TCT NA Issue 5.6 by TCT Magazine

DENTAL

The latest developments from the burgeoning world of digital dentistry

MAG

FORMNEXT

News, reviews and interviews from the show floor

NORTH AMERICAN EDITION VOLUME 5 ISSUE 6

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BASES LOADED DESKTOP METAL GEARS UP FOR 2020 WITH STRONG MANUFACTURING STARTING LINE-UP

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VOLUME 5 ISSUE 6

ISSN 2059-9641

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Daniel O’Connor e: daniel.oconnor@rapidnews.com t: 011 + 44 1244 952 398 DEPUTY GROUP EDITOR

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Optimise Your AM Build Process (and beyond …)

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DANIEL O'CONNOR HEAD OF CONTENT

How am I being chased for an end of the year editor's letter already? Honestly, I've only just gotten used to writing 2019, I'm not ready to start writing 2020, but I think that goes to show what a ludicrously busy year it's been from TCT's point of view. With 19 issues of the magazine in four languages (if you count North American British as a different language, which for this I am doing) put to bed and one remaining, we've covered an awful lot of ground both geographically and journalistically. This year alone, team TCT has covered well over 200,000 miles across three continents to produce over 500,000 words on 3D printing and additive manufacturing. Of all of that writing, I've asked the team to pick some personal highlights:

Laura Griﬃths, Deputy Group Editor Winning the Manufacturing Race – Vol.5 Issue 4 "Speaking to Brad Keselowski at this year's RAPID + TCT was enlightening, not just because he runs a thriving advanced manufacturing facility but because his enthusiasm for the technology is very much grounded in reality. It's not very often you get to meet someone with experience of the technology both as a solutions provider and an end-user. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing some of his fast-paced anecdotes around using AM to deliver insane turnaround times on the race track." Pushing Prusa – Vol.5 Issue 5 "We're very much accustomed to the evangelical types that led the 3D printing hype, but a candid conversation with Josef Prusa delivered a refreshing perspective on that same desktop sector. A no-nonsense approach to the industry has won Prusa Research over 10% of the desktop printing market share. While some desktop companies have ventured away from the maker community, Prusa talked about being pushed by those users, mass printing for their machines, and winning customers over with Haribo." Sam Davies, Assistant Editor HP on HP – mytct.co/hponhp "The widespread internal application of the Multi Jet Fusion process started with printing components for HP's own additive manufacturing hardware, but encouragement from the company's Head of Supply Chain soon saw the deployment of 3D printing across the entire HP Inc. business. A range of tooling, fixture and end-use components have since been printed across HP's (2D) printing and computing segments, with part consolidation, weight reduction and cost reduction among the myriad benefits." Moog VeriPart – Vol.5 Issue 3 "In another 2019 TCT Award-winning project, Moog's VeriPart platform was at the center of a proofof-concept trial carried out by ST Engineering and Air New Zealand. Reporting a broken cabin part shortly after taking off from Auckland, a replacement was ordered and printed before the plane arrived in LA, with installation completed within 30 minutes. The trial perfectly demonstrated 3D printing's ability to print replacement parts, on-demand." This industry is ever-changing, and thus, our content must evolve to reflect that. If you have any feedback on our output, my email address is daniel.oconnor@rapidnews.com and I'd more than welcome any constructive criticism to make TCT Magazine the best possible publication it could be. Thanks for reading.

VOL 5 ISSUE 6 / www.tctmagazine.com / 03

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TCT VOLUME 5 ISSUE 6

COVER STORY

06. BASES LOADED

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

DENTAL

11. ALIGNER START-UPS SHOW THEIR TEETH Assistant Editor Sam Davies speaks to Smilelove and SmileDirectClub about scaling up aligner manufacture with a secret weapon: 3D printing.

15. CERAMIC 3D PRINTING Isabel Potestio, Business Developer at Lithoz GmbH, discusses the benefits of ceramics over metals in digital dentistry.

17. News

18 POST PROCESSING

18. POWDER MASTER Sam meets with PULVERMEISTER, a new company taking postprocessing into its own hands.

20. POWDER REMOVAL GETS SMART

IP & FINANCE

26. INDUSTRY SHIPMENTS REPORT

A look at Solukon’s TCT Award-winning collaboration with Siemens.

21 FORMNEXT 21. REVIEW We take stock of the launches and key trends highlighted at the Frankfurt event.

A round-up of the big news stories from this issue’s focus: dental.

Context’s VP of Global Analysis and Research Chris Connery presents the latest findings on the 3D printing market.

27. GREY MATTERS Jason Teng at Potter Clarkson discusses the grey areas around IP rights, infringement and enforceability in 3D printing.

28. WHAT IS INDUSTRIAL-GRADE? 24. ADDITIVE COMMITMENT

Dan takes a tour of GE Additive’s new 40,000 square-meter AM facility in Germany.

Todd Grimm asks how we define what makes an industrial AM technology.

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

hree years ago, the words “desktop metal” were still a pipe dream, an additive manufacturing couplet yet to be successfully executed. That was until a company of that very name took the concept and put it on engineers’ desks for the first time making office-friendly metal printing a reality. The name Desktop Metal is now so entrenched in the additive manufacturing lexicon, it’s hard to believe it has existed for little more than a tenth of the lifespan of some fellow industry heavyweights. Today, Desktop Metal’s Studio System has one of the largest install volumes in its class thanks to companies like Ford, BMW and Google who were among early adopters and investors. With a technology-driven ethos, it has transformed itself into the most funded 3D printing company in the world, amassed a global sales channel of near 90 partners, and that compact Studio System is now shipping in 48 countries to

customers like John Zink Hamworthy Combustion in the U.S. and the University of Sheffield in the U.K. Now, the Burlington, Massachusetts-based outfit is gearing up for its biggest year to date armed with new technologies and a commitment, as the company’s co-founder and CEO Ric Fulop describes, “to changing the way manufacturers and engineers do their work.” Sitting at the opposite end of the spectrum is Desktop Metal’s large-scale Production System which underwent its first installations this year. With promises of speeds more than 100x faster than quad-laser metal printers, the machine addresses the metal additive industry’s ultimate goal; real manufacturing production. While install figures are currently under wraps, shipments are ramping up and user stories from the likes of Indo-MIM, now a full-service manufacturing partner for Desktop Metal with an aligned focus on MIM, are a strong indicator that the machine is on track to fulfil those promises.

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

06 / www.tctmagazine.com / VOL 5 ISSUE 6

cover story

DED  BELOW:

OPTIMIZED CLUTCH PLATE PRINTED WITH THE SHOP SYSTEM

For those application areas in between, however, two new technologies announced in the lead up to this year’s Formnext see Desktop Metal making a major play for two huge user bases so far underserved by additive manufacturing: machine shops and composites. "We see 2020 as a year of explosive growth for Desktop Metal,” Fulop tells TCT. “From the continued expansion of our Studio System into new geographies and new verticals, to the broader installation of our mass manufacturing technology, the Production System, to the most recent addition of both the Shop System and Fiber, the bases are loaded for Desktop Metal to deliver the right 3D printing solutions needed that are designed to increase customer success and help innovators find opportunities to unleash the true potential of additive manufacturing.”

TALKING SHOP

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

The most recent addition to Desktop Metal’s ensemble is the Shop System which is aimed directly, as the name suggests, at machine and metal job shops. Equipped with a high-speed, single-pass print engine, the Shop System is said to be 10x faster than laser powder bed systems, allowing for up to 70kg of steel parts to be processed per day. Physically, it takes a similar form to the Production System with a powder station and revamped furnace sitting alongside, but with a price point starting at 150,000 USD, aims to appeal to users with unique mid-volume manufacturing requirements, from single parts to production batches. Fulop says: “In the machine shop, if you can free up capacity and human labor, which is the constraint for growth for a machine shop, this is a really great opportunity to then be able to produce a lot of parts.” According to Fulop, the company saw there was a gap in the market for companies that may not have the capacity to invest in milliondollar machines (“You can get a lot of CNC machine for 200K”, Fulop says). The printer offers a

spot size of 16 microns per drop, 1600 dpi resolution and distribution of up to 670 million droplets per second. It also offers the smallest drop size of any single pass binder jet system, down to 1 picoliter (a trillionth of a liter) which allows for superior surface finish, and its five lines of 70,000 nozzles per line are said to provide 25 percent higher redundancy compared to other systems. The accompanying furnace has also been reworked to allow for greater mass and faster sintering. “The idea was: what can we give them in 3D printing that would be competitive with CNC that would enable them to have no tooling and faster productivity and better shapes?” Fulop explains. “Binder jetting, being the most efficient way of 3D printing, was the right choice to do that. We understood that one of the things CNC gives you is very good surface finish and tolerances. So, we focused on a print engine that would be very, very high resolution. This is the highest resolution print engine in the market today by at least 33 percent. Then we focused on having the smallest drop size possible, so we could have the highest level of detail. I think there's incredible demand for it.” Backing up that demand, Desktop Metal understands that hardware is just one part of the process, which is why the company has built out a team of experts to ensure every piece of equipment has a strong backbone in materials and software. Desktop Metal’s VP, Inventor and Lead Developer of Live Parts Andy Roberts, for example, has evolved the company’s Live Parts software into a sintering simulation tool by programming sintering fundamentals into the physics engine to show how a part will react throughout the entire sintering cycle. Its Fabricate software, with built-in metallurgy expertise, also underwent an update earlier this year. Similarly, Desktop Metal’s growing materials library is a good indicator of progress with the company recently introducing 4140 chromoly steel and H13 tool steel for the Studio System, opening up applications in molding and tooling and critical industrial components.4

VOL 5 ISSUE 6 / www.tctmagazine.com / 07

“We are committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% until 2050 – this requires us to develop new technologies which make aeroplanes much lighter. And this is just possible using generative design, using Autodesk software.” Bastian Schafer Innovation Manager Airbus

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03/12/2019 15:20

cover story

 LEFT:

FIBER PRINTER BRINGS AFP CONTINUOUS CARBON FIBER REINFORCEMENT TO THE DESKTOP

SMALL BUT STRONG

Desktop Metal recently threw a bit of a curveball, diversifying outside of metals for the first time with a completely different kind of additive technology in the form of a small but mighty machine known as Fiber. “We are about making strong parts, making end-use parts and really making functional components,” says Desktop Metal Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Jonah Myerberg, referring to the “desktop metal” misnomer in light of its new continuous fiber desktop 3D printer. “Metal 3D printing, done the right way, accessible to everyone. Carbon fiber 3D printing, done the right way and accessible to everyone. What we heard from the industry was that the same customer who wants to print metal parts wants to print lightweight, strong composite parts as well.” Fiber is designed to bring the same level of accessibility the company’s 160,000 USD officeoriented Studio System brought to metals, to the challenging area of composites. To get there, the company leveraged the expertise of Dr. Konstantine Fetfatsidis, a former Aurora Flight Sciences (now a Boeing company) advanced manufacturing lead and long-time user of automated fiber placement (AFP) who founded a company called Make Composites. Desktop Metal ultimately integrated it into the company’s portfolio, bringing Fetfatsidis on board as VP of Composite Products. “A lot of people want to use carbon fiber for smaller stuff because it's less weight, it's got these great properties, but composites, as they get smaller are actually more expensive,” Fetfatsidis says, alluding to the labor intensive multi-step process of composite part lay-up which typically prices out smaller parts. “We basically took the media that we use in traditional manufacturing and said let's put it in a printer.”

process PA6 (Nylon) as well as PEEK and PEKK thermoplastics with up to 60% continuous fiber loading with <1% porosity and can produce flame retardant parts with continuous use temperatures up to 250°C. Fiber LT, meanwhile, is able to produce high-strength, ESD-compliant, abrasion-resistant PA6 parts using continuous fiber with <5% porosity and chopped carbon or glass fiber filled filaments. Both machines feature a robotic tool changer architecture for future expandability. “That was the key,” Fetfatsidis says “leveraging existing material to get the properties but also making a flexible system that could be adapted,” noting the benefit of changeable print heads in opening up future material capabilities, even in metals.

“WE ARE ABOUT MAKING STRONG PARTS.” SHOWN: CNC FIXTURE, 3D PRINTED ON THE FIBER PRINTER

Another key difference is its pricing model. Harking back to those initial goals around accessibility, Fiber is offered via a subscription service starting at 3,495 USD per year including hardware, software and services. It also means, should Desktop Metal come out with a new printer, the customer can send theirs back and get an upgrade. It’s a bit of an experiment, according to Fulop, but customers so far are keen. “It's the portfolio, it's the ability to have a portfolio and be able to help customers grow with our technology and make them successful,” Fulop said of the company’s growing roster. “We’re excited and ready to build on that momentum with the commercial availability of our portfolio of 3D printing products and prepare for other exciting announcements in the coming months.” Those coming months are set to be tremendously busy for the company. Both Fiber and Shop System platforms are scheduled for commercial availability in 2020 and more users are set to get their hands on the Production System, which Fulop, without giving away details, suggests could be in line for a number of updates. One thing he and Myerberg do offer, however, is that Desktop Metal knows there are plenty more ways to build parts in metal, hinting that there is more to come over the next 12 months. Myerberg concludes, confidently, “And we’re just getting started.”

With a small footprint that’s ideal for a print farm setup, there are two Fiber models each featuring a compact build volume of 310 x 240 x 270 mm and two printheads: one to deposit continuous fiber prepreg tape, the kind that has already been used and qualified by industry for years, and the other printhead to extrude chopped fiber filament. The Fiber HT (high temperature) platform is able to

VOL 5 ISSUE 6 / www.tctmagazine.com / 09

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DENTAL

ALIGNER STARTUPS SHOW THEIR TEETH WORDS: SAM DAVIES

omeone may try to manufacture clear aligners, but we believe that would be similar to the technology that we had 10+ years ago.” Align Technology’s VP of Product Innovation Srini Kaza gave this response 12 months ago in reference to the increased possibility of competition in the clear aligner market, where his company’s Invisalign brand has dominated since the late 1990s, after the company’s early patents began to expire. It has seen companies like SmileDirectClub and Smilelove emerge to challenge Align’s stranglehold, but as of October 2018, Kaza found confidence in the hundreds of still active patents, its ‘substantial experience curve’, and the fact it is churning out 320,000 aligners per day. A lot can happen in 12 months, however, and a lot more is known about some of its new competitors, not least the aforementioned two. Smilelove was recently named the first public direct-to-consumer partner of Voodoo Clear Aligners, a branch of New York-based service provider Voodoo Manufacturing. Voodoo Clear Aligners has a growing fleet of Formlabs Form 2 machines which operate inside an automated factory to produce customized aligner molds. Conversations between the two companies began at the turn of the year, with discussions becoming more serious at the start of summer when Voodoo received FDA clearance and proved its capacity to turnaround molds within five days. This approach, the use of a service provider to print aligner molds, has been harnessed by Smilelove SHOWN: ALIGNER BEING LASER MARKED INSIDE VOODOO’S NEW YORK FACILITY

SHOWN: VOODOO CLEAR ALIGNERS’ FLEET OF FORMLABS FORM 2 MACHINES

since the company was founded in 2017. It is a method also attempted by Align in its early years, but the idea was ditched because the company reckoned it could get a better grasp of quality control by managing the manufacturing operations independently and all under one roof. Smilelove, though, recognizes the infrastructure and expertise required to undertake those operations. “We have been relentless in our efforts to partner with world-class 3D printing manufacturers to make sure that we provide our customers with the highest quality clear aligners on the market,” Smilelove co-founder Spencer Grider told TCT. “We leverage those companies which are manufacturing-first to do what they do best [and] manufacture highquality molds and aligners.” With 21 Form 2 machines in place at the time of Voodoo Clear Aligners’ launch in September, the company can output 20,000 aligners a month to serve 700 patients and plans to reach 80,000 to serve 2,800 patients by the end of the year. There are also plans to step up to the Form 3 model which, during trials, has produced lower failure and higher repeatability rates. The company manages between 12-16 molds per build – this will be about the same on the Form 3 – which are washed and cured

before a sheet of plastic, developed by ZenduraDental, is thermoformed over each printed part. A six-axis robotic arm will trim away excess material – a task believed to have only been automated by four companies around the world – before aligners are polished, sorted and shipped. This all takes place under the supervision of Voodoo Clear Aligners. “We chose a manufacturer who was able to provide a few things: a wealth of experience in 3D printing; the ability to produce a truly better aligner at a better cost which we then pass onto our customers; and the capacity to meet our rapidly growing demand while cutting our manufacturing time almost in half,” Grider said. “Because [Voodoo] is able to meet these standards using the Formlabs Form 2/3 systems, we are happy with them. We’d love to max out Voodoo’s production capacity and scale in tandem.” Chief among the company’s ‘lofty’ goals is optimizing the supply chain to deliver treatment plans within 4-5 weeks, rather than the 6-8 weeks patients currently have to wait. Along with the free post-treatment retainers and teeth whitening kits each patient receives, reducing the wait time to start treatment cycles is a key aspect of what Smilelove aims to offer the millions of 4

VOL 5 ISSUE 6 / www.tctmagazine.com / 011

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dental

 LEFT:

THERMOFORMING PROCESS

 BELOW:

DEPOWDERING ALIGNER MOLDS WITH HP’S MULTI JET FUSION TECHNOLOGY

people who could benefit from affordable orthodontic care. “Smilelove is a people-first company. We spend a majority of our efforts internally on providing an unparalleled customer experience,” Grider said. SmileDirectClub, meanwhile, oversees every aspect of its supply chain and, by installing 49 HP multi Jet Fusion (MJF) platforms at its Nashville ‘SmileLab’ production base, is gearing up to go toeto-toe with Align. “We are the only [direct to consumer] teledentistry business that is 100% vertically integrated. Unlike some competitors in the global market, [we don’t] farm out manufacturing and other back-office processes. We have control over every step which is vital to ensure a superior customer experience, quality products and services,” a spokesperson from SmileDirect told TCT. Founded in 2014, SmileDirect was once a partner of Align’s, but a legal dispute and a public offering later, SmileDirect is now out on its own, has served 700,000 people and is continuing to gain traction. The company has so far set up 300 ‘SmileShops’ where customers can have their mouths digitally scanned and plans to add more with expansions into Puerto Rico, Canada, Australia, and the UK already commenced. Users of the SmileDirect service can also retrieve manual impression kits via an online platform which attracts five million unique visitors a month. Overseas customers will see their shipments prioritized to ensure their wait is no longer than 3-4 weeks, and SmileDirect is hoping to keep costs up to 60% less than competitors. Once the patient’s information is gathered, SmileDirect can kick its fleet of MJF printers into action. With its current 3D printing capacity, SmileDirect can produce 500 aligner molds per batch with each printer running twice a day. That returns 49,000 molds, and therefore 49,000 aligners, a day, 343,000 a week and

17,836,000 a year. The company wants to hit 20 million by next summer. “We have a lot of secrets, and we have a lot of talent, but one of the things that is a key piece of our success - our secret weapon - is 3D printing,” SmileDirect’s VP of Manufacturing, Research and Development John Vargis said at TCT Show. “We are pushing the envelope and collaborating day by day with HP helps us accelerate our innovation and growth. It’s given us a big leg up on our manufacturing capabilities.” The company has been working with HP since 2016 when it took on a beta MJF machine and ran it, perhaps prematurely, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In the three years since, HP has been training SmileDirect service engineers in the same classes HP runs for its own staff. In the meantime, SmileDirect has been feeding back its experiences and enjoying the subsequent upgrades implemented on newer platforms. HP has also assigned dedicated ‘customer success’ engineers to address repeatable errors and work on cloud data analytics to develop predictive service notices. It is expected SmileDirect will commit to taking on more Multi Jet Fusion platforms in the not-toodistant future. “Keeping that technology running at that high performance [has been] one of our biggest obstacles and HP stepped up to the plate,” Vargis said. “We feel that HP [has] something that could disrupt the

“ONE OF THE THINGS THAT IS A KEY PIECE OF OUR SUCCESS - OUR SECRET WEAPON - IS 3D PRINTING”

printing industry to provide low-cost, high-quality parts, and, at the same time, scale with us.” Despite the assuredness of Align Technology, its greater experience and the 1.6 million aligners it produces every week, competitors are coming. There is room for them all in a market of tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of people who wish to enhance their smile, but each of Align, Smilelove, SmileDirect, and many more, will want to be the go-to supplier of clear aligners, the one to supply the highest quality product, cheapest service, and finest customer experience. Who occupies that position, in large part, will be down to which company gets the best out of 3D printing.

VOL 5 ISSUE 6 / www.tctmagazine.com / 013

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

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

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

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

SEPT/OCT 2020 NEC, Birmingham, UK

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30 01

DENTAL

CERAMIC 3D PRINTING: A STEP BEYOND IN DENTAL PRODUCTS WORDS: M.Sc. Isabel Potestio, Business Developer at Lithoz GmbH

ue to their excellent biocompatibility, ceramic materials are recommended as the material of choice from dental restoration and implants to bone grafting material. Unlike metals, there is no debate around ion release or corrosion and they have long term stability both in soft and hard tissue. In addition, ceramic materials show significant advantages when it comes to fabricating restorations that appear as natural as possible in the long term. From an aesthetic point of view, all-ceramic restorative materials have significant advantages over metals in the optical imitation of the natural tooth; no grey shadows in gingival areas and implant collars in case of gum retractions. Often referred to as ‘ceramic steel’, zirconia is commonly used in the field of prosthetic dentistry to restore lost teeth or tooth substance by means of tooth supported crowns, Fixed Dental Prostheses (FDPs) and defect-oriented restorations such as occlusal veneers. Zirconia can also be used when it comes to replacing missing teeth by means of dental implants and implant supported prosthetic parts. Nowadays, the CAM (Computer-Aided Manufacturing) procedure for processing zirconia is performed by subtractive techniques, meaning that the zirconia parts in the aforementioned indications are milled from a prefabricated zirconia blank in a pre-sintered condition – the so-called

white body. In this state, zirconia has a low inherent strength. Due to this fact, during subtractive machining of the material, thin borders can break out and consecutively lead to an evident discrepancy between the design and the fabricated part. For this reason, thin borders and edges often have to be designed over-contoured in these areas to prevent the edges from breaking out during the machining. However, this also results in a considerable amount of post-processing work in these zones. Since the crown margin is, along with the occlusal surface, a very important area of a crown and bridge restoration, the post-processing must be carried out very carefully and under the stereomicroscope. This post-processing is considerably time consuming and costly. Furthermore, fissures of the occlusal surfaces also require postprocessing, as rotating instruments can only reproduce the classic tapered fissure geometry to a limited extent. With increasing aesthetic and performance demands, ceramic 3D printing rises as a solution which meets the challenges of the dental sector. It offers newfound design freedom as

SHOWN: ZIRCONIA IS USED TO RESTORE LOST TEETH OR TOOTH SUBSTANCE BY MEANS OF TOOTH SUPPORTED CROWNS, FIXED DENTAL PROSTHESES AND DEFECT-ORIENTED RESTORATIONS

complex 3D metal-free applications are produced layer-by-layer while enabling the technological limitations of standard ceramic processes such as milling to be overcome. With 3D printing there are no limitations to where the milling burst can get into and no limits to the thickness of the restoration. Minimally invasive veneers can be reliably fabricated with very thin borders and feather edges down to 100 µm and with better mechanical stability compared to milled veneers. In addition, aesthetic results of monolithic reconstructions can be achieved as 3D printing can produce geometries which resemble the nature of an occlusal surface. For replacing a missing tooth, endosseous screw-type dental implants offer a suitable treatment option. Using Lithography-based Ceramic Manufacturing, it is possible to manufacture complex shaped and patient-specific ceramic implants in large numbers in a highly reproducible manner. In a production environment, machines are capable of producing upwards of 60,000 items per year. Furthermore, ceramic 3D printing offers different applications within the field of cranio-maxillofacial surgery and treatment of critically sized bone defects in the lower jaw. The challenge in treating such large defects is that, without proper measures, the bone itself will not be able to heal the defect. Thus, a dual approach is presented here, with a shell of high-strength zirconia giving the proper support during the healing phase and the inner volume of the implant being made of bioresorbable beta-Tricalcium Phosphate (ß-TCP). It has been proven that ß-TCP has good osseointegrative properties, and that by choosing suitable pore and strut dimensions the bone ingrowth can be significantly influenced. The ß-TCP will be resorbed by the cells and replaced by newly formed bone, while the zirconia cage can be left in place due to its biocompatibility.

VOL 5 ISSUE 6 / www.tctmagazine.com / 015

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NEWS

NEWS: DENTAL CARBON AND DENTSPLY SIRONA LAUNCH WORKFLOW FOR 3D PRINTED DENTURES

FORMLABS LAUNCHES DENTAL 3D PRINTER AND BUSINESS UNIT

Carbon has teamed with Dentsply Sirona, one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of professional dental products and technologies, on a new 3D printing workflow for dentures. The Lucitone Digital Print Denture workflow and material system has been optimized for Carbon’s M-Series printers to deliver the first digitally produced complete single arch dentures over existing dentition (1 arch), and full-overfull dentures (2 arches) made with Dentsply Sirona material. The cloud-based workflow includes five core products:

Formlabs has announced the launch of a new 3D printer and business unit focused on dental. Formlabs Dental and the new Form 3B printer, based on the company’s recent Low Force Stereolithography technology, are said to provide nextgeneration materials, service and software. The Form 3B will be compatible with more than 10 materials including an inhouse developed Surgical Guide Resin and four new shades of Denture materials. These can be easily swapped out using the cartridge system to cater to a number of dental applications such as crown and bridge models, clear aligner and retainer models, surgical guides, and patterns for casting and pressing. To expand on this, Formlabs has also announced the Formlabs Materials Partner Platform which will allow third party manufacturers to develop new materials for the Form 3B. In addition to hardware and materials, Formlabs is also offering a Dental Service Plan to provide self-learning and training. This includes bespoke in-person or video tutorials, email and phone support with dental specialists and hot swapping printers for continuous production.

Lucitone Digital Print 3D Denture Resin, IPN 3D Digital Denture Teeth, Lucitone Digital Try-in 3D Trial Placement Resin, Lucitone Digital Fuse 3-Step system, and the Lab Speedcure Processing Unit. Leveraging Carbon’s Digital Light Synthesis technology, the Lucitone Digital Print 3D Denture Resin enables labs to print up to eight denture arches in approximately two hours. Dentures produced with the resin hold high impact and flexural strength, while True Color Technology allows for consistent results in five Lucitone shades.

The news has been described as “a paradigm shift for 3D printed prostheses” and aims to provide significant advancements in materials, laboratory processes, and functionality for the patients.

ZORTRAX LAUNCHES BIOCOMPATIBLE DENTAL 3D PRINTING RESINS Zortrax has announced new biocompatible resins that have been optimized for dental and prosthetic applications on its Inkspire 3D printing platform. Raydent Crown & Bridge is class IIa biocompatible, ensuring it is safe to contact human tissue for up to 30 days, and boasts high abrasion resistance guaranteeing permanent smooth surfaces and anatomical shape for the duration of its usage. Raydent Surgical Guide, meanwhile, has been developed for the printing of precise prosthetic surgical guides. With Class I biocompatibility, the Surgical Guides grade is safe for transient contact with human tissue. The material is also

translucent to enhance visibility, features high dimensional accuracy to enable correct placement of implants or guidance for tools, and low viscosity and water resistance to make the guides easy to wash. With the introduction of these new materials, Zortrax believe users will now not only be able to generate prototypes, but move into the production of final parts for intraoral use by patients.

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POWDER M WORDS: SAM DAVIES

hen, we came up with an idea.”

Those seven words are uttered a lot in the additive manufacturing industry, typically by vendors who have crossed the threshold after a not-sosuccessful adoption of 3D printing technology, deciding to take matters into their own hands. Luigi Monaco, a Managing Partner at PULVERMEISTER GmbH, became the latest person to tell TCT of his company’s idea. He fell foul of what is – hopefully now was – roundly considered 3D printing’s dirty little secret. The machine he purchased some time ago now, a P110 from EOS, wasn’t simply going to churn out ready-to-use parts in record times like he initially thought. There was to be a post-processing phase to follow, and, it turns out, a post-processing company too. “We started producing with the machine,” Monaco recounted. “But nobody told us about post-processing. What everybody said is ‘you have to hit it a little bit, brush it, and then you’re good.”

PULVERMEISTER’s process takes somewhere between one and two hours, depending on the material used (only PA11 is offered at the moment), the volume of parts, and the geometry of the parts – “The higher the cavities are, the thicker the powder is, the longer it will take,” Monaco explained. PULVERMEISTER also recommends processing a bulk of the same component at a time so as to avoid bigger parts damaging smaller ones when in the separation and/ or blasting drum.

Indeed, manufacturers harnessing powder bed fusion technologies for serial production are the target market. PULVERMEISTER will invite customers to test their applications on its ≤300,000 EUR post-processing platform, making adjustments as and when necessary. Already, the company has received feedback from a select few companies, plus a range of Formnext visitors who stopped by the PULVERMEISTER booth, but Monaco told TCT the company has cooled customer interaction temporarily to focus on concluding the development of the platform before commercialization next year.

Not the case. Monaco would spend four and a half hours depowdering and machine blasting a batch of parts to come off his P110 three times a week for eight months, all the while telling himself he would not do this next year. But money was coming in, and Monaco was the only person in the company capable of running the printer and finishing the parts which prevented him from delegating. Then, those seven words.

JUST MY TYP The result is the Typ3, exhibited at Formnext 2019 for the first time, one year after the company debuted its Typ2 in the start-up area. A two-ton box, Monaco slid open the door to reveal two stainless steel hexagon-shaped drums, both soldered to ensure air tightness, one located above the other. The top drum has been designed to remove the powder from selective laser sintered parts, with the powder then being sucked down a pipe and into a container for recycling. A video of the process at Formnext showed the drum of PULVERMEISTER’s prototype machine – the Typ1 – being elevated, turned and rotated for around ten minutes before slowing to a stop. A batch of parts printed in PA 11 Black were then dropped from the upper drum to the lower one where they were sandblasted with glass beads, the drum spinning and rotating again, for around 40 minutes. Upon leaving the second drum, the components were ready to use and had maintained their black coloring. The unpacking of parts from the powder bed and subsequent sandblasting process have been separated to ensure the powder is contamination-free and can be re-used.

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4 SHOWN:

E-BIKE CHIP TUNING DEVICE

POST-PROCESSING

MASTER “We had a lot of customers in the beginning of this year, potential customers,” Monaco said. “And then, in March, we said we will not accept any more customers or potential customers because we have to build the machine, it was always an interruption in the construction process. The results were all very positive. They all said, ‘please call us when it’s ready’, they basically saw their problem solved. But we finished the machine for [Formnext] and delivery will be Q2 or Q3, we’re pretty sure before the next Formnext. We will test until we’re satisfied but this is our goal.”

JUST IN TIME One user of the PULVERMEISTER system who has been seeing the benefits is a company called Badass eBikes. This is where Monaco’s aforementioned struggle occurred, where the subsequent idea for the PULVERMEISTER post-processing platform originated and

SHOWN: PULVERMEISTER'S TYP3 MACHINE

whose parts were featured in the video shown at Formnext. The company has a somewhat rebellious reputation in the electric bike space: its flagship product is a chip tuning device that effectively unlocks the speed restriction of bikes and allows users to travel at speeds higher than the standard maximum of 25 kilometres per hour. Controversial though the product is, the casing of tuning device is, it turns out, a good example of how 3D printing can be applied for an end use component. The demand for the device isn’t overwhelming – Badass eBikes additively manufactures around 25,000 of the part in PA 11 Black every year – and so the company produces the parts in short runs on a monthly basis. The company cannot manufacture a mass volume of the parts and stick them in inventory because e-bike vendors will regularly make alterations to their bikes to render chip tuning devices useless. To prevent their warehouse being emptied out and the contents

thrown in the bin without sale or use, Badass eBikes has implemented a just-in-time manufacturing operation with selective laser sintering and PULVERMEISTER post-processing hardware at the center. It will deploy the Typ3 to replace its Typ1 early next year. “Just-in-time is one of the main advantages of the whole system, apart from being capable of building things that you cannot do with injection molding,” Monaco said. “Time to market – having your part, pictures, putting them on the web shop and selling – is a week. [If you can] do that with another process, tell me about it. It’s incredible. It’s saved sales. Do injection molding, it’s 12 weeks.” As PULVERMEISTER comes to market with its post-processing platform in the next 12 months, it will be hoping to facilitate similar accelerations to the Badass eBikes business it’s linked to, but in doing so, receive a much warmer welcome on the market.

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POST-PROCESSING

WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS

POWDER REMOVAL GETS SMART

arlier this year, I took a tour of Materials Solutions – a Siemens Business’ new additive manufacturing (AM) facility in the UK. The facility, dedicated to direct metal AM currently houses more than 20 AM machines with the capacity to extend to around 50. It’s a smart factory in every sense of the word, covering the AM production line from digital file all the way to finished part, with one exception; the trusty little chisel that sits in the postprocessing station of the factory floor, used to knock off supports from laser sintered parts destined for Siemens Power and Gas, and customers in the aerospace, automotive and other industrial markets. That chisel is not an uncommon sight for any digital factory floor, coupled with blast cabinets for manual powder removal. Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that German powder removal solutions specialist Solukon Maschinenbau GmbH took home the award in the post-processing category at this year’s TCT Awards ceremony for its intelligent de-powdering solution, the product of a collaboration with none other than Siemens, which now has five Solukon systems at its Worcester site. “We quickly realized that this was a very good fit for the type of de-powdering that we wanted for complex additively manufactured parts,” Nick Turner, Project Manager at Materials Solutions told TCT.

“We're now experimenting with the de-powdering times to make industrialized manufacture of additive parts more efficient and more reliable. Using the Solukon machines, we have confidence that we'll de-powder the parts effectively meaning that we have more confidence in our downstream processes.” You’ll hear post-processing referred to as a few things in the AM world; the Achilles heel, the dirty secret. A word you will rarely hear associated with it, is intelligent. This winning solution packages Siemens software knowledge with Solukon’s post processing expertise into an SFMAT800-S de-powdering system. Equipped with an intelligent algorithm, the machine rotates the part in a sequence derived from its CAD geometry, rather than programmed, to successfully and safely remove residual powder from even the most inaccessible areas. Andreas Hartmann, CEO/CTO at Solukon explained: “Siemens came and said, ‘let's do a software that detects the internal channels of the part so that our machine moves exactly along a path, along the labyrinth’. So, we changed the machine with two endless rotating axes to give more freedom for rotation.”

SHOWN: PARTS ARE ROTATED IN A SEQUENCE DERIVED FROM THEIR CAD GEOMETRY

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SHOWN: SFM-AT800-S DE-POWDERING SYSTEM

“It has given us a confidence in our process that wasn't present before and that's something that we pass on to our customers as well,” Turner said. “So, with the confidence that we can effectively de-powder complex components, we know that we can focus our efforts on our other downstream processes and continue our automation journey knowing that this stage of the automation journey is a gap that has been filled effectively.” Manufacturing for the gas and power industry means a huge portion of Materials Solutions output is large-scale parts with internal cavities. Dealing at these volumes, there may be multiple parts placed on a single build plate and it is crucial that each is processed in the same way to ensure repeatability. “We have the digital link on our Solukon machines where we can tailor our de-powdering programmes specific to the parts that we want to de-powder,” Turner adds. “If we know we have a certain complex channel structure on a part, then we can design the routing for de-powdering specifically on that part.” Yet, there’s another major advantage to this automated solution. In the list of AM benefits you’ll no doubt hear reeled off at any given conference, one is sustainability. Unlike subtractive manufacturing, you only use the material you need but what about powder that doesn’t get used? Solukon’s intention is to reclaim that residual powder, free of contamination free and ready for further processing. Hartmann concludes: “We are concentrating on the sustainability and I think that was a good product to have in the industry, to have a sustainable tool for reclamation of powder and recovery of powder and [provide] much more for health and safety and automation.”

Formnext

WORDS: LAURA GRIFFITHS

FORMNEXT 2019 REVIEW A s it’s likely to take us beyond Christmas to get through the mass of news, press conference notes and interviews from our annual trip to Frankfurt – apologies to all of my family members who will be receiving various additive manufacturing branded USB sticks this year – for our last issue of 2019, we’re looking back on what has now become one of the busiest weeks on the TCT editorial calendar. In addition to aching feet due to the mammoth trek between halls 11 and 12, connected by the two stages of the TCT Conference @ Formnext, the common theme throughout Formnext was once again about maturity. Concepts we saw demoed just one or two years prior like EOS’s Shared Modules are now said to be ready for factory floors, and long-standing challenges around historically unserved topics like post-processing are being addressed with automation by companies like Additive Manufacturing Technologies (AMT) and collectives like AMP+. As with every year, there were more promises of moving towards production and real manufacturing, and similarly, this year came with more evidence to prove that close attention is being paid to ensure we get there. Take, for example, Desktop Metal whom I spent an afternoon with chatting about their new Shop System that’s targeting an untapped section of manufacturing; machine shops. The 150,000 USD binder jet machine, on the cover of this very magazine, features a high-speed, single-pass print engine said to be 10x faster than laser powder bed systems, allowing for up to 70kg of steel parts to be processed per day. For machine shops requiring more than the smaller Studio System but perhaps priced out by the larger

Production System, this could be just the thing they’re looking for.

Naturally, production was a reoccurring topic of discussion. For years we have talked about the transition from prototyping to production and whether it’s GE Additive applying its Arcam EBM Spectra H to produce a milling cutter in highly alloyed tool steel (that is some TOUGH material) or Velo3D printing rocket nozzles support free with thin walls to allow improved heat transfer, there were plenty of examples to be found. GE Additive’s Chief Technology Officer, Christine Furstoss said of the significance of the entire ecosystem in the move to industrialization: “It's not just the machine. It's not just the material. They're all important.” In addition to the major players, there were also a number of new

companies making their debut, like One Click Metal, a spinout of machine tool manufacturer TRUMPF, that is aiming to deliver an affordable and accessible metal 3D printer to the market thanks to easy swap-out powder cartridges and a low price point. Israel-based company Tritone showcased its DOMINANT metal 3D printer with its huge MoldJet technology platform which prints parts in a powderless environment with real-time auto layer correction. Meanwhile, in materials, newcomer 6K Additive exhibited its UniMelt microwave plasma platform for the first time, capable of producing premium AM powders from certified machining turnings and previously used materials. Materials was another big area of discussion. Amongst several other vendors, Clariant launched a new fire, smoke and toxicity compliant material, Adaptive3D introduced Elastic ToughRubber 90 resin, and Essentium showcased a new portfolio of advanced high-4

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SHOWN: THE EOS AND DYEMANSION BOOTHS PROVED QUITE THE DRAW

temperature nylon materials. Speaking with TCT, Keith Cox, senior business manager for Additive Manufacturing at SABIC’s Specialties business, which announced a number of collaborations at the event, said in terms of additive production, whether you’re in materials, hardware, whatever it may be; “everybody has something to contribute.” Catching up on countless press releases received throughout the four-day event (note to PRs – send news early!), there’s a common thread in the images of suited and booted bosses shaking hands in front of AM machines; that theme is collaboration and as evidenced at this year’s RAPID + TCT, it’s one the industry continues to champion. Evolve’s CEO, Steve Chillscyzn, said it best during the company’s press conference where he namechecked strategic partners like Evonik, Rockwell Automation, Siemens and Kodak, as he introduced the company’s STEP technology platform: “We can’t do this alone. No one can.” Rosler and HP; Renishaw and Sandvik; Oerlikon and Hirtenberger; Solvay and Ultimaker, the list goes on and it shows that companies are focusing their attention on the parts of the value chain they are good at while calling upon partners, whether that’s in hardware, software, materials, automation or post-processing, to boost the industry together.

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“WE CAN'T DO THIS ALONE. NO ONE CAN.” SHOWN: THE TCT CONFERENCE AT FORMNEXT, AS ALWAYS, PROVED POPULAR

FORMNEXT

While the MANY press conferences at shows like this can verge on overload, this year, it seemed companies used their time wisely. Instead of treating press conferences as simply a platform for their latest products, vendors like Stratasys, EOS and HP hosted panels featuring experts and users who gave insights into how such products are having real impact. Brand new kit is nice, but user stories are the best indicator of the technology’s progression and Stratasys’ new Rail Industry Solution, first presented at TCT Show, was a prime example of true industry adoption. The same could be said of the Additive Manufacturing Users Group panel session which took place on the TCT Introducing Stage sponsored by Link3D, and brought leaders across various corners of

industry to discuss technical challenges of AM workflows to scale production. That said, launches were there in abundance. DyeMansion introduced its new Powerfuse S solution, said to be “the first chemical smoothing solution that proves to be clean and industry-ready.” In contrast to corrosive solvents or acids, DyeMansion’s VaporFuse Eco Fluid solvent is said to be harmless and can safely be used for the processing of plastics intended to come into contact with food according to regulation (EU) 10/2011. The solvent is circulated continuously in a closed loop and automatically recovered by the system. Meanwhile, AMT’s postprocessing Digital Manufacturing System aims to address the manual intervention required in finishing an additive part with a comprehensive manufacturing cell that can be customized to the user’s requirements. SPEE3D demoed its additive manufacturing production cell, combining a heat treatment furnace and CNC three-axis milling machine, and successfully printed a 1 kilo copper sledgehammer in 10 minutes live on the show floor. Barcelona-based 3D printer manufacturer BCN3D unveiled the BCN3D Epsilon, claiming to bring “industrial power to your workbench”, and Polish 3D printer manufacturer 3DGence introduced the new INDUSTRY F420 polymer extrusion-based printer designed for the manufacture of end-use parts, functional prototypes, jigs & fixtures at high speed.

SHOWN: PARTS MANUFACTURED USING GE'S ARCAM EBM TECHNOLOGY

GEWO Feinmechanik GmbH and its 3D printing division GEWO 3D showed its new AM machine (and the latest TCT Germany Magazine cover star) the GEWO Performer 260. The company, which specializes in complex workpieces for the semiconductor industry, aerospace, medicine and research, says the biggest advantages of the system are faster print speeds, high reproducibility, higher print temperatures with shorter preheating timeframes, a large build chamber and compatibility with a wide range of materials. On the metals side, we also saw debuts from INCUS, born out of Lithoz, with its Hammer Series metal printers which fabricate green parts from a photoreactive, metal-filled feedstock using a high-performance projector. Further down the hall Meltio premiered its M450 3D printer which features a patented metal technology based on direct energy deposition (DED) with a high power multi-laser print head for manufacturing with metal wire and powder. There were less obvious themes emerging too, such as the influx of custom built machinery and developments away from laser-based technologies, noted by TCT Head

of Content, Dan. A closer look past the bigger statement machines on some booths paid off, particularly in the case of Xerox which, alongside its liquid metal 3D printer, had embedded its inkjet expertise into a new nozzle that could speed up the extrusion process for FDM. Away from the show floor, the TCT Conference @ Formnext was once again a prime opportunity to hear from real users of additive technologies. Delegates packed in to hear from companies like Schubert, who are so confident in AM’s ability to transform their workflows, their CEO of Additive Solutions, Jörg Brenner recently commented; “We believe that 3D printing is the solution for a large number of tools and parts and can replace conventional manufacturing methods in many places.” Maximilian Meixlsperger, Head of AM Metal at BMW Group opened up the conference with the potential and challenges for AM in automotive from the point of view of one of AM’s biggest super users, while Dr Wilderich Heising at The Boston Consulting Group explored how to make the right technology decisions by assessing the current AM landscape. In healthcare, Alex Kingsbury from RMIT University highlighted the barriers associated with the global adoption of patient-specific implants, and Cemile Basgul at Drexel University took a deep dive into how different extrusion-based PEEK printer generations might affect the outcome for printed spinal cages. So, what does all of this mean as you head back to your offices and put away your show shoes? Those reallife applications should serve as food for thought in your own manufacturing workflows, whether that's sticking a printer on your desk to make jigs and fixtures, or finding a partner to help tackle a complex bottleneck. It also means taking stock of where this industry still needs to progress. Production is still the big one, and we're not 100% there, but whether that means ironing out creases by honing in on laser behavior and gas flow like GE Additive, or adding robotics to truly automate like EOS, the right cogs are all turning.

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ADDITIVE COM

HEAD OF CONTENT DAN O’CONNOR ON HIS WHISTLE STOP TOUR TO GE ADDITIVE’S NEW BAVARIAN CAMPUS.

last-minute decision to attend the opening of GE Additive’s Lichtenfels Campus in Germany meant my route was circuitous and my time to prepare for interviews limited. Arriving at my hotel I was trying to figure out the last time I was in town visiting the company GE acquired as part of a $1.5 billion deal, Concept Laser. Through the powers of Google Photos, I realized that it was, in fact, five years ago to the day since I took part in Concept’s 2014 user group. In many ways a lot has changed in half a decade; gone is the Concept Laser orange color scheme, in is GE Additive’s blue and white, the workforce is four times larger and the new facility has that smart factory, Industry 4.0 feel you tend only to get from multinationals. What hasn’t changed is the team spirit that Concept Laser Founder and CEO Frank Herzog instilled with his commitment to the code of honor that is the Deutsche Mittelstand. “Behind the companies there are owners and we have a responsibility to take care of the people,” Frank Herzog told me five years ago. “The people that work for us, who we have a responsibility to as a longterm employer; being a reliable partner the people that are our customers; and the people in our local surrounding, who we support by the sponsorship of social and sporting activities. We are a community.” After working to bring the metal additive manufacturing technology

to market for the best part of two decades, Frank and his wife Kerstin undoubtedly made a great deal of money in the deal with GE. One would forgive the pair for jetting off to a tropical paradise, but such is Frank’s dedication to additive manufacturing in Bavaria, he has overseen the integration between the two companies at the Lichtenfels site and GE Additive’s CEO, Jason Oliver called the new campus ‘Frank’s Vision’. “Mohammad Ehteshami [the VP of additive integration at GE at the time of acquisition] asked me really to make a plan for how we want to ramp up here in Lichtenfels,” Frank said at the grand opening. “The result is this campus here. It hits the numbers of machines we need to produce, and it has the flexibility to shape what we do in the future.” The new 40,000-square-meter facility will replace what is currently 26 different buildings all with different functionalities. The campus’s singularity is, for a man so focussed on community, the most important feature. “We’re a family,” says Frank. “You are only working when you're together, when you're sitting together on a table in the evening having dinner together, it's the same here, for efficient working and collaborating, I think you need to be together. The character of this building is like a university campus; we have open offices, we have silent working areas, we have meeting areas to exchange ideas, we have a nice canteen; people have the chance again to work closely together and to create. Concept Laser had its own culture

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SHOWN: GE ADDITIVE TEAM CUTS RIBBON ON NEW CAMPUS

GE ADDITIVE

MMITMENT  BELOW:

JASON OLIVER, PRESIDENT & CEO, GE ADDITIVE, KERSTIN AND FRANK HERZOG, FOUNDERS OF CONCEPT LASER

I was given a tour of the facility by GE Additive’s Andrew Simpson, Pascal Krause and Wolfgang Lauer, all of whom have been involved in the new facility from the ground up. For those that have worked in the other Lichtenfels facility, there is more to being under one roof than ideas of culture and future, there’s a much more practical benefit. “Do you need to ask somebody a question?” asks Pascal. “Now, instead of having to run three kilometers,”

SHOWN: GE ADDITIVE’S NEW FACILITY

“In the rain and the snow,” Wolfgang interjects. “Now it’s only 200 meters.”

“IN THE FUTURE, THERE WILL BE PLENTY OF HIRING AND MORE MACHINES COMING OUT THE DOOR.” and this will change. The new culture will be a mixture of GE and Concept Laser culture, Arcam will add color to this culture, it's the GE Additive culture.” There isn’t anybody more embracing of the new culture than GE Additive CEO Jason Oliver. Jason delivered a speech to the gathered employees and dignitaries in word-perfect German. “This campus represents a commitment to Lichtenfels,” extolls Jason. “A commitment to Bavaria, a commitment to Germany, and a commitment to Frank and the people that have that have built Concept Laser. An investment in the campus of 150 million euros tells you that we are committed to the industry, we know about where the growth is going to come from, and we have real plans to achieve that. In the future, there will be plenty of hiring and more machines coming out the door.”

The production of the M2, M Line, X Line and Mlab machines will move there ultimately move in its entirety to these two long bright and airy corridors. The facility houses shipping and receiving areas, it has a warehouse facility, it has a walled off R&D lab where the team will work on the next generation of machines, and the entire front side of the building facing the autobahn will be dedicated office space for the admin, accounts and customer service teams. The building itself looks every bit as good as those renders you see of factories of the future in presentations. It has the flexibility to add automation to the production/assembly process and Jason Oliver is keen that the facility echoes the technology GE Additive is going to produce: “Automation is absolutely key. If you look at our latest product line that we will manufacture here in this facility, the M Line, that has a lot of automation already built in, where you're now not touching powder at all. It's highly efficient and we’ll have whole factories based on that kind of concept, where you have full production lines connected.” Although Jason has the vision for the future, coming from the world of 2D printing where speed and reliability is king, Jason is all too aware that those are the two areas metal additive manufacturing needs to address now. The GE Additive Campus and team here in Lichtenfels certainly seems like it has the wherewithal to do so.

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FINANCE

INDUSTRY SHIPMENTS REPORT

CHRIS CONNERY, VP GLOBAL ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH, LEADS THE 3D PRINTING EFFORT FOR CONTEXT WITH OVER A QUARTER OF A CENTURY OF EXPERIENCE IN BRAND MANAGEMENT, MARKETING AND INDUSTRY ANALYSIS OF VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE IT MARKET. HERE, HE PRESENTS THE LATEST FINDINGS ON THE 3D PRINTING MARKET. root outside the education and hobby markets, many vendors are now completely shifting their focus to the Professional class.

PROFESSIONAL PRICE CLASS

atest CONTEXT analysis of the global 3D printer markets sees the Professional, Design and Industrial markets set for growth in spite of cautious outlook in some sub-markets, but the Personal sector continuing to struggle. Double-digit printer shipment growth for the year as a whole is still projected with rising shipments from new form factors and from within certain vertical markets offsetting newly cautious forecasts for slowing manufacturing and automobile sectors.

PERSONAL PRICE CLASS Defined by having an entry-level price point (below $2,500), this class of 3D printers has now seen six consecutive quarters of declining sales. Projections for the remainder of the year show that the class may struggle to see flat year-on-year shipment totals after a fall of -10% in Q2 2019. With no signs of emerging geographies, and sales yet to take

This is now a hot sector. On a trailing twelve months (TTM) basis, this class – along with the Industrial class – has seen the greatest growth: unit shipments up +8% and revenues rising +37% over the past year. While the dental market has embraced many modes of 3D printing using machines at a range of price points, sales of Professional printers have been exceptionally strong in recent quarters – exemplified by strong shipments of 3D Systems’ Figure-4/ NextDent platform and EnvisionTEC’s One line. The segment saw a shortterm downturn in Q2 2019 with shipments falling by -7% year-on-year, but this was more a supply-chain/ product transition issue for one vendor rather than due to reduced demand.

DESIGN PRICE CLASS Unit sales in this segment have long been dominated by three of the oldest players in the market (Stratasys, 3D Systems and EnvisionTEC) but recent quarters have seen HP enter the field and contribute to an 11% rise in shipments in Q2 2019 –and an even stronger rise in printer revenues of +26% . HP’s new color 3D printers performed especially well in this period.

INDUSTRIAL PRICE CLASS Industrial price-class printer shipments were up just +4% in Q2 2019 and only +5% in 1H 2019 but, historically, over 30% of this category’s shipments come in

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the fourth quarter. Key verticals such as the European automotive sector are currently weak – as evidenced by the shipment of -18% fewer metal powder bed fusion printers in Q2 2019 than in the year before – and many are pointing to slow sales into this market as a key issue. However, other verticals are still strong and the outlook for the year remains positive. Shipments of Industrial class printers in the Chinese domestic market were particularly strong in 1H 2019, and the new sub-class of lower-priced metal 3D printing solutions from the likes of Desktop Metal and Markforged have also buoyed this class this year. Bottom-up forecasts for 2H 2019 project that strong Q4 shipments will yield double-digit unit shipment growth in the Industrial, Design and Professional classes with the Professional class poised for the strongest annual growth of +15%.

 BELOW:

CHART 1: GLOBAL 3D PRINTER SHIPMENTS BY PRICE CLASS SHOWING Y/Y CHANGE (NOTE TWO SCALES)

GREY MATTERS IN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION WORDS: Jason Teng, partner and patent attorney at European IP law firm, Potter Clarkson

ntellectual property (IP) protection is a major feature of the additive manufacturing (AM) sector, with the registration of IP rights covering new AM processes, hardware, materials and end products as well as copyright issues over digital files all commonplace. Yet, while existing IP laws are generally viewed as adequate for current needs, new technological developments have exposed a number of grey areas in the industry, specifically around subsistence of IP rights, infringement and enforceability.

BIOPRINTING 3D bioprinting is increasingly used to fabricate tissue models for in vitro testing and research, but the long-term goal lies in its application to the field of regenerative medicine. Although many aspects of 3D bioprinting are patentable, bioprinted tissues and organs may face barriers to patentability in the form of excluded subject matter, medical exclusion and public policy. European and US patent laws exclude a human organism from patent eligibility but conversely do not explicitly rule out patent protection for human organism parts such as tissue and organs. Furthermore, non-human subject matter constitutes patentable subject matter as long as it is synthetic or modified to an artificial state. Accordingly, 3D bioprinted tissue and organs will remain patentable so long as they are distinguishable from natural tissue and organs. In terms of infringement, identification of an infringing bioprinted product would be less clear-cut and more complicated if it is only distinguished from a natural tissue or organ by its fabrication process and if it is then implanted into the human body. Moving forward, the level of artificiality in a bioprinted product

will be a key point of contention in determining matters of patentability and infringement.

4D PRINTING 4D printing takes existing 3D printing techniques to create, from a digital file, a 3D object with the added ability of transforming its appearance or function over time. When considering infringement in AM, it is often asked who the infringer might be if the 3D printed object is designed, digitally modelled and printed by different parties. 4D printing further complicates this question because infringement by a party responsible for transforming the 4D printed object may hinge on whether the IP-protected elements of the 4D printed object cover the untransformed object, the transformed object or both. Protecting the transformed object without covering the untransformed version may lead to future difficulties in catching the infringer in the act of transforming the 4D printed object. Moreover, the 4D printed object in its untransformed state may be initially infringing but over time becomes noninfringing due to shape and structural changes. Therefore, to maximize the scope of IP protection for 4D printed objects, patents and IP agreements should be carefully worded to incorporate the transformative ability of 4D printed objects in addition to the 3D printing aspects.

PERSONALIZED MEDICINES The 3D printed pharmaceuticals market has attracted the involvement of many major industry players in recent years. Whilst patent and design rights can provide protection for 3D printed pills and production methods, there is the question of the ability to effectively enforce such IP rights. Under the UK Patents Act, an exemption to infringement exists for the preparation in a pharmacy of a medicine for an individual in accordance with a prescription given by a registered practitioner. This exemption appears to apply to medicine printing performed using AM in a pharmacy based on a prescription. UK patent law also provides an exemption to infringement for acts conducted privately and for non-commercial purposes. On the other hand, patents may be enforced against infringers supplying the means or materials relating to essential elements for putting the invention into effect. Whilst this might help restrict domestic medicine printing, digital file sharing via the internet could still make IP rights enforcement difficult. Ultimately, when bioprinting and pharmaprinting become more ubiquitous, IP in these areas is expected to attract the same questions faced by other medical inventions around rewarding innovation versus protecting public interest.

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grimm column

ack in May, I penned a bit of a rant in the article titled “Word of the Day”. The crux of that story was that players in AM have liberally adopted the term “industrial” to describe their printers. It is now so commonplace that industrial has become a meaningless adjective used for printers of all levels. The moral of that article was that each reader needs to decide for themselves what constitutes industrial-grade and then investigate to see if a printer measures up. Well, I am now living through this dilemma of defining industrial. After hours of deliberation and contemplation, I have not arrived at a suitable definition. The reason I am now enveloped by this quandary is that I am involved with the Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG). Every year, AMUG hosts a conference for additive manufacturing (AM) users. Conference attendance is limited to those that rely on AM, in their work lives, to get the job done and that are seeking input on both basic and advanced concepts. For years it has simply stated that to attend individuals must be affiliated with AM ownership or operation for commercial or industrial purposes. In the age of clear distinctions between consumergrade and professional-grade printers, that statement worked. Today, it doesn’t. AMUG provides a venue where users share insights and experiences that help them get more out of, and do more with, AM. While a casual user would certainly benefit from the conversations, he/she would likely contribute very little back to the community in terms of deep, meaningful information. AMUG is pondering the question “What is industrial?” so that it may be applied to interested attendees, sponsors and exhibitors. At the AMUG Conference, it is about quality of insightful conversations, not the quantity. While AMUG has a clear understanding of the demographic that it serves, it now TODD GRIMM

is a stalwart of the additive manufacturing industry, having held positions across sales and marketing with some of the industry’s biggest names. Todd is currently the AM Industry advisor with AMUG.

tgrimm@tagrimm.com

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faces the very same challenge I cited in the May article. As a member of AMUG’s Board, I am a part of a team trying to come up with answers; answers that have proven difficult to find. See for yourself; look up the definition of industrial and you will be presented a nebulous description that basically says, “used in industry”. The original fallback position, price point, is no longer a clear, distinct measure. The common threshold used in AM analysis is 5,000 USD. However, users convincingly prove that printers below that threshold can measure up when deployed by the dozens for a company’s engineering and manufacturing teams’ usage. At the same time, a comparably priced printer may sit idle for long stretches and then be used to make a few basic fixtures. Applications don’t work as a determining factor either. Prototyping is as valid as series production and surgical training aids are just as worthy of an industrial label as assembly fixtures. For other industries, such as power tools and office machines, an industrial label suggests high productivity, long duty cycles and extended service life. This would be an interesting and workable approach. However, the variety of technologies yields varying throughputs and vendors don’t publish expected duty cycles or service lives. In the future, we may be able to rely on OEE (overall equipment effectiveness), which incorporates throughput, scrap, uptime and usage, but this isn’t widely used or commonly published. So, what else is there that can be used to award an industrial label to an AM solution? Maybe you have the answer. Imagine that you will be at the AMUG Conference seeking deep, insightful conversations that help you and your company advance AM. Now ponder what kind of people you can get that information from, both on the attendee side and exhibitor side. What are the characteristics of the AM solutions they use or sell that would form a clear, unquestionable foundation that answers the question, “What is industrial-grade?” If you have any thoughts on this, get in touch.

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