intelligence of its community of more than 16,000 people. Local Motors believes in solving problems at a local level, using open source principals to develop a number of innovative, co-created vehicles and components with the knowhow of specialists all over the world.

Senior Engineer in the R&D and CoCreation Management team at Local Motors Alex Fiechter explained that for Local Motors, 3D printing fits this bill particularly well.

“3D printing is especially useful because of the lack of tooling required. You can build so many different forms without having to make a large up-front investment.

“Local Motors is driven by creating short runs of many different designs, so avoiding high up-front costs is key to keeping us nimble from a design perspective.”

Local Motors’ approach to design and creativity is facilitated by its network of microfactories and outlets, as well as its rather full contact list of talented designers who pool their ideas together forming innovation after innovation from all corners of the planet.

When the ORNL CRADA was announced, Co-Founder and CEO Jay Rogers said: “By invoking the principle of open-source, this partnership – and future efforts like it – will drive a true paradigm shift in hardware product development and automotive manufacturing technologies. Just as exciting as the vision of delivering the first direct digital manufactured car is that we will be engaging future consumers to contribute and evangelise its creation.

Continued on p49

47

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An

Company

[Local Motors]

Continued from p47

“We are living in a time when speed to market trumps slowgoing protectionism. Local Motors’ open development platform is what delivers this very speed.”

ORNL’s mission is to help industry adopt new manufacturing technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, production costs, lead times and life-cycle energy, allowing for more products and opportunities for well-paying work to emerge.

Local Motors already has an excellent handle on advanced manufacturing and is very much an early adopter of 3D printing technologies.

Fiechter said the company has a scattering of MakerBot Replicator 2s and a Rostock Max, a RepRap-esque delta printer.

“If we acquire new machines in the future,” he said, “it will probably be for large-scale 3D printing with a much larger extrusion head. There are professional-grade 3D printers that do large build areas, but they are very expensive and take forever to build. Truthfully, we are most interested in hybrid techniques of additive and subtractive [manufacturing] to get the large-scale functionality we need in automotive.

“3D printing is great, but it is just another tool in your arsenal. A waterjet creates even cooler parts when paired with a press brake. Similarly, a large-scale 3D printer can do a lot very quickly and precisely when paired with a bit of material removal.”

Sensibly, Local Motors’ approach to additive manufacturing technology is that it is a complementary tool to be used where the technique offers a better end result than all the alternatives, rather than being carried away by the novelty of 3D printing.

Fiechter said: “I think there is a lot of hype and sometimes that runs the risk of giving you tunnel vision around a technology and miss the ways it can be used in conjunction with ones that are familiar and ‘old news’. I love 3D printing but I also still love my waterjet, you know? A good tool is a good tool. It should be kept in mind that I am speaking from the vehicular industry though...”

He continued that Local Motors primarily uses PLA when it incorporates 3D printing into its work. The cost is attractive, as is the material itself, however, he said there has been some experimentation with carbon-infused ABS, in addition to other typical FDM plastics.

“We have access to metal 3D printing, but so far the cost has pointed us elsewhere when considering the scale and precision of the metal parts we need.”

The Rally Fighter is Local Motors’ best-known product

Large scale 3D printer at ORNL

Nevertheless, 3D printing could, according to Local Motors, make vehicle manufacture more economical.

“There are many ways this can happen,” Fiechter said. “The two I am most interested in are the fundamentals.

Firstly, if you can do production 3D printing, that means no tooling requirements, even for design changes.

It should be said though that this is most applicable to our approach of short-run products, because 3D printing still takes time. Secondly, the geometry you can produce is impressive and it allows you to combine features in very interesting ways. So to put it all together, imagine if you could create the exterior, primary structure and the primary interior architecture in one go with one part. You can kind of do it with composite moulding, but now imagine you needed no tooling and could create entirely new aesthetics as easily as changing the CAD. Pretty cool.”

Fiechter’s enthusiasm for the technology is apparent, but as a user, he is realistic about the applications and capabilities of 3D printing. Nevertheless, he believes that additive manufacturing has the potential to change the automotive sector, indeed he thinks that it already has.

“Now I think it’s just about the technology getting better at what it does and also playing nicer with its fellow manufacturing techniques,” he considered.

“The cost reductions are the most exciting [aspect of the technology],” he continued. “The closer it gets to my deskjet printer, the more excited I get because it means the technology is that much more widespread. You want to see cool things done with a capability - get it into as many hands as possible! Other than that, everything that is happening to make materials like the carbon infused plastic more available excites me. The stronger and more thermally resistant the affordable materials become, the more we can use 3D prints as solutions rather than tests.”

An innovative, engaging and growing company like Local Motors has proved that additive manufacturing, in conjunction with traditional manufacturing techniques, has the power to lower costs and bring complex designs to life and the very nature of 3D printing complements Local Motors’ own philosophy of opensourcing and local production.

49

[CEO CONNECT: EnvisionTEC]

Envision

a brighter

future

WORDS | JIM WOODCOCK

While once again over on the sunny West Coast, Jim Woodcock hopped up from San Diego to LA to meet up with Al Siblani, CEO of EnvisionTEC at the company’s Gardena manufacturing facility.

EnvisionTEC’s machines seem to be ubiquitous, especially in the jewellery and dental markets, but also in toys and games, entertainment and more.

Jim got behind the scenes at one of the industry’s ‘quiet’ companies...

i

E

EnvisionTEC www.envisiontec.com

nvisionTEC is a well established company that is perhaps best known as a leader in what is set to become the next 3D printing battleground — highprecision. From the FormLabs Form1 to the Old World Labs OWL Nano, new manufacturers are popping up that eschew the now saturated FDM-style desktop machine and instead go after the Al Siblani, Founder, Chairman market that EnvisionTEC has led and CEO of EnvisionTEC — desktop-friendly high-resolution polymer 3D printers. In this arena stereolithography (SL) and digital light projection (DLP) are the kings – and EnvisionTEC’s lineup includes a bit of both.

I was able to get the lowdown on the company, its philosophy and its products directly from Al Siblani, the Founder, Chairman and CEO of EnvisionTEC, while at the same time seeing firsthand the company’s production facilities. Al has been in the industry longer than most, starting with the now-defunct Helisys in the early 1990s, selling and installing the first ‘laminated object modelling’ (LOM) machines to the big Michigan-based automakers General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. A number of the Helisys team made the move with Al when he set up EnvisionTEC, meaning the core team has been working together for over two decades.

The first thing I noted upon arriving with Al at the Gardena facility is that’s its no longer big enough. Crates had been wheeled outside in the morning to make room for the production lines inside — a benefit of production happening in California rather than Michigan or Gladbeck in Germany! Al explained: “We have roughly three times the orders this January compared to January 2013, so we need more capacity. We have another unit opposite this [current unit] that comes online at the start of February. We are currently in the process of doubling our production space in our facilities in California and in Gladbeck, Germany.”

Since the early days of the Perfactory, the EnvisionTEC line up has changed significantly as new sectors of industry chase the speed and precision offered by the company’s DLP and now 3SPbased systems.

Value vs. Cost Of all the industry leaders I have spoken to, Al Siblani is perhaps the clearest about sticking to the company’s philosophy, even in the face of increasing ‘competition’. I put competition in inverted commas because whether or not other companies in the space are considered as such depends on your point of view.

Certainly from within EnvisionTEC the view is that they are differentiated from the competition — they operate alongside other companies in a similar space, but companies that have a different mission.

Al explained: “I am not interested in getting involved in a ‘race to the bottom’ by competing solely on price. We have made some significant changes to our technologies that have allowed us to reduce the price of the machines without compromising our core values — if we tried to compete with the low-end machines we would have to make low-end machines and in the long-term that won’t serve us or our customers.”

Looking around the production facility it is easy to see the emphasis placed on quality in every aspect of the development, manufacture and testing. Following the line around from a bare case to a complete product, the high-quality components become evident — including CNC-machined parts made in-house just metres from where they will be tested and deployed.

“We deliver machines that create highly accurate parts, down to 15 microns, and to achieve that for build after build, year after year, the machine itself has to be built incredibly accurately,” explained Al. “Where the less expensive machines use plastic components, EnvisionTEC machines use our own metal parts that are designed to perform for many years facilitating the highest of accuracies. Likewise, our DLP technology is more expensive than that used in the cheaper machines — because to get the real, repeatable performance our customers rely on for their businesses requires the more expensive DLP system. Could we make a desktop printer that was $1,000? Of course, we believe we know more about DLP than any other company, but cheap and cheerful is not what our customers want, and it’s not what we deliver.”

Continued on p52

51

[CEO CONNECT EnvisionTEC] EnvisionTEC’s XEDE 3SP and Ultra 3SP

Taking a look at the projection system in their DLP systems alone shows how the company is not willing to compromise on quality. DLP projectors can work with square- or diamond-shaped pixels.

Square pixels produce the crisp, fine edges required for very high-resolution 3D printing, where the diamond pixels are subject to resampling of the image, meaning that where just 1 square pixel may be ‘on’, when resampled at least four of the diamond-shaped pixels will be ‘on’ to produce the same image.

On large ‘broadcast’ projection this creates a softer, more pleasing image. On a 3D printer, it creates a softer, less desirable definition.

The difference is best exemplified by imaging a straight line made up of pixels. The top edge of a straight line made with squares will be flat, but the top edge of a straight line of diamonds will be ‘ridged’, with peaks and troughs created by the points of the diamond.

Key to ensuring that all of the effort and expenditure of the production process actually makes a difference for the customer, a huge amount of QA and QC testing is performed on every single printer before it leaves the building. Some 280 individual pieces (albeit small pieces) are built on each machine before it ships, with a three-day programme of testing and re-testing undertaken.

Rather than running purely test parts, each printer manufactures industry-specific parts — for example dental or jewellery — that are then accurately measured, ensuring that the shipped printer is ready for real world operation.

Even with the higher-cost professional DLP chips and projectors, DLP-based printing systems all face limitations in terms of the size of parts that they can be used to produce. To create parts larger than about 200 mm x 250 mm, the projector must be moved further away from the build plate to cast a larger image.

However, the number of pixels (whether square or diamondshaped) remains the same regardless of the image size — thus each pixel becomes larger and resolution is lost.

52

tct [22:1]

“We have extensive experience designing DLP printers,” explained Al, who is still deeply involved in the R&D team. “We have tried machines with multiple projectors, moving projectors, a huge number of optics and so on, and there is really no effective way to make DLP suitable for the printing of large parts quickly and repeatably enough for customers. We have patents on image stitching for example, needed where more than one projector is used to cover a larger printing area. In theory it is possible to use sophisticated algorithms to ensure that there is no evidence of the place that the two images meet on the part, but in the real world it is very, very difficult. When your machines are being used in production settings, such as within dental workflows, it’s vital that sources of error and complexity are eliminated.”

In order to move into new areas where larger-scale parts are needed — such as the MCAD space — the company developed a new type of process that retains the highresolution and speed of the smallerscale systems, but adds a theoretically infinitely scalable build size. The solution is 3SP (standing for Scan, Spin and Selectively Photocure) technology, a laser-based resin curing system rather than a DLP system. The system is actually remarkably simple and surprisingly quick thanks to a combined curing and recoating step performed on both the forwards and backwards sweep across the X-axis.

The lasers in the 3SP systems are contained in compact cartridges, reminiscent of a VHS videotape, that themselves are moved in the X direction across the surface of the print bed. The Y-axis is covered by the scanning of the laser, which is fired at a mirror revolving at over 20,000 rpm. The laser can be turned on and off in just seven nanoseconds, which relates to accuracy in the Y-axis of 4-5 microns, while being up to five times faster than a comparable SL machine.

[CEO CONNECT EnvisionTEC]

EnvisionTEC 3DBioplotter

One of the issues with a laser system controlled by mirrors and housed way above the build platform is that for larger parts, the spot size and shape of the laser changes from the centre of the build platform to the corners, something that has to be computer corrected but can still affect the fidelity of the final models. By correcting the beam shape and size with bespoke fixed optics, the 3SP systems can produce sharp details across the bed area without the need for correction algorithms.

“We started development work on the 3SP technology a few years ago with the aim of developing a technology that fit the EnvisionTEC ethos while allowing us to expand into new sectors.

It is completely scaleable and could potentially make huge parts

without sacrificing the level of detail or speed by combining multiple ‘print heads’ together, as one would with a conventional inkjet printer.”

If evidence was needed to justify the development of the 3SP technology, Al explained that the 3Dent — a dental specific 3SPbased system — would have to be some $55,000 more expensive if it were to retain the same specifications but run DLP rather than 3SP. In the last three months a large dental lab group purchased 10 3Dent machines based on the 3SP technology.

Again the quality control procedures were underway for the 3SP range and include measurements of the wavelength, spot size, consistency and more.

The final string in the EnvisionTEC bow is something quite different again — the 3D-Bioplotter. The 3D-Bioplotter is a syringe-based 3D printer that can process more individual materials than any other biofabrication printer — from gelatine to titanium.

Using syringes actuated by either air or physical pressure, viscous pastes, gels and liquids are deposited (plotting material) into a matrix (plotting medium) or directly onto a platform/object placed on the printer. The unique properties of the process allow Computer Aided Tissue Engineering and controlled drug release systems that require very well defined internal and external structures coupled with the ability to utilise up to five materials at a time on the 3D-Bioplotter.

3D-BIOPLOTTER MATERIALS: Hydroxyapatite; Titanium; Tricalcium Phosphate; PCL; PLGA; PLLA; Agar; Gelatine; Chitosan; Fibrin; Alginate; Collagen; Polyurethane; Silicone.

53

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[SWW Review]

SolidWorks World 2014 I still sometimes feel somewhat out of my depth at a big CAD event like SolidWorks World — while anyone can marvel at the power of the new software developments and be wowed by the hundreds of incredible designers and designs, it’s an intimidatingly complex industry to get into. It was to my delight therefore that the biggest news coming out of SWW this year was all about the 3D printing space...

A

number of the announcements have significant overlap and synergy, giving the whole event a pleasing completeness.

From Dassault Systèmes’ CEO Bernard Charlès’ keynote assertion that “the world of making is changing, 3D printing is one way, and the world of design will have to change too”, to the fact that Stratasys, Mcor and MarkForged all used the

event as a platform to release significant news.

Stratasys actually have a history of using the event to make significant announcements — they launched the Dimension range of printers at the SWW event 11 years ago — so with that in mind the unveiling of the Connex3 looks less conspicuous. The Connex3 technology has been anticipated for a while and the beta testers have been using it in secret for some time, as would be expected.

The sample parts from the machine wowed the crowds of press at the official launch on the Sunday (26th January 2014) preceding the conference proper. As so often, the hardcore 3D printing folk seemed hard to impress with wails of consternation that there were only 10 colour pallettes to choose from! Some people! The resolution of the colour parts equals that of the multimaterial Connex, down to 16μm, and the vibrancy of colour surpasses that of any other multi-colour printer I have seen. Admittedly, this is not ‘full’ colour, but if one imagines this to be the v1.0 release the potential is enormous.

WORDS | JIM WOODCOCK Mcor’s announcement followed the news earlier in the week from Adobe - 3D printing support in Photoshop (see more on page 39 of this issue). With Adobe’s mastery of 2D printing, this move seems obvious, and the photorealistic-colour-on-paper 3D printing offered by Mcor is as good a place to start as any.

I would expect more to come from both companies over the course of the year...

Thirdly an entirely new company, printer and material debuted during the keynote session of the second day. MarkForged’s Mark One printer uses a proprietary extrusion process to build in both the usual ABS/PLA/Nylon polymers any FDM-style printer user will be au fait with, and... carbon fibre. The resulting parts are strong, stiff and lightweight — I can think of a thousand uses already, but especially if the team scale the process up. The system looks slick too — it’s obvious that the company wants the system to be taken serisously as a tool, rather than a mere curiosity.

The team at MarkForged share talent with Aeromotions, a company that makes aerodynamic parts for racing cars. Parts on display during SolidWorks World included carbon firbre parts that connected the wings to the boot lid / trunk of the car in question, where a limited run of many different shapes is needed to match stock wings to many different cars, some of which have complex surfaces.

Finally SolidWorks itself is really bringing 3D printing to the fore. You may or may not be aware that there has effectively been a 3D print button in SolidWorks for the last 11 years, but it didn’t really take off as the company had hoped.

Now with the native support in Windows 8.1 (on which the SolidWorks team worked closely with Microsoft) they’re able to leverage the really push engagement with printer manufacturers. As the following article exemplifies, software companies like Dassault Systèmes are continuing to pick up 3D printing on their radars and making efforts to help users capitalise on the increasingly accessible technology.

The big news out of SolidWorks was the new Mechanical Conceptual release, the first applications on the much discussed 3DExperience platform (mytct.co/tctswmc).

Continuing the 3D printing theme that ran strongly through the whole event SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual (SWMC) offers to bring ‘3D manufacturing and 3D printing’ to the top of the agenda once again. The concept modeling environment aims to bring significant benefits to the early concepting phase of design, before the models are moved into Solidworks for final detailing.

In the words of Bertrand Sicot, CEO, SolidWorks, Dassault Systèmes: “As technologies and business models evolve, our users look to us to provide them with the newest tools to help them collaborate more widely and leverage 3D manufacturing and 3D printing in order to be more competitive and innovative. With SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual, we’ve done that. For the first time ever, the entire manufacturing industry can benefit from a game-changing social platform that powers both the global SolidWorks community, as well as a new generation of process experiences for the worldwide CATIA community. Because of this, the cooperation opportunities for SolidWorks users are profound. This opens the door for our customers across multiple industries and companies where Dassault Systèmes and its other applications are significant players.” i

SolidWorks www.solidworks.com

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[DASSAULT SYSTEMES]

3DPrinting

Presents Business Opportunities

WORDS | FRÉDÉRIC VACHER, DIRECTOR MEDIA STRATEGY MARKETING DASSAULT SYSTÈMES

The recent broadening in knowledge and understanding about 3D printing and additive manufacturing have generated new business ideas and opportunities ranging from home hobby machines to printing buildings on other planets. Frédéric Vacher, Director of Media Strategy Marketing at Dassault Systèmes reveals some exciting options.

A

s one of the leaders in ‘3D’, Dassault Systèmes has been involved with 3D printing since its inception 30 years ago.

Indeed, having a 3D digital model is mandatory to program 3D printers and additive manufacturing equipment. 3D digital models created with software such as SolidWorks or CATIA allow designers to simulate and develop products on the screen before they are physically produced. 3D printers are already used extensively in automotive, aerospace and consumer goods industry applications to validate form. Over the last three decades considerable business and technical experience has been built up in enterprises that use this technology and in many cases Dassault Systèmes 3DExperience Platform is instrumental to its creative and efficient usage. On this foundation, and now that prices are falling, many more machines are being put into service.

Not only have 3D printers become less expensive, their capabilities have evolved. Machines that can print titanium, aluminium, silver and now carbon fibre, are revolutionising many businesses including, for example, jewellery-making, by enabling production of shapes and designs that could not be made by conventional techniques. The opportunity to show people what a design will look like — even make a plastic example first — allows people to acquire often-unique pieces with no risk of disappointment or surprise at the outcome. The same idea is current in the life sciences industry where dentists will soon be able to produce perfect crowns on demand from in-houses machine while other types of medical implant could be literally made to measure. There are opportunities throughout these developments for new types of services that will evolve to help companies make the most of the technology. Manufacturing is entering a renaissance where start-ups can produce brilliantly designed high quality products without the need for a factory.

i

For further information www.3ds.com

Light bulb moment In the past, to have an idea for a product was one thing but to have it made was quite another. 3D printers have changed that, so now a single product can be made, small batches are easy to produce and individual customisation has become practical. If demand increases, more machines can be simply added to meet it.

Additional materials are coming onto the market and the ability to mix them during printing offers more scope for opportunity. For example some manufacturers that Dassault Systèmes works with stock standard products that are finished to individual customer specification at the last minute. This facilitates stock holding reductions with massively increased product range flexibility. Companies that show manufactures how to do this are in demand, because when technology is used this way it leads directly to higher margins through a more efficient use of resources.

Existing manufacturing can easily adapt to accommodate 3D printing and many successfully deploy it extensively. New types of companies are also emerging that exploit the reduced cost base of 3D printing set-ups. These offer innovation through flexibility that is hard to match in a more traditional manufacturing environment.

There are opportunities too in the spares industry. Companies that are obliged to provide spare parts for many years, such as in the automotive or aerospace industry, face storage and logistics costs with ‘dead’ stock. With 3D printing it is simple to maintain ‘digital spares’ that are printed to order. That means that any amount of digital spare parts can be held in stock indefinitely. This effectively extends products lives with all the reputational and environmental benefit that brings.

Continued on p59

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[DASSAULT SYSTEME]

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Fast and Faster Dassault Systèmes Aerospace, F1, satellite, consumer product and life science customers are increasing their 3D printer deployment to help them innovate faster. And in areas of economic under development where industry has not taken a foothold, 3D design and printing is also offering great business innovation potential. Creating products locally means that new agile businesses can start with low investment, minimal infrastructure and potentially high returns. The ability to manufacture to demand is very appealing in poor areas of the world that view 3D printing as a way to leapfrog the industrial world’s production and development cycles. Innovative manufactures are benefiting from this development by siting machines across the world to take advantage of operating conditions and energy costs.

Military and security services also see 3D printing as a way to avoid lengthy spare parts procurement supply chains by making parts and equipment on-site.

Robot Builders in Space Many people belief that Man’s future includes colonising other planets. Development of technologies for mining asteroids is already underway and in 20 years mining in space may be a reality.

Robotised 3D printing and other manufacturing in space could be an alternative to sending product supplies from Earth. It is predicted that the first permanent off-Earth dwellings will be built by robots using 3D printing techniques developed for the materials and conditions that are found on other planets. This long-term business opportunity has already spawned several development companies with Richard Branson and Google’s Larry page as investors. Dassault Systèmes 3DExperience technology currently helps in the design and construction of the systems and vehicles, to get people into space. All the subsequent systems for exploring, mining, refining and manufacturing of goods for use either in space or for return to Earth could be developed using the same technology.

Back on Earth, 3D printing offers a lot to the education market. Recent studies at Queens University in Belfast proved that Dassault Systèmes digital 3D animated models are very effective teaching and training tools in comparison to written or verbal instruction. When this is coupled to the ability to output students’ work as 3D physical models, learning is further accelerated. The imagination is also fired when students use additive manufacturing techniques to make ‘impossible’ shapes and effectively produce ‘something from nothing’. Adding social networking and communication to the mix enables student collaboration, ideas exchange and further innovation from young minds. This can spawn low-cost start-up manufacturing businesses that students can develop on graduation.

Fab Gear Started as an outreach project from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA). Fab Labs aim at developing programmable molecular assemblers able to make almost anything. Projects in Fab Labs include solar and wind-powered turbines, computers and equipment for agriculture and healthcare, housing, and printing complete working machines, including 3D printers. Not surprisingly there are many business opportunities and new enterprise scenarios being developed around Fab Labs and their intensive use of 3D design technology.

Another idea is for people to use designers’ basic forms to customise their own products. This means that people without design skills can partner with designers to create new products. As 3D printing prices fall this market driven by ‘collective intelligence’ will inevitably grow. Scanning an item with your phone and making a part is also not far away. This means, for example, people could scan, make, repair and replace parts rather than discard products because one component is faulty. The financial argument is strong because there is immediate return through money saved.

Roadside breakdown repairers could even manufacture parts on the way to a vehicle that has communicated directly with a 3D printer on-board the recovery vehicle.

With its 3D EXPERIENCE Platform used by more than 170,000 companies to develop 3D digital models and product simulations, Dassault Systèmes is positioned at the heart of additive manufacturing. Working with many 3D printer-using innovators, Dassault Systèmes is helping them achieve maximum business advantage from the technology as it develops. This lets anyone from the maker of a jet airliner to a start-up with a good idea; execute their business while creating downstream opportunities as the technology is rolled out.

In the coming years 3D printing is set to grow exponentially and as it does new business opportunities will abound. Correctly positioning a business to capitalise on that prospect presents many exciting ways for enterprises to flourish in this inspiringly innovative technological era.

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[CES Review]

Don’t believe the 3D printing hype?

Join the queue... i

G

etting the opportunity to put on a conference track at the world famous International CES 2014 in Las Vegas was one of the most exciting challenges TCT + Personalize faced when preparing for the massive technology event.

Of course, signing up top industry commentators and innovators to speak to an information-hungry audience is something TCT + Personalize does well, with 18 TCT Shows under our belts in addition to numerous other industry shows. But the flavour of CES is a little different. This would not be like the trade shows TCT frequents, this was a different animal altogether.

Which is why we knew we would need superstar speakers something the TCT Towers contact list succeeded in delivering with aplomb. CEO of 3D Systems Avi Reichental - the first speaker to be signed up - was billed as our keynote speaker, followed by the Super Users. This group was made up of industry commentator and President of TA Grimm & Associates Todd Grimm, Vice-President & Global Industry Leader, Electronics, at IMB Paul Brody, Technical Design Manager, Innovation, at Under Armour Alan Guyan, and Legacy Effects’ Systems Engineer Jason Lopes. Finally, the Access for All portion of the morning featured CEO of Sculpteo Clément Moreau and Co-founder and CEO of Mcor Technologies Conor MacCormack.

TCT’s Don’t Believe the Hype? 3D Printing Uncovered conference track commenced with a full auditorium in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s North Hall. Avi Reichental kicked off proceedings with his characteristic flair for the technology and industry zeitgeist and kept the audience engaged with his ‘Manufacturing the Future’ presentation, which covered

CES International www.cesweb.org

The TCT + Personalize team could hardly believe their ears when CES told them their 3D printing conference track was in such demand there was a queue snaking around the block. Digital Media + Community Editor Rose Brooke recalls the crazy morning of Don’t Believe the Hype? 3D Printing Uncovered.

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everything from the consumer 3D printing industry overall to the very latest in 3D Systems’ growing arsenal of consumerfocused products and services.

“You don’t have to be an expert, you don’t even have to be a designer,” Reichental preached, when demonstrating the accessibility of Cubify.

It was standing room only when Reichental’s keynote came to an end, but it was not a simple case of introducing the next speaker to the stage, as the queue for TCT’s conference track snaked down the corridor and around the corner of the vast North Hall, prompting CES stewards to find a larger room for the next presentations to take place in.

Needless to say, although the change created a little stagemanaging chaos for the TCT team, the news we had to be uprooted to accommodate the scores of waiting 3D printing fans outside our original venue was music to our ears, particularly when an earlier meeting with the CEA team indicated we should be satisfied with something along the lines of 75 bums on seats.

Ensuring the second act began as well as the first had completed was not a problem for seasoned trade show speaker Todd Grimm, whose ‘Enthusiastically Realistic about 3D Printing’ presentation brought the audience back down to earth about the hype bubble that can often misrepresent 3D printing and in particular consumer 3D printing.

“I’ve lived through two hype cycles already,” Grimm stated, giving the packed auditorium a fresh perspective without dampening anybody’s enthusiasm for the technology in the process - no easy task.

A minor change in schedule followed, with Legacy Effects’ Jason Lopes ensuring everybody’s backsides remained firmly in their seats for a presentation demonstrating 3D technologies and their uses in the special effects industry. Clips from Iron Man are a fantastic way to begin any big speech, particularly when your script explains 3D printing technology was used to create the iconic suit.

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“There are no limitations any more,” Lopes said. “If somebody says it can’t be done, we’re going to friggin’ well try.”

Under Armour’s Alan Guyan stepped on stage after Lopes, explaining how 3D printing is better for some applications at the sportswear business for reducing both cost and turnaround times, making it perfect forprototyping and consumer products. His talk also served to open the eyes of many audience members to the fact their sportswear may feature zippers and other accessories that have been made using additive manufacturing, without them even realising.

Finally, Paul Brody of IBM arrived (giving a nod to Under Armour’s innovative 3D-printed zip technology when passing Guyan on the steps) to talk IBM’s take on 3D printing.

Echoing Grimm’s presentation, Brody commenced with the arresting statement that “we are not going to make everything with a 3D printer”. However, he acknowledged where 3D printing technology is the best tool for the job, it will be used, something IBM has been putting a not insignificant amount of effort into researching.

“We live in a world of complex supply chains, but 3D printing takes away the requirement for complexity,” he said.

The final act, 3D Printing Access for All, commenced with a touch of dry Gallic humour from Sculpteo CEO Clément Moreau concerning a fellow 3D printing ‘flavour of the week’ at CES, MakerBot. “We didn’t want to make a 3D printing machine,” he said.

“We could have gone the MakerBot way - and now they’ve made tonnes of money.”

But the European self-deprecation did not last long, with Moreau launching into his presentation on how Sculpteo’s business model as a service bureau is enabling more consumers ordinary people, some without any technical or design background - to understand and use 3D printing technology. He went on to explain how one of Sculpteo’s first customers was a 70-year-old artist who creates her work using Sculpteo, a case study Moreau described as “wonderful”.

TCT’s conference track representatives from our native Europe then rounded off the incredibly successful series of talks, as Dr Conor MacCormack of Mcor followed on from Moreau’s tales of enablement and creativity with a more commercial bent.

“Users are going to get access to 3D printing via commercial machines,” he said, as opposed to desktop 3D printers - in the short term at least.

“We’re going to see some very big companies enter the 3D printing arena,” he continued, indicating UPS, Staples and WalMart-owned ASDA in the UK. The morning of conferences ended with the same volume of applause as it commenced. Even at the very end, almost every seat in the auditorium was taken. Whether this is testimony purely to the calibre of the speakers billed, or if the hype surrounding consumer 3D printing at CES and in the wider tech sector had something to do with it as well, remains to be seen. What matters is all seven speakers - all professionals from their own diverse corners of the industry - delivered engaging, original presentations that were far from the derivative so often spouted in the mainstream media. Don’t Believe the Hype? 3D Printing Uncovered seemed to deliver what it set out to do, to wipe the slate clean for an informed, interested audience and to set realistic but nonetheless exhilarating expectations for what 3D printing in the consumer sphere is really capable of.

[CES TechZone]

4 1 0 2 S E C @ e z li a n o rs e P TCT + WORDS | JIM WOODCOCK When TCT + Personalize visited International CES back in January 2013, Group Editor Jim Woodcock and Publisher Duncan Wood were there for just 36 short hours. The handful of 3D printing companies that were exhibiting in 2013 were spread over the 2 million square feet of floor space, meaning that to see it all required some walking. In fact, it required an awful lot of walking. On his return, Jim Woodcock wrote a blog post imploring the CEA to bring them all together for 2014 — and they listened! Our 2014 experience was something quite different!

T

he changes to the 3D printing coverage at the 2014 International CES were in stark contrast to the experience just 12 months before. Perhaps the most important from the perspective of TCT + Personalize is that we sponsored the 3D Printing TechZone and organised a 3D printing conference session at the event. This meant a lot of work in a short space of time — but the way the TechZone and Conference were attended immediately wiped any memories of all-night planning sessions from the team’s mind, it was simply staggering.

As reported by Rose Brooke, the conference was over subscribed by at least 100% and this was reflected in the 3D Printing TechZone too. If there was a record for the most number of people squeezed into a 2 metre wide aisle at a tradeshow, I think we’d be in with a shout. From the moment the doors opened to long after they officially closed, tens of thousands of visitors streamed through the zone, stopping at each booth to take in the technology first hand.

The spread of attendees was incredible. It is important to remember that CES is a tradeshow for the consumer electronics industry, not a consumer show. You don’t get a badge unless you can prove your credentials — and we know from 2013 that they enforce that impeccably. Between them, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Amazon and Hewlett Packard sent 985 representatives — an example of how important the show is, especially in the retail sector.

Of the thousands of people TCT interacted with over the course of the week, there was a split between the 3D printing virgin, novice, expert and super user unlike any other event.

Switching between talking first principles one minute to discussing specific materials the next was challenging. And that’s without the hundreds of analysts and investors looking for the inside track on what’s going to make money in the next 12 months.

The TechZone was made up of 28 companies allied to 3D printing, ranging from startups to multi-billion dollar concerns, and from affordable desktop 3D printers through to additive manufacturing for production. Each company will have been looking for something different from the show; to reach the highest concentration of technology journalists possible; to show the big consumer electronics giants how they can use 3D printing; to show the big consumer electronics giants how enticing they are as a potential purchase. Regardless of the reason for attending the feedback TCT received from the other 27 exhibiting companies was wholly positive.

3D Printing TechZone Exhibitors 3D Printlife 3D Systems Afinia Beijing Tiertime Technology CEL Technology Ltd. DWS SRL EnvisionTEC Inc. Formlabs FSL3D Incodema Group Invoxia/Swissvoice Kevvox Leonar3do International LIGHTFORGE Makerbot Industries Matterform Mcor Technologies Ltd Old World Laboratories Pirate3DP Pte Ltd Robo 3D Sculpteo SolidIdea.com Solidoodle LLC Stratasys, Ltd. TCT Magazine + Personalize WhiteClouds 3Doodler XYZprinting Inc.

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[ctrl-alt-del]

Did we see 3D printing 2.0 at International CES? Astonished CES attendee: TCT:

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T

he conversation depicted in the graphic above happened on more than one occassion. In fact, this happened on numerous occasions to the TCT + Personalize team whilst staffing our stand in the 3D Printing TechZone at International CES 2014. I’ve only worked here for one year and the impression that we are bandwagon jumpers really grinds my Nautilus gears.

Another conversation I had on the stand began with “I know the guy on the front cover of your magazine…” – the esteemed Scott Crump, “…he’s my husband.” Lisa Crump who formed Stratasys with her husband in 1989 knows better than most that this is not a new technology, “We are an overnight success, 25 years in the making,” as she so eloquently put it.

But there was a new phrase being bandied around the show floor, coined by the inventors of it all 3D Systems ‘3D Printing 2.0’. Though this terminology may annoy some and be cast off as marketing speak it has some validity in terms of the advancements made from the first batch of consumer 3D printers that have been on the market for the last three-to-five years.

We were lucky enough to have a preview of 3D Systems’ (3DS) latest consumer product range from CEO Avi Reichental himself before the show even opened. Amongst the impressive new line of Jets; CeraJet, ChefJet and CubeJet, the one thing that really hit home with me was the new system for loading filament on the Cube 3.

We can argue until we’re blue in the face as to whether the everyday consumer will have a 3D printer in their home, but one thing is for sure — there’s no way the last batch of platform levelling, filament feeding, nozzle clogging, gap setting printers would have survived the patience of an average consumer. Heck I’ve even been tempted to throw my Epson paper printer out of the window from time to time. All of those annoyances needed to be taken away in the next generations of printers for it to stand any chance of getting in to the home.

The new system 3DS have developed means you never have to see the filament, you never have to level the bed, set the gap or… you get the picture. Though there will be those for whom being tied into 3D Systems’ cartridges may be annoying, with all due respect, those aren’t the target market for the Cube 3.

The target is one that perhaps, does not even exist yet. Not the Innovators or the Early Adopters perhaps not even the Early Majority but the Late Majority and Laggards who haven’t got the 66

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foggiest about technology and don’t care how a part is printed, they just need to print because their kids’ latest computer game or school project requires them to. All this lot have to do when the printer runs out of material is plug in what looks like a headphone jack into the top of the machine and hit print.

Other advancements in the consumer 3D printing market came with the catching up to all other tech and the use of smartphone/tablet apps to control and print. We’ve lamented before on how the use of PCs has substantially held the tech back in the consumer sphere. Nobody wants to put down their shiny new iPad, dig out that dusty old laptop that takes three hours to load, download some software, which says you need to update before installing and then hook it up using an old printer wire, which is somewhere in that box of accumulating wires in the garage. It felt like the equivalent of recording BBC HD on VHS. Both MakerBot and 3D Systems announced new machines with the capability of sending prints to it direct from their respective digital file libraries. MakerBot even went as far as adding smartphone control of 3D printing, each of their three new Replicators has a camera and the bigger two in the line, allow for control of a print with your smartphone. This comes in handy for bigger prints that you would like to keep an eye on while out and about.

Away from the big two (bearing in mind MakerBot are now owned by Stratasys), other developments saw injection mouldedlike prints coming off the DWS stand. The Italian company have previously been known for quality wax casting systems used in the dentistry and jewellery industries. At Euromold they announced new materials for those industrial machines but here at CES they launched a new consumer machine, the XFab, which will come in sub $5,000.

Next to the machine, DWS had a bust of Iron Man, seeing and feeling the part I noted a significant improvement from FDM machines, layering isn’t visible and the ABS like material is nearly as smooth as injection moulded parts. As for the rubberlike material demonstrated with a watchstrap, it feels and looks like the Casio resin watchstrap that is wrapped around my wrist right now.

We saw plenty of new machines, plenty of new innovations and plenty of interest to suggest that consumer 3D printing is improving. It may not be there yet and there will always be those who say it will never be there, but CES 2014 felt like the beginning of the Internet boom as opposed to the beginning of the Virtual Reality craze.

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