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3D PRINTING SERVICES

LABS LOCATED THROUGHOUT THE U.S. CONTAIN THE LATEST ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING TECH FOR PRINTING FDM, POLYJET, STEREOLITHOGRAPHY, ORIGIN ONE (P3 TECHNOLOGY), AND SAF (POWDERBED FUSION) MATERIALS.

Cover story 6

06. NEED FOR SPEED

Metal 3D printing firm SPEE3D discusses AM for production, manufacturing in the field, and sustainability.

Sustainability 9

09. RENEW AND REUSE

On the back of a visit to 6K Additive in Pittsburgh, Sam Davies explores the company’s sustainability efforts.

10. SUSTAINABILITY AND AM

Additive Manufacturing experts from the Manufacturing Technology Centre in the UK discuss the sustainability credentials of AM.

13. 5 THINGS WE LEARNED FROM DR PHIL REEVES’ TCT 3SIXTY TALK

Laura reports on some key takeaways from a TCT 3Sixty Conference presentation, which provided a frank assessment of sustainability in AM.

14. GREEN GAME CHANGERS

Laura Griffiths talks to Siemens’ Eryn Devola about digital transformation, sustainability as a business metric, and more.

Polymers

16

16. DOES IT HAVE TO BE METAL?

A look at the proliferation of highperformance polymers for end-use parts.

19. MAKING THE FUTURE

Sam speaks to Merit3D CEO Spencer Loveless about the company’s additive manufacture of one million epoxy hanger products.

21 RAPID + TCT

21. SPEAK AT RAPID + TCT

North America’s most influential AM event is on the lookout for conference presentations which provide insight and inspiration.

Heavy industry

23. NEW TERRITORIES

Seurat Technologies discusses use of its Area Printing technology to produce 59 tons of Siemens Energy turbine parts.

25. WORDS GETS AROUND

We explore how Lincoln Electric’s Additive Solutions business is supporting several markets with its 3D printing services.

Culture 27

27. SURF’S UP

How 3D printing is being used to create foil surfboards at Australian start-up Foil Drive.

28. HOLLYWOOD INNOVATIONS

Gentle Giant’s Jason Lopes sits down with LAIKA Studios’ Brian McLean to discuss the evolution of 3D printing’s application in entertainment.

30. ROLL WITH THE PUNCHES

Carbon & Hayabusa detail how 3D printed lattices are enabling boxing gloves with enhanced protection.

32. TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME

Wilson Sporting Goods and Nexa3D share how their collaboration is reducing cost and time in the development of baseball bats.

34. WELCOME TO JURASSIC PRINT

Laura reports back from a behind the scenes tour of the Natural History Museum.

36 Expert Column

36. I’LL SHARE MY BANK CARD AND PIN BEFORE I SHARE MY AM DATA!

Rob Higham, CEO of Additive Manufacturing Solutions, shares his thoughts on data and intellectual property.

FROM THE EDITOR LAURA GRIFFITHS

Here in the UK, I can't think of many scenarios that would bring together additive manufacturing (AM) users from major companies like Stryker, GKN Aerospace, Alpine F1 and Thales for a frank, open dialogue about the state of the industry – but that’s exactly what we got at this year’s inaugural TCT UK User Group day.

Calls for a UK-based user group, akin to that of our friends at the Additive Manufacturing Users Group in the U.S., have been sounded for a while but this year, weeks before our 2023 TCT 3Sixty event, we decided to heed them and invite a select group of UK-based end-users to spend a day together at the NEC and hash out the industry’s key challenges – because what’s one more event when you’re on the last stretch of the run up to your flagship trade show?

The day homed in on three areas: AM repeatability, economics, and enterprise-wide adoption; the conversation that flowed was refreshing, enlightening, and at times, challenging.

Raised hands popped up from tables to flag the chicken and egg situation that AM finds itself in – we want repeatability to get to high volumes, but we need high volumes to prove out repeatability – and asked if, in a bid to turn AM into a reputable production method, we hold the technology to too high a standard compared to established processes. As one vocal participant shared –if you were to visit a traditional casting house and saw how the sausage is

made, you might never get on a plane again …

Yet one theme that continued to crop up no matter the subject was the need for more communication and knowledge sharing, as you’ll read from another proactive attendee in our expert column on page 38. No one expects a global aerospace firm, for example, to give away its AM secret sauce, but there is much to be gained by sharing not only our success stories but how they came to be, and similarly, how our failures taught us to grow.

Elsewhere in this issue, we tackle sustainability; the opportunities, misconceptions, and ongoing challenges, with input from the the MTC, Siemens and Dr Phil Reeves. In culture, we take a visit to the Natural History Museum's 3D visualization lab, catch up with Wilson Sporting Goods about something other than 3D printed basketballs, and present a conversation between two thoughtleaders in film about the evolution of AM in entertainment.

We've also just opened our call for papers for the 2024 RAPID + TCT Conference. Working with our partners at the SME, we are looking for original, high-quality abstracts that focus on the latest AM applications, research and business considerations. If you have insights to share and want to join us in California next year, you can all the details you need on page 21.

NEED FOR SPEED

SPEE3D CEO Byron Kennedy and Director, Corporate Programs EMEA David McNeill discuss AM for production, manufacturing in the field, and sustainability.

When you last spoke with TCT, you remarked that ‘when you get into production, it's all about speed.’ What else makes for successful adoption of AM for production?

BYRON: Speed and cost are the obvious ones – but there’s also usability. Can you put the technology in a factory or out in the field and rely on it to produce strong, reliable parts without a team of experts operating it? When we launched the XSPEE3D, which comes in a 20-ft container and is made to be transported into the field, we called it expeditionary technology. I like that term, but I also think usability is a good word – our process doesn’t have restrictive safety constraints so it can sit almost anywhere. It also has software built in that enables the user to generate parts without going through iterations of prototyping. It’s built for production, not for the lab, and I think that makes a huge difference in adoption among our customers.

DAVID: Vision is key. This is where our defence partners have excelled and moved the adoption needle quickly and effectively. They focused on an objective and took the steps to get themselves there. Adoption happened relatively quickly as a result and the adoption base continues to expand. Defence hasn’t cut any corners – there’s been rigorous engineering and qualification along the way – but all of that happened to deliver a common vision.

Compare this to other industries where I think we sometimes forget to set a vision or objective or forget that we’ve set one. A lot of activity takes place, but that activity gets stuck in the technical weeds. Little progress is made and therefore adoption is stifled.

The company launched in 2017 and since then you’ve introduced multiple solutions to the market based on metal cold spray technology. How would you describe the journey so far?

BYRON: Like with most new technology, the path taken was not the one initially envisioned. Coming from a manufacturing background, Steven (Camilleri – co-founder) and I focused our development around that sector. Soon after the first version was released, we were approached by the Australian Army with the request to deploy. We jumped at that opportunity and have grown substantially from that point onwards. Next steps are into parallel sectors: mining, oil & gas, and heavy industries. The manufacturing sector is still our passion,

though, and those applications are starting to evolve. Stay tuned…

SPEE3D’s technology has been widely adopted by customers in defence. Why do you think SPEE3D has had such interest from this sector?

DAVID: A combination of the pandemic and global insecurity (Ukraine for one) has caused defence, military, and government to think differently about supply. Commercial industry has had the same issues, but the potential impact has not been as severe for them to act with the pace and vigor defence has.

Why SPEE3D? Well, our technology simply meets the technical, commercial, and operational challenges being faced by defence – a need for larger metal parts of simple geometry on demand at the point of need from a financially viable and technically sound source.

You describe the recent XSPEE3D as “the next generation of deployable metal manufacturing.” Can you elaborate on that and your ambitions there?

BYRON: Our vision is bold – to have a printer less than two hours from anywhere. As you push the boundaries, SPEE3D will be there. As a soldier, miner, oil rig operator, manufacturer, or space explorer you need access to metal parts, now. To do this, you need technology that is robust, reliable, and above all, useful. XSPEE3D, a fully transportable solution, is enabling this vision to become a reality.

DAVID: SPEE3D’s ambitions are straightforward; to make manufacturing as easy as possible.

Listening to the market, they wanted a solution which could be moved anywhere and operated quickly by relatively inexperienced technicians. XSPEE3D is a fully containerized production cell that delivers precisely that capability.

We also know that for those clients of ours where operating tempo matters (e.g., defence, natural resources) having the production facility at the point of need adds value in an order of magnitude.

Could that deployable AM concept apply to other industries where on-demand manufacture is needed?

DAVID: Absolutely. We are talking in terms of technology and knowledge transfer here, not concept development. Defence has shown that Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing (CSAM) and mobile CSAM can be an effective and safe component of an AM strategy.

The competitive edge mobile CSAM offers industry is significant; lower costs, higher productivity, less downtime, release of capital, decarbonisation, etc. We see greatest utility in industries like energy and mining where the cost of production outage is high, where capital is tied up in physical spare parts most of which are never used, and where carbon emissions and environmental impact is hard to abate.

This issue of TCT is all about sustainability. What are your general thoughts on AM’s sustainability claims?

“SPEE3D technology less than two hours from anywhere.”

SHOWN: SPEE3D'S ROCKET NOZZLE & SIX-AXLE ROBOTIC ARM

SPEED

BYRON: Before SPEE3D, AM still relied on centralized manufacturing, followed by distribution. By manufacturing only what you need at the point of need, you not only minimize waste inherently, but you eliminate shipping and storage, which translates into a significant reduction in the carbon footprint –not to mention freed-up capital to reinvest in your operations.

DAVID: Generally speaking, AM offers manufacturing a great way to decarbonize. The most sustainable part is one you never make; AM’s ability to produce within a digital warehouse system rather than traditionally physically warehouse parts is the most obvious example of this.

On that, what would you say is unique about SPEE3D’s technology in terms of offering a sustainable manufacturing process?

DAVID: We are learning more every day but SPEE3D has two clear differentiators:

Point of need: Around 17% of CO2 emissions of any part is associated with shipping. By manufacturing at or close to the point of need you can eliminate a huge footprint here.

Low energy/CO2 process: An internal study demonstrated CSAM emits 60% less CO2 and consumes 33% less energy than the equivalent part made in casting.

Generally, SPEE3D is more sustainable from being a “cold” process. Any process which requires heat, lasers, etc. will involve high energy. CSAM relies on kinetic energy, so it’s a bit like keeping the heating in your house down or putting on a cooler wash. Eliminate the temperature/heating issue and you’re instantly being more sustainable.

Are you undertaking sustainability initiatives in-house?

BYRON: As an Australian business, we see the effects of climate change in extreme weather like seasonal bushfires and flooding; our colleagues in Europe and the US are experiencing similar issues and we are committed to do our part. We’re in the process of measuring and benchmarking current processes, and then following this, we will do a review and subsequent implementation of key opportunities.

We have implemented some early initiatives, such as the eradication of single use materials in our product packaging. Items such as polystyrene are

banned, and we will be using recycled/reclaimed materials that can be further broken down and recycled/reused again. A SPEE3D ESG team has been formed to compile more initiatives where we will measure and promote our success, and as we grow, I expect this will accelerate.

We have also joined the AMGTA (Additive Manufacturing Green Trade Association) to ensure we play a leading part in how our technology can be a sustainable and environmentally responsible solution.

You’ve previously described your vision to take AM to production. In your view, what’s been the most limiting factor standing in the way of that so far?

DAVID: An absence of vision and an obsession to overcomplicate technical processes. Done correctly, vision dictates what technical steps need to take place. Right now, technical processes hold vision for AM hostage. Until this model is broken, AM will sit in the R&D department. This is dangerous because when the economy is squeezed, it will be the R&D budget that gets cut. If we are serious about AM, it’s time to get serious about vision-led adoption strategies. This is what I spend a significant amount of time speaking to industry about.

This is not the same as saying we should skip steps or compromise quality, quite the opposite in fact.

What do you see as the biggest misconception about additive manufacturing technology today?

DAVID: That it is not ready for industrial adoption. SPEE3D’s automated approach means process and quality control is attainable. The pace of the system means throughput can be achieved in volumes viable for industry; and not just for prototyping/ pre-manufacturing.

Most recently we’ve seen SPEE3D’s expansion into the European market. What’s next?

BYRON: SPEE3D technology less than two hours from anywhere!

SHOWN: AUSTRALIAN ARMY SOLIDER DEMONSTRATING PART MADE IN THE FIELD

SHOWN: DAVID MCNEILL, DIRECTOR, CORPORATE PROGRAMS – EMEA

SHOWN: BYRON KENNEDY, SPEE3D CEO

RENEW AND REUSE

Treating customers as its suppliers, 6K offers buyback agreements as part of its long-term supply contracts that means, as long as the user has good traceability on their parts, 6K will take back their scrap and offer, for example, 15% off their next order. There are also strategic relationships in place with some of the US’s largest processing facilities to upcycle material from failed builds, support structures, condensate, and out of spec or used powders to turn them into powder or ingot.

Aplume of microwave-based plasma is engaged. Powder particulates previously loaded into hoppers are injected from two points. And the particles flow into the heat zone, melting quickly before the surface tension of the molten metal causes it to form a perfect sphere.

“Microwave-based plasma –that’s basically the secret sauce,” says 6K Additive President Frank Roberts. “With the UniMelt [process], you’re using microwaves as your energy source. Energy is passing through a waveguide, and they’ll intersect a torch stack. In the torch stack, that’s where we’re applying gas. The result is, instead of having your electric field be concentrated on the OD (optical density), the electric field gets dispersed pretty evenly through the core of your plasma.”

After TCT visited 6K Additive’s facilities in Pittsburgh earlier this year, there will be a deeper dive into the company’s UniMelt process – the central piece in a process that is delivering high-quality metal powders to additive manufacturing (AM) users – in a later issue of the magazine. But here, the focus is on how 6K Additive is ensuring its method of material manufacture is as sustainable as it can be. Not just in the control of energy as it spheroidizes its powders, but in the way it procures raw material at the front end and recycles it at the back end. For while quality is the top priority for 6K Additive, sustainability of its products is a close second. It has been since day dot.

To underscore the company’s sustainability claims, 6K Additive commissioned a third party – Foresight Management – to conduct lifecycle assessments on its nickel and titanium powders. These powders currently represent around 95% of what flows through the company’s factories, and as detailed in a TCT Magazine cover story

last year, were shown to use much less energy and emit much less carbon than conventional techniques. With nickel, 6K Additive was using 6,265MJ of energy and produced 301kg C02-eq for every 100kg delivered – a 91% energy reduction and 92% carbon emissions reduction. Titanium, meanwhile, was using 56,268MJ of energy and produced 2,748kg C02-eq for every 100kg delivered – a 74% energy reduction and 78% carbon emissions reduction.

“This is twofold,” Roberts says of how 6K is able to deliver these numbers. “It’s the efficiency of UniMelt, so how effective we’re able to put energy into that machine and generate plasma – it’s highly efficient from 99% coupling power into plasma creation – and then the other big mover is yield. You only put in what you want to get out. All that energy goes into prime product, not in waste. That’s what makes this meaningful data.”

6K Additive is keen to point out that, thanks to UniMelt, its yield tends to be much higher than the 25-50% yield delivered by conventional atomization processes. That 6K can save so much material from going straight to landfill is a good start, but 6K is also incentivizing its customers to recycle material once used, bringing the front and back end of its processes together to close the circle.

Before a decision is made on whether 6K uses the incoming metals for its powder business or its alloy business, it goes through a ‘complicated decision tree’ that considers quality, economics, and efficiency. Since powder is the company’s biggest value stream, 6K will hope to get most incoming scrap metal through that business, but the alloy side of the company will pick whatever isn’t feasible for the powder side.

“Let’s say you had nickel 718 solid, some sort of big ring out of a jet engine, it will never make sense to take something that large and turn it into turnings and then the turnings into powder,” Roberts explains. “The most efficient thing you can do with that is immediately take it to some wrought product or application. The goal is nothing that was on any one of these value streams leaves this site and goes to a landfill. We’re looking at ways of upcycling everything.”

As of this summer, that looks set to include materials previously used in hip, knee, and shoulder joint replacement surgeries in partnership with Surgical Metal Recycling.

“If you generate a used powder, chances are we will be able to rejuvenate it,” assesses Roberts. “You can really see true scrap-topowder-to-part-to-scrap-to-powder-to-part, and just continuing this infinite loop without the need for things like ore coming from Russia, [for example.]”

Reshoring the production of metal materials is also on the agenda at 6K Additive. Its Pittsburgh facilities currently boast four UniMelt bays, but the company is in the process of expanding that to ten. At the point at which those bays are operational and 6K Additive is manufacturing a wider range of materials at the volumes its producing nickel and titanium, expect more lifecycle assessments to follow, and more incentives for its customers to recycle their material.

Sam Davies reports on 6K Additive’s sustainability efforts after going through the doors at its Pittsburgh headquarters.

“We’re looking at ways of upcycling everything.”

SUSTAINABILITY AND AM

With sustainability gaining traction, manufacturers are seeking innovative and eco-friendly solutions to reduce environmental impact. Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers an opportunity for sustainable practices to overcome this challenge. The AM industry grew 18% in the last year (Wohlers Associates, 2023) emphasizing the need to explore sustainable ways of using the technology. This requires moving towards a circular economy, aiming to eliminate waste through circulating resources and balance environmental, economic, and social factors. This article explores AM’s current state, benefits and challenges in the circular economy context, and provides strategies and opportunities to enable AM as a sustainable manufacturing technology.

BENEFITS

AM’s sustainability advantages over conventional technologies include:

• Material efficiency – Lower buy-tofly ratios and tooling elimination.

• Energy conservation – At the manufacturing stage, thanks to reduced material sourcing and design optimization, and at the operation stage enabling a more efficient energy or fuel consumption during operation.

• Reduced transport –Distributed manufacturing enables on-site manufacturing, reducing goods and materials movement.

• Life extension – Through highly optimized or customized parts that have the potential to extend product life, and through assembly component repair or replace, reducing waste.

CHALLENGES

While these benefits suggest AM offers greater sustainability, key challenges remain to fully understand its true impact. These include materials, energy consumption, data availability

and knowledge-related challenges to make the industry aware of their contribution to a circular economy.

MATERIAL CHALLENGES

The extraction and processing of AM materials contribute to environmental degradation and greenhouse gas emissions. While some polymers are derived from natural sources, most AM materials require mining or are derived from oil. Furthermore, each AM technology has specific material requirements, such as melt flow characteristics, viscosity, and thermal properties, hindering the development of standard sustainable materials for all processes. This diversity limits material scalability and leads to issues around recovery and recycling, where unique material compositions make it challenging for conventional waste streams. An additional challenge is identifying materials, which requires specialized equipment for composition analysis and recovery route definition.

PROCESS CHALLENGES

AM processes require energy for heating, melting, and fusing materials, whilst removing support structures, surface finishing, and applying coatings require additional energy, time, and resources. Capturing and assessing sustainability metrics is more difficult due to continuous part

changes. Additionally, energy for one part per build differs compared to multiple, limiting the ability to calculate energy consumption on a component basis. While AM shows great potential for smallscale production and customization, scaling up for mass production remains a challenge. Enhancing AM machine throughput while maintaining quality is necessary to make AM competitive with traditional manufacturing in terms of efficiency, leading to energy reductions.

KNOWLEDGE CHALLENGES

Understanding the environmental impact of AM faces two crucial challenges: data availability and how to use it to validate AM’s sustainability. Databases like Ansys’ Granta are resource pools for materials, however, the differences between AM processes hinder assigning generic data for comparison. The agile nature of AM leads to a varied processing and destination for parts, reducing the data uniformity. The sheer volume of data needed for reliable and accurate product and machine lifecycle assessments continues to be an ongoing challenge in identifying AM’s true environmental impact.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

As an AM designer, it may feel like there are limited opportunities to impact its sustainability, however, design is understood as a circular economy driver and there are already common design strategies to promote a sustainable mindset. These are some prominent sustainable design strategies and their potential use cases in AM, starting with those that are most effective at reducing environmental impact:

Experts from the UK Manufacturing Technology Centre on how AM can develop its sustainability credentials.

WORDS: Ollie Hartfield & Alice Wise

• Design for life extension – Topology optimization or generative design can enable highly functional parts which can prolong life. Customization offered by AM can improve desirability and emotive connection, also linked with prolonged life.

• Waste source reduction design –Lattices or topology optimization can reduce material usage whilst retaining the structural integrity. Part consolidation can reduce material usage and assembly steps.

• Design for material substitution – When options are available, the environmental benefits of different materials should be considered. Material substitution of high-density materials with low-density materials can reduce energy use in transportation and more efficient operation.

• Modular design – Where there is difference in life span, only defective parts need to be replaced, saving energy and resources compared to remanufacture of the entire component. Distributed manufacture ensures spares are available on demand.

• Design for reusability – Standardizing certain aspects of the design may allow for re-use in future products.

• Design for disassembly – Considering how the assembly could be dismantled into individual materials ensures each resource can be recovered at end of life.

• Design for recycling – Recycled and recyclable materials should be considered where possible. Eco-labelling practices should be used to identify materials for easier recycling such as embossing material information or QR codes.

• Design for energy recovery – Materials that give off toxic fumes should be avoided if incineration is the disposal method.

• Design for disposability –The use of toxic materials should be minimized or eliminated. Consider biodegradable materials which can be composted.

FUTURE MATERIAL

As the technology progresses, it is important to understand how AM can develop its sustainability credentials. Finding alternative materials that are renewable, bio-based, recycled and recyclable is crucial for reducing the environmental impact of AM, however, sustainable materials must also balance these requirements without compromising function. Expanding production and supply chains for sustainable materials and making them economically viable

will be essential for their widespread adoption.

There are limited options for recycling AM waste due to poor waste infrastructure, incentives to recover material and material identification issues. Further research is required to establish suitable waste management strategies and develop the infrastructure to recover return to recycled feedstock. There is also currently no standard practice for labelling AM parts, making it difficult to identify and recycle AM materials. Although labelling tools would enable designers to combat this issue as individuals, a more widespread solution would require legislating the use of environmental labelling. Labelling practices could simplify material identification and maintain specific material compositions or alloys through the recycling process as opposed to being mixed with other grades which would prevent them being re-circulated back into AM feedstock. Overcoming these material-related challenges in AM requires collaboration between

material scientists, AM technology developers, and industry stakeholders.

PROCESS

To fully understand the sustainability of AM, data needs to be collected and assessed. Life Cycle Analysis is a prominent tool used to assess product or process sustainability therefore it should be more widely used in AM. Widespread and reliable data relating to the environmental impacts of AM materials and processes is needed beyond individual case studies and research to enable the leverage of such tools.

KNOWLEDGE

To improve AM’s sustainability in the future, every stage of the design for AM workflow and its supply chain must engage with the concept of the circular economy. Since the topic of sustainability is still relatively new, it cannot be expected that everyone involved will have prior experience. Therefore, it is important that the necessary education is made available relevant to the role. Training and guidance will help to shape the mentality of the industry and transition it towards a circular economy.

SUMMARY

As a disruptive technology AM has the potential to lead the way in sustainable manufacturing and promotes benefits such as material efficiency, energy conservation, reduced transport, and life extension. However, the challenges, such as the environmental impact of materials used, variable energy consumption, and lack of standardized data for sustainability assessment limit its current potential. Designers can adopt sustainable design strategies to make an immediate impact on their components, however, the future of AM sustainability depends on developing renewable and recyclable materials, establishing effective recycling practices, and promoting education and training in the circular economy for the industry.

“AM has the potential to lead the way in sustainable manufacturing.”

AM Forward

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What can we do for you?

5 THINGS WE LEARNED FROM DR PHIL REEVES’ TCT 3SIXTY TALK

You can always rely on Dr Phil Reeves for a healthy dose of pragmatism on your 3D printing conference bill. The additive manufacturing (AM) consultant has spent the last 30 years cutting through the hype around 3D technologies; the consumer booms, so-called industrial revolutions, and at TCT 3Sixty this year, sustainability.

‘Greenwash, hogwash or a justified shift in thinking?’ was the question posed by Reeves on the main stage, where he used real data to debunk and back up claims around AM’s sustainability assertions.

Here are five things we learned that you might want to consider before ticking that green box on your metrics checklist.

WE NEED TO ADDRESS GLOBAL CHALLENGES FACING SOCIETY

“When we run a sustainability analysis, we’re looking for embedded carbon –how much carbon is associated with the making of a product?” Reeves explained. These are not insular but global challenges the AM industry should be looking to address if it is to remain competitive in a world that demands greater attention paid to environmental issues. Where do greenhouse gas emissions come from? For industry, a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions come from power generation, according to stats shared by Reeves. Landfill is another challenge. In the footwear industry, for example, nonrecyclable landfill, which features a mix of polymers, is its biggest output. So, while ideas around processes like multi-material 3D printing are great, we need to think about what happens to those products once retired to ensure they don’t just pile on top of this problem.

USE SCIENCE NOT PERCEPTION

For better or worse, when it comes to sustainability, AM has positive perception on its side. It is very easy to link up the benefits of AM with the demands of sustainability. For years, the industry has marketed itself on the technology’s ability to reduce material consumption,

manufacture locally, reduce weight, and so on. But what does any of this actually mean once you dig into the science and assess the true impact on a part’s embedded carbon emissions? AM machine architectures are not built around sustainability, Reeves said, and while we might believe additive is better than subtractive for material consumption, or sending digital files over parts is more efficient, it may not be the case.

MATERIALS REALLY MATTER

Using less material is great but manufacturers need to think about how that material gets from mining to 3D printable product. Raw material consumption is important. Some metals fare better than others; titanium and aluminum are easier to turn into metal powder than tool steels, and 76% of the world’s aluminum is recycled. The good news is, by recycling, we can recover some of that energy usage in our endto-end process. There are also positive developments in renewable resources like castor beans but Reeves says we need to look at factors like water consumption, the land it’s grown on, and so on, to gauge how truly sustainable a material is.

DON’T GET HUNG UP ON WHERE

The ability to print something next to the place it will ultimately be used sounds like a win but it isn’t that straightforward. Reeves suggests avoiding using localization as a metric for sustainability; different counties have different infrastructures and this has a significant, sometimes overlooked, impact on a part’s overall carbon footprint. Does a country rely mostly on fossil fuels, nuclear or renewable energy? How efficient is its ‘grid’? How much energy is lost between the power station and battery? According to stats shared by Reeves, Norway uses 99% renewable energy, while India uses mostly fossil fuels and has a ‘grid’ efficiency of only 27%. Therefore, depending on the part and mode of shipping transportation, a manufacturer in India could potentially have a lower carbon footprint by producing in Norway and shipping to India.

WORDS: Laura Griffiths

THE ECONOMICS STILL NEED TO MAKE SENSE

Even if you get to the end of an LCA and discover AM is the most sustainable method, it still needs to make sense economically. “Good sustainable practice has to tie into economics,” Reeves said, and suggests there are creative ways manufacturers can think about turning sustainable AM into profitable AM. Conclusions can only be drawn when you consider consumer usage. Weight optimization has a massive environmental impact in areas like aerospace, which can mean reduced fuel consumption over a part’s lifetime, and reduced costs. The whole point of AM isn't to make things how we've always made them, and there are sustainability benefits to be found there.

Catch up on more TCT Conference content at: additivemanufacturing.network

GREEN GAME

Laura chats to Eryn Devola , Head of Sustainability at Siemens Digital Industries about digital transformation, sustainability as a business metric, and more.

TCT: What role do you think sustainability has to play in the context of digital transformation?

ED: Sustainability is an important outcome of digital transformation. Today, companies are looking for ways to bring more innovative products to market, faster than the competition, at a competitive price point. In addition, they have to pay attention to their environmental impact. The only way to do that is to be more deliberate in balancing all of these requirements. Becoming a digital enterprise is a key enabler for sustainability.

TCT: How is Siemens supporting that?

ED: Siemens is uniquely positioned to combine the digital and real worlds to help industries drive the outcomes mentioned above. Our Digital Threads enable companies to connect their whole value chain, from design to production, in use and end of life. Comprehensive Digital Twin technologies, including simulation results, production data, material information, supplier carbon footprint data, and product carbon footprint data help executives make smarter and betterinformed decisions for sustainability. In addition, Siemens helps businesses drive a circular and continuous design and manufacturing optimization process based on data from the real and digital world.

TCT: You recently hosted a panel featuring perspectives across automotive, agriculture and space. Given the variety of these industries, was there a key takeaway that could apply to most if not all industries?

ED: Some key takeaways that can be applied to all industries: First, speed is important. Companies need to be able to plan for different scenarios without expelling physical resources. #2: Start small, and then scale with the right tools and skillset to capitalize on your investments based on your biggest sustainability needs. #3: And this makes me hopeful – while our challenges around sustainability and the environment are huge, industry has brilliant people tackling them from all different angles and in all different industries.

TCT: You recently shared in a report how nearly 80 percent of a product’s lifetime environmental impact is determined during the design phase. What considerations do manufacturers need to be making and how early do they need to start making them?

ED: Manufacturers and in particular design engineers can no longer put all their focus on traditional drivers of product performance, quality, and cost. Today, many designs still fail to live up to their promise for sustainability because of the design strategy used. Putting sustainability first means designers need to start looking further upstream and downstream of their products. The products of tomorrow need to be designed with sustainability in mind from the earliest development stages – designing and building for reuse, using fewer materials or less energy in manufacturing, remanufacturing and recycling, or incorporating carbonfree technologies. Digitalization and automation are game changers to achieve these goals.

TCT: How can simulation help with determining sustainability impact in those early stages?

ED: One of the biggest advantages of simulation is that it allows people to try more things digitally before building physical prototypes. In the 1980s or 90s, when you were developing products, you had to move to the most probable designs - those that you intuitively thought would work. Simulation gives us freedom to test hundreds or thousands of designs that don't seem intuitive at first but might be really effective in the long term. Being able to test without boundaries is impactful. It brings innovation to life in a more reliable, dependable and sustainable way.

TCT: One solution is to deploy sustainability as an additional business metric. In your experience, how seriously are businesses thinking about sustainability when making key decisions?

ED: For multiple reasons, sustainability is becoming a key factor in making

decisions. We call them the carrot and the stick approach. In places like the U.S., with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), there is a lot of funding for sustainability (the “carrots”). Understanding the positive impacts of sustainability can help decision-makers secure funding. The other space, the “sticks”, can be found in places like the EU: the legislation that you're required to comply with. Using rules and regulations to really weigh in as a factor in your decisions is important. In addition, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requires companies to not only disclose what they're doing for sustainability, but to also have a strategy and a plan, to understand their impact. For the UK specifically, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Sustainability Disclosure Requirements enforce product – and entity-level sustainability reporting in the U.K. as well as for product naming and marketing. The good news is, more and more companies are looking at

“Industry needs to start rethinking their make, take, dispose strategy.”

CHANGERS

sustainability as long-term profitability. They realize if they don't start acting now, they will be left behind.

TCT: More and more companies are carrying out lifecycle analysis to assess environmental impact of parts and products. How important is it to connect all parts in the designto-manufacture ecosystem to ensure we manufacturers fully understand the impact and where improvements can be made?

ED: I actually held roles in quality management before moving to sustainability. One of the old mantras you often hear is “You can't control what you don't measure”. Being able to control your sustainability impacts first depends on your ability to see and understand the data. Lifecycle impacts depend not only on what happens within the manufacturing facility, but also in the supply chain. Getting and analyzing the right data helps you make choices about how to minimize your carbon footprint, reuse material etc. This requires people to work together in ways that they never have before. It requires looking at data holistically and outside of your own manufacturing facility to leverage all that collective intelligence that’s out there. Your ecosystem plays a big role in it, because you need to be able to share information with your partners and supply chain, customers and consumers, to understand the downstream effects and work together on the solutions.

TCT: What would you say is the most overlooked or forgotten factor when it comes to assessing sustainability impact in manufacturing?

ED: Maybe not overlooked, but certainly complex is the concept of circularity. Industry needs to start rethinking their make, take, dispose strategy. While recyclability and remanufacturing are important, extending the life of the products that we already have and making sure that we're driving maximum use out of them is the clearest path to circularity.

It requires rethinking business models in a fundamental way.

TCT: How concerned do we need to be about so-called greenwashing in design-to-manufacturing?

ED: Greenwashing can be concerning. Well intended people continue to look at their small piece of the puzzle unless they can understand that full value chain from cradle to next cradle. It's hard to understand exactly what those impacts are and disclose them. We need to continue to be mindful especially when there aren’t universally understood and accepted standards yet. CSRD is aimed at ensuring transparency, and the Green Claims Directive in the EU will give clear criteria on how companies should prove their environmental claims and labels. It’s expected to go into effect in 2024.

TCT: Across the business, Siemens is a major adopter of additive manufacturing (AM) technologies. For example, Siemens Energy is using it in the manufacture of flexible-fuel gas turbines. Is AM viewed as an enabler when it comes to Siemens’ sustainability goals?

ED: AM is one of the big trends we see in manufacturing as it allows creative thinking. Similar to simulation, parameters around how you manufacture a product can be eliminated with 3D printing. For example, what is the best way to lightweight a product? How do I make sure that I'm getting the functionality with the least amount of material? AM allows engineers to rethink design. In our own plants and factories, we have been able to reduce 70% of the overall weight of a part because we discovered it didn’t have to be produced in a conventional machining way. This can only be done with AM technology. It's a huge enabler for sustainability.

SHOWN: ERYN DEVOLA, SIEMENS DIGITAL INDUSTRIES

SHOWN: DIGITAL THREADS ARE A KEY COMPONENT FOR SUSTAINABLE TRANSFORMATION

DOES IT HAVE TO BE P

olymer 3D printed parts have long been bound by preconceptions around their feasibility for enduse applications. But after three decades of materials science, hardware improvements, and real-world applications to learn from, much of those preconceptions around tricky layer lines, brittleness, and ‘only good for prototyping’, have shifted to mere misconceptions. In fact, in many cases, they’ve proven to be viable alternatives to traditionally manufactured parts – even metals.

"One misconception is that polymers lack the strength and durability for demanding applications,” Nirup Nagabandi, Ph.D., Vice President of Materials and Process Engineering at Essentium, said. “However, advancements in high-strength 3D printed polymers have closed this performance gap, allowing plastics to match or exceed the mechanical properties of certain metals.”

Nagabandi offers the example of soft aluminum tooling which some Essentium customers have replaced with parts made using carbon fiber variants of its highspeed sintering powders. One customer was able to manufacture injection molding inserts using PPS-CF to successfully produce 150 parts, while another, a contract manufacturer, replaced its production aids with parts made with Essentium’s PA-CF which were three times lighter than its aluminum counterparts and about seven times lighter than steel tools.

“Advanced 3D printed polymers like reinforced nylon, PEEK, PEKK, and PPS have mechanical properties that rival certain metals, allowing them to be effective replacements in various applications,” Nagabandi continued. “High-strength 3D printed plastics can offer enhanced corrosion resistance, chemical compatibility, and electrical insulation properties, which can be advantageous in various industries and applications, such as in aerospace and consumer electronics, which are already

extending their use of 3D printed polymers beyond prototyping and into full-scale manufacturing.”

Nagabandi also suggests that greater awareness is needed around suitability of polymers in extreme high- and lowtemperature environments. While some polymers do struggle, materials such as Essentium’s Duratem high-impact, hightemperature thermoplastics have been designed for demanding rail, automotive and aerospace applications.

Perhaps directly comparing polymers with metals isn’t entirely fair. Speaking to an anonymous source with over 30 years’ experience in AM polymers, there is an argument to be made for polymers that, while not perfect, are in many instances “good enough” to get the job done. Yet to deepen the adoption of AM in end-use applications, testing and benchmarking against traditional standards is crucial.

“We have to use the same test methods and standards that the plastics industry uses – and test for all environmental factors: heat, light, cold, humidity, water, as well as UV,” they said. “These strict tests are why metal replacement has been so successful in many industries –especially automotive.”

Last year Toyota Racing Development (TRD) established a partnership with Stratasys to expand its use of AM in end-use parts for its TRD-branded vehicles and racing cars – some of which may have traditionally been made in metals.

“There are a few reasons to look at replacing metal parts with high-strength 3D printed plastic (carbon infused),” Nelson Cosgrove, Executive Engineering Director at TRD, explained. “One is to reduce mass in an area where the part strength can be managed with the use case. Another reason is when you need to make modifications to the part for additional requirements. Various brackets with clever retention/routing features such as snap fits, tie wrap access, etc.”

The company has brought in a suite of Stratasys Fortus 3D printers and plans to print end-use parts including an FDM Nylon 12CF hood vent for its new production vehicle Toyota GR86. It will also leverage’s Stratasys’ SAF technology via Stratasys Direct services to manufacture a clamp using sustainable Stratasys High Yield PA11 material.

“Most of the challenges/trade-offs are related to material property demands related to strength and temperature,” Cosgrove said. “With most of TRD’s applications, we are working in fairly low volumes and the cost tradeoffs usually mean we select the 3D printed part when conventional tooling and labor are considered. The ability to add features that can adapt for a higher functioning component is very important for our use cases.”

The development of engineering-grade materials specifically formulated for AM is expanding possibilities as manufacturers across automotive, aerospace and consumer goods demand thermal stability, chemical resistance,

WORDS: laura griffiths

and dimensional accuracy. Further to that, advancements in multi-material and composite printing have made it possible to combine different materials within a single printed part, creating complex, multi-functional components with tailored properties. Ilaria Guicciardini, Head of Marketing at Roboze, which specializes in highperformance AM polymers and composites, says for industries such as aerospace and energy, replacing a traditional metal part with high-strength 3D printed plastic can be a strategic choice.

“While metal has been traditionally favored for its strength and durability, advancements in 3D printing technology have led to the development of high-performance plastics that can rival some metals in terms of strength and other properties,” Guicciardini said.

Earlier this year, Roboze introduced Carbon PA PRO, a PA 6 reinforced with carbon fibers, which it claims to be its strongest composite material to date, and Carbon PEEK, a PEEK matrix reinforced with carbon fibers. The latter was deployed to manufacture a metal replacement pump impeller for an oil and gas customer, which resulted in an 85% lead time reduction, decreased energy consumption, and 5-6 times lower weight compared to steel.

“These kinds of materials can withstand harsh environmental conditions including corrosion, erosion, and high temperatures,” Guicciardini explained. “The main advantages are the reduced maintenance of the components required thanks to the chemical

resistance of the Carbon PEEK, lower mass which translates into safer handling and greater efficiency, dimensional resizing of the valves without necessarily creating special molds and digital warehouse.”

Newcomer Axtra3D made a splash at Formnext 2021 with its Hybrid PhotoSynthesis technology which combines the benefits of three polymer processes: SLA, DLP and LCD. Promoting speed and injection mold-like quality, the company agrees we should't be so quick to judge polymer capabilities.

“There is a misconception that 2-part materials that require post print thermal curing are the only materials that are “good enough” for production," Paul Spoliansky, founding member and Chief Revenue Officer at Axtra3D, said. "There’s been a revolution in single part material development by all the large formulators and there are materials quite capable of meeting the demands of some end use applications.”

With the launch of its two X1 Series printers last year, Axtra3D believes it is taking photopolymerization to ‘the next level,' while major materials developments have also helped propel the polymer industry as a whole.

“There have been major investments made in R&D from some the biggest resin formulators such as Henkel, BASF, 3D Systems, Spectra, Evonik and others,” Spoliansky added. “This has led to much better mechanical performance and long-term stability which is what’s been needed to enable production of end use parts. The rate of innovation has increased substantially, and I believe we’ll continue to see more capable materials being released at a fast pace.”

What that may look like, Guicciardini has an idea, and Roboze has recently commenced construction of a new lab for the development of new ‘super materials.’

“Our further step will be the rapid progress in the development of alternative materials to petroleumbased super polymers, favoring the use of bio-based reinforcing fibers and matrices. The challenge lies in researching new materials and technologies that can on the one hand reduce the generation of carbon dioxide (responsible for the greenhouse effect), and on the other hand achieve the properties of the super polymers available today in the replacement of metal parts.”

“The rate of innovation has increased substantially.”

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MAKING THE FUT RE

Taking the reins of an industrial vacuum manufacturing business established in the late 1980s, Spencer Loveless was at a crossroads.

Father Mike, who founded Dustless Technologies, had passed away. Mum Colleen, who helped to run the company, was stepping back into retirement. And Spencer had the responsibility of moving the business forward. His father had engineered a vacuum initially to address the nuisance that was cleaning out a coal- and woodburning fireplace, but soon expanded into industry. As Spencer took over, he was never perturbed by the ash, dust and slurry that needed hoovering up from a myriad of industrial settings, but instead with how the equipment was manufactured.

“I don’t like, almost hate, injection molding,” Spencer tells TCT, “because every time a customer says, ‘Can you change this vacuum? Can you add a handle on top? Can you make this part bigger?’ The answer is always no even if their idea was great and made sense.”

Though the company manufactured its systems through conventional means, it had been prototyping with a Stratasys 3D printer since 2006. It was seeing the agility this added to product development that led Spencer to foster a mindset of continuous improvement.

In 2020, he founded Merit3D, harnessing 3D printing to make parts in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions.

“We have to find how [to] benefit the customer,” Spencer says. “How is that manufacturer going to bypass overseas suppliers? How are they going to be very agile? How are we going to change the future?”

Posing those questions, an Abraham Lincoln quote comes to Spencer’s mind. ‘The best way to predict the future is to make it.’ Spencer, then, has been determined to prove additive really can be used to make the future, doing so in a way not many people project.

In May, the company announced an order for one million hanger components which connect two epoxy tubes to a mixer nozzle. But getting there hasn’t been without its

challenges. Merit3D’s first order was for 1,000 phone cases. It took 30 days to complete, with Spencer describing the process as ‘brutal’.

But his team got better. Last year, Merit3D received orders for multiple batches of binocular tethers. A first order of 5,000 soon grew to an order of 60,000. Feeling confident, Spencer pushed his team to additively manufacture the components in a single day, despite a typical turnaround time being closer to two weeks.

All the stars – materials, machines, people power – had to align, but Merit3D proved it could be done. To go at such a pace every day would not be sustainable without automation at the back end to cycle the parts through post-curing, but when Henkel Adhesive Technologies came with a demand for its epoxy product hangers, Merit3D was not deterred.

Adhesive Technologies turned to Merit3D in response to supply chain issues. Harnessing a fleet of Photocentric LC Magna machines, with their 510 x 280 x 350 mm build volumes, and a set of approved materials (including BASF’s durable Ultracur EPD 1006 material), Merit3D can print 400 parts per 225-minute build, delivering 40,000 units a week. At 30,000 pieces, Merit3D implemented its first significant but subtle design changes. It did another at 100,000 pieces, and another is set for when they reach 500,000 pieces.

It is this continuous improvement that makes it more affordable for Merit3D to additively manufacture the hanger parts rather than injection mold them, and also

helped to increase the initial order from around 600,000 units to one million.

“Having the customer back AM is key,” Spencer says. “Good enough should happen but you should always have a continuous improvement mindset.”

Merit3D does, not just of the application, but the processes that facilitate it. As the company powers its way through tens of thousands of units a week, it has learned more about what it takes to manufacture at those numbers, post-process at those numbers and control quality at those numbers. Automating postprocessing is now a focus, as is traceability, as is the evolving design of the parts. Merit3D is fighting to prove additive as an option for high-volume manufacturing, and has been now for three years.

“Within a week, we had a first design, we gave it to them, and it broke,” Spencer explains of the one-millionpart order. “And they’re like, ‘it doesn’t work for our application’ – which we hear every single day – and we said, ‘wait, wait, wait, just give us another chance. Tell us some of your more indepth design parameters, what do you need this thing to do, how do you test it?’ It took that moment of, ‘hey, just give us a chance, let’s figure this out.’”

WORDS: SAM DAVIES

“You should always have that continuous improvement mindset.”

SHOWN: THE HENKEL ADHESIVES EPOXY HANGER PRODUCT, 3D PRINTED USING PHOTOCENTRIC LC MAGNA TECHNOLOGY BY MERIT3D

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SPEAK AT NORTH AMERICA’S MOST INFLUENTIAL AM EVENT

SME and the TCT Group are now welcoming speaker submissions for the 2024 RAPID + TCT Conference, which takes place during North America’s largest and most influential additive manufacturing event on April 23-25, 2024 in Anaheim, CA.

For over 30 years, the annual RAPID + TCT Conference has brought together 3D printing and AM professionals to present their latest findings, exchange innovative application ideas, and discuss emerging industry trends and challenges.

The conference is renowned for its industry-leading educational content with a diverse line-up of AM thought leaders covering everything from the latest technology advancements and cutting-edge applications to business considerations and emerging research.

It is an essential event for industry newcomers and experienced additive professionals alike.

SME and the TCT Group is now welcoming abstracts that focus on case studies, research findings, and technical analysis.

Commercial and sales submissions will immediately be disqualified. Customer applications are encouraged and should be submitted by the end-user. The presentation format is 20 minutes plus 5 minutes Q&A.

Lu Tikrity, Conference Producer at the TCT Group, said: “Speaking at RAPID + TCT allows you to share your knowledge, inspire others and contribute to the advancement of the additive manufacturing industry.

“As well as sharing your insights, speaking at RAPID + TCT enables you to connect with like-minded professionals

and offers invaluable networking opportunities. The conference covers a wide range of industries. We are looking for original and high-quality submissions across different sectors.”

CONFERENCE SUBMISSION REVIEW PROCESS

Conference abstracts will be reviewed and scored against the following criteria: originality, impartiality, aims of presentation, target audience, technical level and learning objectives. Conference abstract submissions are reviewed and vetted by RAPID + TCT Event Advisors, which is made up of the top technical experts representing the manufacturing industry, academic institutions, and government agencies. Their decision to accept or decline is final. While all commercial presentations will be rejected, customer applications are encouraged and should be submitted by the end user.

ADVANTAGES OF SPEAKING AT RAPID + TCT

• Exposure at a global event dedicated to AM and industrial 3D printing.

• Opportunity to showcase and increase the visibility of groundbreaking projects, research, and solutions.

• Establish yourself and your organization as thought leaders and experts in AM to an engaged audience of peers and prospects, with promotion of the presentation, speaker, and organization before, during, and after the show, online and through printed material.

• Complimentary conference pass.

• Networking opportunities to meet fellow speakers and conference delegates, to drive relevant business conversations and build connections with the AM community.

TECHNOLOGIES OF INTEREST

Abstracts should address research, case studies and/or applications in any of the following which include but are not limited to:

• Aerospace

• Automotive

• Healthcare

• Defense

• Energy

• Consumer

• Entertainment

• Construction & Architecture

• Marine

• Rail

• Economics & Justification

• Standards & Repeatability

• DfAM

• 3D Scanning & Metrology

• Post-processing

• Materials Development

• Process Development

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission Deadline: October 27, 2023

Conference Dates: April 23-25, 2024

Presentation title, abstract (maximum 300 words), speaker biography (maximum 175 words) and a high-resolution headshot photograph can be submitted via the online submission site.

Visit: bit.ly/RAPIDTCT24

NEW TERRITORIES

Seurat Technologies on the additive manufacture of up to 59 tons of Siemens Energy turbine components.

It was 18 months ago when Seurat Technologies began to detail to Siemens Energy the capabilities of its proprietary Area Printing powder bed additive manufacturing process.

As it did, the company shared how development continued on the parameters of its process, and its ability to print stainless steels, Inconels and tool steels. By May of this year, Seurat was ready to announce that it will manufacture 59 tons of parts for Siemens Energy turbines, with each side pushing the other into new territory. When they commenced discussions last year, Seurat hadn’t yet qualified Inconel 625 and Siemens had never considered additive manufacturing (AM) for these turbine parts.

Together, though, they will be ramping up the additive production of sealing segments for Siemens Energy turbines, starting at an annual rate of two tons and eventually climbing to an annual rate of 15 tons by the final year of this initial contract.

“This is a six-year agreement,” Seurat CEO James DeMuth says, “but that doesn’t mean this isn’t something that as we demonstrate capabilities that can be renewed and renewed and renewed. Really, this is all speaking to long-term production agreements to make parts. This was not a part that they had ever previously conceived to do via additive manufacturing. It was not a fit until we came along.”

Seurat caught the attention of Siemens Energy with its Area Printing technology, which it is intending to use to manufacture parts in mass volumes via a parts service offering. Area Printing is a powder bed 3D printing process which has been packaged into machines that currently print at 3kg/ hr across a 450 x 450 x 450 mm, with Seurat working to grow these capabilities to 1,700kg/hr and 9.6 x 9.6 x 9.6m by 2030. Siemens Energy has been so impressed by this roadmap, that it has also decided to become a strategic investor in Seurat. And as the conversation developed over the last year and a half, the pair worked together to assess potential applications,

with most of Siemens Energy’s current roster of 3D printed parts considered too low volume to make production with Area Printing economically viable. Concurrently, Seurat was working to develop and qualify materials. Qualification of 316L stainless steel was completed early, with Seurat next working through the qualification of Inconel 718. Deeming this to be more challenging than the qualification of Inconel 625 – a material suitable for the production of turbine sealing segments – Siemens Energy had identified their first application.

“We identify this as a great opportunity for us to expand their thinking and expand their mindset based on new capabilities,” DeMuth says. “They’re driving us to a new material. There’s qualification work we have to do, but as soon as we can get that buttoned up, they want parts as fast as they can get them because they have a need right now.”

What Siemens Energy needs is to install 250 of these parts per turbine. The segment component is a ring that thermally expands as the turbine spins before sealing, and has been a part manufactured by Siemens Energy for decades. Shifting a portion of the part’s production to Seurat, the metal AM company will see the capacity of one machine taken up for the next six years.

Though Siemens is beginning to leverage an AM process for the production of this part, the design of the component will remain largely the same with only small tweaks made to achieve efficiency gains.

“We often talk about how we can make a part and not do any design changes on it,” DeMuth says. “Well, Siemens can’t help themselves. They've already thrown in a couple of tweaks here and there to leverage additive because they can. Cost is justified and then we're bringing on additive features and capabilities to improve efficiency, improve performance, improve assembly.”

As production commences, Seurat is confident that the additive manufacture of these parts is just the start. They are currently ‘deep diving’ into the Siemens part catalog to assess the suitability of components for the current Seurat machines, as well as future generations.

“We found this part,” DeMuth finishes, “but that doesn’t mean it’s the best part. Not by a longshot.”

WORDS: SAM DAVIES

W RD GETS AR UND

Sam Davies speaks to Lincoln Electric about a TCT Award-winning refinery pressure application in partnership with Chevron.

On the shore of one of the five Great Lakes sits a headquarters spanning over 2 million square feet, home to the largest welding company in the world, Lincoln Electric.

Inside, word is getting around about the 18-strong Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) robotic systems based in a facility down the road. This technology has already shaved weeks and months of time off customer deliveries, and now Lincoln Electric wants to take advantage too. Soon after, a large hydraulic cylinder, the forging for which would take six months to get, was additively manufactured within six weeks out of a high-strength steel. It is one of many quick-turn replacement parts 3D printed by Lincoln Electric for Lincoln Electric.

“That’s significant when you have a production line that needs a part and is not running at full efficiency,” says Mark Douglass, Business Development Manager, Additive Solutions, Lincoln Electric. “That speed matters so the factory can get back up to full efficiency.”

In 2019, Lincoln Electric, stationed in Cleveland, Ohio just a stone’s throw away from Lake Erie, launched the Additive Solutions manufacturing service, to supplement its longstanding legacy of producing and supplying a variety of welding consumables, equipment, and automation systems. It was established to deliver large components to industries like energy, heavy equipment, shipbuilding and more — though producing parts for internal use is a nice side benefit.

Several decades ago, the company made a concerted effort to build out more automation capability, recognizing it as an important feature of manufacturing moving forward. In similar vein, when the time was right, the company swiftly set about building an additive manufacturing service business, powered by WAAM technology. WAAM was deemed the obvious choice given Lincoln Electric’s extensive expertise in welding and its pre-existing supply chain of wire, robotic automation, software and controls.

“What we also anticipated in the market, and this has proven to be true, is the long lead times you have with castings and forgings – we’re able to shorten that dramatically,” Douglass continues. “We knew there was significant value, not necessarily to all customers but a lot of customers, of being able to shorten that lead time significantly, 50%, 80%, even 90%.”

This is true of many customers in the aforementioned industries

Lincoln Electric Additive Solutions has targeted, where speed and time to market are critical.

The company recently worked with Chevron, a multinational energy corporation, and Stress Engineering Services to qualify and additive manufacture eight pressure components that were installed in a hydrogen furnace of a refinery. Printed in nickel wire with the WAAM process, the components weighed over 500 lbs each. In the printing of the components, CAD model changes were able to be made, some after the printing had commenced, to ease installation and improve part performance. Importantly, Lincoln Electric was able to manufacture, qualify and test the components in four weeks, saving up to eight weeks compared to conventional methods. Lincoln Electric, Chevron and Stress Engineering Services would later win the TCT Industrial Application Award at this year’s TCT Awards.

On the back of success stories like this, Lincoln Electric Additive Solutions has room to expand the number of WAAM systems installed at its Cleveland facility.

The company sees big potential in additive manufacturing and has made good progress in components ‘that are measured in feet and metres, rather

than inches and centimetres.’ That said, there may be a need for a larger WAAM system to cater for the demands it is getting, and Douglass also suggests alloys optimised for WAAM would move things further along.

And then there are the commercial hurdles. Additive manufacturing’s reputation may extend across the road within Lincoln Electric, and it may have reached the likes of Chevron, but it’s still considered a nascent technology, especially in the heavy industries.

“Getting people to know that it exists, getting the word out there, that’s a huge hurdle,” Douglass finishes. “This is very much farming, and we’re in the ploughing and planting seed stage. There’s not a whole lot of harvest, but I think it’s coming. We’re already seeing it now.”

Reconfigure manufacturing!

“There’s not a lot of harvest, but I think it’s coming.”

SURF’S UP

Oli Johnson speaks to Liam Marriott, Formlabs APAC Marketing

Lead about how the company’s 3D printers and materials are being used in the creation of foil surfboards at Foil Drive.

What is foiling? Foiling is a variation of surfing, but with a shorter board with a masthead and foils, also known as wings, which lift the board above the surface by one foot or more. Being above water allows surfers to ride waves further off shore, to surf when there is no wind or even on flat water.

A foilboard, otherwise known as a hydrofoil board or foil surfboard, consists of two primary components, the board and the hydrofoil. Unlike regular surfing, the board is typically made from a material such as carbon fiber. The hydrofoil, attached to the bottom of the board contains the mast as well as the front and back wings, can also contain carbon fiber.

Hydrofoils work by generating an upward force in reaction to downward pressure. The wings, start beneath the water and as the surfboard gains speed, the wings push the water down, creating the upward force. 3D printers and materials from Formlabs are being used by a company called Foil Drive to manufacture end-use parts for the foil surfboards.

Speaking about why 3D printing was the right choice for Foil Drive’s applications, Formlabs APAC Marketing Lead Liam Marriott told TCT: “The ability to get out on the water in any condition is appealing for riders, but difficult for the equipment – which must be built to endure harsh ocean conditions, plunging in and out of waves as propellers spin at 3000 rpm. Before Foil Drive used 3D printing, the propeller blades of the surfboards were manufactured with inconsistent quality, leading to part failures in the water and ending users’ rides early.

3D printing enabled Foil Drive to both manufacture in-house at a cost lower than traditional manufacturing and solve the quality issues. The company used Formlabs Form 3L and Fuse 1+ 30W 3D printers which enabled

them to manufacture over 1,000 end-use parts including propeller blades, controller brackets, and waterproof electrical motor pods that go with their riders in the water.”

3D printing allowed Foil Drive to change the design of blades as they were being manufactured, and tested them in low quantities and at a price that ensured profitability was still possible according to Formlabs. Foil Drive trialled various materials, on Formlabs FDM printers, and also worked with materials such as Tough 1500 and Tough 2000, but achieved consistency once the correct material was found, which turned out to be Formlabs’ glass-filled Rigid 4000 Resin, and was printed on a Form 3+ SLA 3D printer. The company worked with Melbourne-based supplier ThingLab to test parts.

Speaking to TCT about the benefits of Rigid 4000 Resin for hydrofoil blades Marriott said: “This material is ideal for load-bearing applications because it can be printed into thin and sharp blades, but is strong and stiff, which ensures the blades are strong enough to spin through turbulent water without breaking at 3000 rpms.”

Marriott told TCT about where else

3D printing was used in the hydrofoils: “Foil Drive retrofits rely on brackets that are repeatedly tightened and loosed to clamp parts together. Without the right material, these brackets would snap if over tightened, but with the use of Formlabs Tough 200 Resin, no brackets have broken. The Tough 2000 Resin is ideal for bracket production because it can produce strong and durable parts with minimal deformation, so even after months in the ocean water and repeated clamping and unclamping, the brackets will remain intact.”

Using 3D printing allowed Foil Drive to scale its production volume, operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The company began with 100 parts a week, which then increased to 200, then with the addition of a second Fuse 1+ 30W 3D printer, 650 Nylon 12 Powder parts each week.

Marriott added: “By adopting 3D printing into its workflow for in-house production, Foil Drive has grown to a multi-million dollar business in only three years.”

SHOWN:

3D PRINTED PROPELLER BLADES

“Foil Drive has grown to a multi-million dollar business.”

INNOVATIONS

BM: It was after Kubo [and the Two Strings] that we were at AMUG, and we were giving a presentation about how we were able to write our own software using this AMF tool with three colors. And Rob Ducey sat down and happened to be at a table with somebody from Cuttlefish, and Cuttlefish had been doing the same thing with a Connex3, but they had been turning it into a four-color printer by dyeing the support material.

JL: Bingo.

BM: Yeah, and so they, essentially, were years ahead of what Stratasys was focusing on. And they were doing a real scientific deep dive into color and how when you're dealing with three-dimensional objects that are printed in color and you have color not just on the exterior surface, but a certain depth into it, the color is affected by the shape, the size, whether it's a cube or a sphere, they're going to have slightly different dithering patterns to create and dither the colors.

So, Cuttlefish were amazing. We ended up working with them and, again, Stratasys gave us the ability to give us one of these voxel dongles. And then Cuttlefish would do all of our slicing for us. And now that's something you can get.

Back on Missing Link, we were the only place in the world that had the capabilities of that because we were getting software from Cuttlefish and hardware, the J 750, from Stratasys. But you can now buy a cuttlefish add on.

would say we'll give you guys access, we'll give you these voxel dongles, you guys can do this, but don't tell Nike. And maybe it was just the fear of Nike being such a machine and having a different use of 3D printing that they felt like we were the playground. They didn't care if we were messing around in the sandbox, but 'we don't want other clients to know because we're not ready to support this.'

JL: Correct. And I think that nails it.

Entertainment and with a person like you, with a person like me, once we get access, we approach it on our own, we go under the hood. Just open the door for me, and I'll take care of it and I'll try to figure it out. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, great. Build that Bible of understanding.

That's how I was able to get in and print on fabric in 2010. And actually use it in a direct TV commercial, where people had piston robot arms. And we just green screened, erased out, the green sock that it was printed on, 3D pistons, and really taking things to the next level.

Oof TCT Magazine’s Innovators on Innovators podcast series, Jason Lopes [JL] of Gentle Giant Studios (and formerly of Legacy Effects) sat down with Brian McLean [BM] of LAIKA Studios to discuss the evolution of 3D printing applications in the entertainment space.

JL: I believe you can. And, once again, just showing how entertainment opens the doors to give people accessibility to things that were tried on before they were released. It's really awesome.

BM: Maybe it's entertainment. Because we we have a connection with Nike, at LAIKA we are owned by the Knight family, which are founders of Nike. And I remember Stratasys

When we got that first 3D printer inhouse, my focus wasn't even on the 3D printer. My focus was 'how can I now develop this pipeline that feeds it differently to make it more efficient for artists? How can I get people understanding how to take scan data, and now retopologize it in a way that we can build this digital asset library to go out to the printer or any technology if needed, and never look back.' And then, as you mentioned, the Connex3, I refer to it as if you wanted to go back in time and get the Andre Agassi colors or Buzz Lightyear colors, the Connex3 was perfect for you if you were using it at default, because that was the whole 80s vibe of colors with that limited

palette. But then I saw what you were up to. And I was just like, 'wait a second. Something's going on here because you can't do that at default.'

BM: Well, it's funny because Angela Novak was recommended by Nike because she was trying to apply to Nike and they couldn't hire her. And she had worked with you. And you recommended her and she came in and I remember Angela came in she said, 'oh yeah, they're doing color at Legacy [Effects], it's similar.'

And then we started showing her what we were doing, and she's like, 'oh, no, this isn't the same. Jason would really love this.' It's like, 'no, you can't tell Jason, we will get in trouble. Like, please don't tell him.' I really wanted her to because I wanted you to know but I was like, 'no, we can't.'

JL: Angela, she came on board, she was in the traditional model shop and she wanted to learn new skills. And it was great because having her and being able to really push the limits in the PolyJet world, I always called it pushing minimums. How can we go thinner? Because in PolyJet, you can print it, the hard part's cleaning it, and keeping it from warping. And she was my Clyde,

I was Bonnie, and we would push it, and she would find a way to clean it and make sure it held its integrity.

If you see the movie Night at the Museum, I think it's Night at the Museum 3, there's these gold Pharaoh pieces of these crowns that the Queen's wearing, whatever her character is, that is probably 300 PolyJet pieces at pushing below minimums of what they say you can print, and gold-plated. It is absolutely phenomenal work but that's enabled by a tag team duo with me and Angela and really understanding it.

right on the thing and let their brains meld on that for a little bit. And they will now be inspired to try things to feed you. And you can create this synergy and do what even the OEMs say is nearly impossible.

To listen to the full Innovators on Innovators conversation, search Additive Insight wherever you get your podcasts.

do to become successful in 3D printing?' I say you need to own your time bend with it, you become because then you

I use this analogy all the time and it's funny you come full circle. When people ask me all the time, 'oh, what do I need to do to become successful in 3D printing?' I say you need to own your equipment, you need to learn that equipment like the back of your hand and time bend with it, you become a wizard or sorcerer with the equipment, because then you go back to your teams and say, 'this is what I can do,' pop it

“Entertainment opens the doors.”

ROLL WITH THE

Carbon & Hayabusa on how 3D printed lattice structures are enabling boxing gloves with greater protection.

On boxing’s most famous night, deep in the African continent, one of its most exciting fighters deploys a tactic designed to absorb the heaviest hitter of his generation.

Muhammad Ali, perhaps the greatest to ever grace the ring, is leant back against the ropes as punches from world heavyweight champion George Foreman rain down on him. To most watching on, it is as one-sided a fight as you ever could see. Until, that is, Ali springs from the ropes in the eighth round to floor a tired, cumbersome Foreman and regain the titles he was stripped of some seven years earlier.

As enthralling a fight and a fighter, most people who put on a pair of boxing gloves don’t do so with the intention of enduring what Ali did or inflicting what Ali did. But in the famous rope-a-dope tactic, there is inspiration to be found.

Boxing, like many sports, is about maintaining the perfect balance between offence and defence. In defence, a fighter needs to be as adept at absorbing the force of a punch as their gloves are when throwing them. Hayabusa, a leading combat sports equipment manufacturer, can do little to prepare its customers for the former but takes pride in doing so for the latter.

The company has recently partnered with Carbon to incorporate its 3D printed lattice technology into the T3D boxing glove. Retailing at 349 USD, users of this product are pretty much exclusively trainers as opposed to fighters, so are only interested in protecting their fists as punches land on a bag or pad. Back in Ali’s era, horsehair was used as padding at the top and the front of boxing gloves, affording fighters a harsher punch, but exposing their hands to more damage. In the decades since, high-density foam has been used in combination with, or in

place of, horsehair to provide enhanced comfort and protection to hands. But Hayabusa has seen an opportunity to push things forward once more.

Through its patented Dual-X dual strap interlocking closure technology, Hayabusa has already applied its focus to addressing deviations of the wrist as punches land. Next on its agenda was protecting the fist.

“We realized that we needed proper technologies to address the fundamentals of a boxing glove,” Hayabusa CEO Ken Clement told TCT. “Our closure system and protection are bang on, now what about under the hood, the nuts and bolts of a boxing glove? It matters as far as what material is used; what configuration is used? What is the perfect way to select materials and incorporate them within a boxing glove? And not only protect [the hand], but it has to feel very comfortable for a user whether they’re striking a pad, whether they’re hitting a punching bag.”

The verve to embark on this evolution came after an extensive assessment of how gloves are put together today; Clement described gloves in which the foam had been ‘poorly Frankensteined’ together. Hayabusa put them to the test, assessing the gloves in a series of strike cycles to determine how striking performance changes over time. The finding was the denser the foam, the longer the characteristics remain intact.

As Hayabusa was making these inroads, Carbon was doing some outreach. The 3D printing company has made a name for itself in the sports equipment and consumer goods industries, through collaborations with the likes of Adidas, Riddell, and CCM Hockey. In boxing gloves, it had identified another opportunity to replace existing foam liners with its printed lattice capability, and a company that prided itself on innovation. The two companies found each other at just the right time.

“As we looked to incorporate [lattice] within the glove, you can do zonal precise changes of the cross structure of the geometries to get the best of all worlds so you don’t have to Frankenstein foam anymore – you can print it in a one-piece insert and get everything you need,” Clement said.

“Lattice was a holy grail moment.”

PUNCHES

What Hayabusa needed was a liner with energy-dampening capabilities. Giving guidance to Carbon, the 3D printing company would then utilize its Design Engine software to design the lattice structure, implementing softer and harder areas of the liner as directed by Hayabusa. Carbon selected the Voronoi lattice structure and the EPU 43 material for their aptitude in dampening and slowing down impact, with Hayabusa wanting the forces that are sent to the knuckle to be stifled.

“The intended primary goal was to increase the amount of protection, so decrease the amount of force transferred to the knuckles,” Jim Sauerbaum, Business Development Director at Carbon, explained. “The secondary benefit was after the completion of the cycle testing, the drop off in the amount of force that was absorbed was better using the lattice than it was using the more traditional foam or horsehair components. So, you get a durability benefit and an increase in protection by moving over to the lattice.”

Working with Hayabusa, Carbon developed a specified latticing workflow driven by considerations like stressstrain curves and meta-material modulus, with the Design Engine software returning several lattice options based on such characteristics. The 3D printing company would then factor in things like weight. Boxing gloves are typically sold in standard weights that increase by two ounces (10oz, 12oz, 14oz, and so on), meaning Carbon had to always be cognizant of the weight of the printed liners.

“We were saying, ‘we want a certain stiffness within a certain volume fraction that would equate to a certain weight,’ and then the software provides that output of the lattice and our engineers will take feedback in and tweak it,” Sauerbaum said. “But you're going to be changing the cell shape, the cell size, and the strut diameter, and then the brand will say where the location may need to change.”

The printed lattice liner for Hayabusa’s T3D gloves features two layers of lattice, with a softer inner layer to cradle the knuckles, and a set of bigger struts on the outside to provide more structure and spread the impact out across the shells as a punch is landed. These liners cover the majority of the top of the hand, running from above the wrist to the fingertips. The thumb is not covered by the lattice liner because this is an area that does not experience a lot of impact, and it also would have added complexity to the printing process because of its shape. As a more conventional four-sided shape, Carbon can print eight glove liners per build on the company’s L1 machine, with each print run taking between two to three hours.

Having distributed the latticed pads to Hayabusa, the company put the T3D gloves through an extensive testing process. This process leant on a mechanical rig developed by Hayabusa to assess durability and force transmission across thousands of strikes, before also retrieving qualitative data from a select group of trainers and athletes. All the data has been promising, with Hayabusa now exploring other product ranges that can be enhanced by 3D printed lattices.

“Lattice was a holy grail moment,” Clement finished. “This material came along and checked off every box, and it’s almost like ‘this is too good to be true.’ Seeing the data, and the results come out, just reaffirmed things at every stage.

“It takes a company to show what can be done and we intend to be that company. As it gets adopted as the new standard, and when people fully appreciate how lightyears ahead lattice is versus foam, the adoption becomes more and more prevalent. When the tidal wave hits as far as ‘this is what a protective piece of equipment should be’ in, specifically, a boxing glove, I think the world’s eyes will open and say this is the new standard that everybody should adopt.”

WORDS: SAM DAVIES

TAKE ME OUT THE BALL GAME

With 3D printing, Wilson Sporting Goods is able to “fail fast and cheap” to innovate baseball bats.

The ball game. Peanuts and Cracker Jack. The Great American Pastime. Baseball has been an integral part of American culture for over a century.

In Major League Baseball (MLB), the manufacturing process for bats has largely stayed the same since the late 1870s, but the design has changed numerous times, with the first major change coming in 1885 when a rule was introduced that allowed a flat side to the bats. This rule was later rescinded in 1893.

The first metal baseball bat was patented by William Shroyer in 1924, but would bend and dent if solid contact was made. Aluminum bats were not effective enough for mass production until 1970. In fact, MLB has never used metal bats, despite their popularity in lower levels of the sport such as Little League and college baseball, and still requires all MLB players to use wooden bats.

In 2023, however, Nexa3D and Wilson Sporting Goods are collaborating to bring further innovation to the baseball bat using additive manufacturing (AM). Wilson's R&D team, which recently caused a stir with its 3D printed airless basketball prototype, was seeking a more effective means to produce tooling for plastic injection mold prototypes, historically made with subtractive manufacturing technologies.

With a large print envelope and ultrafast LSPc process offered by Nexa3D’s NXE400 system, Wilson says it can now create a prototype in one working day, a process which could have previously taken months, and produce multiple design iterations in a single print batch. Wilson says the benefit of using 3D printing is that its R&D team can “afford to be wrong.”

In baseball, the part of the bat that hits the ball, the barrel, is a tube, normally manufactured from a metal, or sometimes a composite such as carbon fiber. The handle is manufactured with a different material. According to Wilson, this is to tune the performance and feel of the bat. The plastic pieces of the bat include the end cap, a knob, a separate handle piece that goes inside the tube, and some internal technology to manage the performance. Some cosmetic elements, such as a grip that goes on the bat, can also be plastic.

Director of Advanced Manufacturing at Wilson Sporting Goods Glen Mason said:

“It’s really interesting seeing the variety of technology that’s out there. And players have a preference, right? Because we do a lot of molded parts, and we’re in a very high mix, low volume environment, meaning we might make millions of parts a year, but its thousands of this and hundreds of this and then 5,000 of this. We can tune each one of those components for the player. So, even though the bat that the college players are swinging and the 12-year-old players are swinging look very similar, and may even be branded similarly, they’re actually more than just a shorter version of the adult bat. We have tuned it specifically for that player to make it the best possible experience for them, and plastics allow us to do that.”

Mason told TCT that he doesn’t ever see wooden bats disappearing from MLB, partly due to baseball being a very traditional sport, but also due to the fact that the implementation of metal bats in MLB would change the game “significantly.” Mason added: “It would be easy to make a bat that hit the ball over the fence every time, that would not be the challenge. The challenge is making the game more fair, making more parity across the game.”

The standard in 2023 for the coefficient of restitution of a baseball bat is 0.5. Coefficient of restitution is the ratio of final velocity to the initial velocity between two objects after collision, or more simply put, the percentage of speed a ball retains after hitting another object, such as a basketball hitting the ground, a tennis ball hitting a tennis racket, or a baseball hitting a baseball bat.

Collisions in which there is no loss of overall kinetic energy is known as a “perfectly elastic collision". This collision has the maximum coefficient of restitution of e = 1. Collision where maximum kinetic energy is lost, is known as a “perfectly inelastic collision”, and has a coefficient of restitution of e = 0. If a ball was dropped from 10ft, and bounced back to 5ft, that would be a 50% coefficient of restitution, so would be measured as 0.5. Every baseball bat in the MLB has a stamp stating that it is BBCOR certified, meaning that the ball bar coefficient of restitution is 50%.

Mason told TCT: “Every manufacturer has to be at 50%. There’s no opportunity to be better, except there’s so much more to a bat than the energy. There’s the experience for the player, the way that the ball interacts with the bat, adding spin to the ball etc. If you’re hitting the ball faster or slower, you can have a different performance.

“We have a box, we have to play inside the box, but there’s a lot of room there, and I feel like its actually more than we even know because it’s constrained by the cost of tooling. Why don’t we have thousands of different models out there? Because they’re expensive to

WORDS: oliver johnson

T GAME

produce. If we really can zero in on these opportunities faster at lower costs, and can really identify some competitive advantage, which we’ve been doing since 1987 when DiMarini started, and we’re still doing it. This [3D printing] is just one tool along the way, but I’m personally really excited because in this advanced manufacturing role this is something I want to take advantage of.”

When Wilson first began using AM, it was to complement the use of injection molding, with the brand liking the combination of the ease and the digital workflow of 3D printing, while still having access to the injection molding feedstock that a lot of data had been built around.

Mason said: “In the early days I said, 'okay, this is just going to get me to digital tooling right? To faster molds?' That was my walk in the door. I then realized quickly that it was far more than that because we have a different type of workflow where we can go from a CAD design to a molded part with relatively low inputs. The time is so low that even if it just has the remote chance of being successful, why don’t we just try that? What’s the downside, right? We’re investing hundreds of dollars, and days, versus

tens of thousands of dollars and potentially months. So, as the cost drops and the speed drops, all of a sudden, we are able to explore things that we weren’t able to look at before. So, initially, it was all about getting to a faster mold and now I’m realizing it’s really more about a better workflow.”

Lasse Staal, Director of Business Development at Nexa3D told TCT: “I think what we’ve done in collaboration with Wilson is that the performance achievable with 3D printing has taken a leap forward. I’ve also been in touch with people interested in golf, and we’ve been making stuff for athletes in the Paralympics. One of the prohibitive costs associated with injection molding used to be the tooling. To help people understand what is now possible, we need forward looking companies like Wilson who are able to and willing to take a chance with the technology. It may be only a little thing we are changing with this approach, but it does a world of difference to the workflow.

“What injection molding is, first and foremost, is an incredible amount of tried and true materials that have been available for many years. It’s a lot of highly skilled suppliers who are used to working with those materials. We are on a mission to connect those manufacturers with a novel way of using injection moulding. I think the Wilson case is so powerful because it highlights exactly that. We are now changing the frame around injection moulding, moving it from having been a high volume to becoming a batch of one technology. With AM as the enabler, lets call it.”

Laura goes behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum’s 3D visualization lab.

Typically, whenever I visit a new facility in search of a 3D printing story, I might be invited to handle a couple of prototypes, a fixture, maybe an automotive manifold. Today it’s a 60-million-year-old ammonite shell.

“It’s not just about dinosaurs,” Tom Ranson assures me as he places a box of fossils on a table at his lab inside London’s Natural History Museum. For a minute, I swear he can sense the Ellie Sattler fangirl in me but it’s merely a reminder of the scope of requests, from every imaginable angle of the museum’s 4.6 billion years of history, that arrive daily at the door of his 3D visualization lab.

Whether it’s a squid crafted from a lost form of glassmaking, the skull of a living marsupial, or a close up of Charles Darwin’s personal collection – this is a day job where, genuinely, no two days are ever the same.

Tom’s four-year-old son has given him the premier title of ‘dinosaur doctor’ but his actual job title of ‘3D Visualization Specialist’ finds him in a lab underneath the worldrenowned museum, where dinosaurs, much like 3D technologies, are merely a gateway to a world of discovery.

Having spent a decade at the University of Suffolk in Ipswich where Tom was responsible for building out its 3D suite, he is now taking that same engineering and logical thinking and applying it to conservation challenges.

“I'm printing things that have been dead for 200 million years,” he jokes, acknowledging the juxtaposition between technological advancements at his disposal, and the fossils on his table.

Tom sees three big opportunities for 3D here: conservation, exhibition, and engagement.

The lab is kitted out with an arsenal of 3D scanners and 3D printers which he believes places it right at the ‘front of the queue’ in terms of its 3D capabilities. There are portable handheld scanners from Creaform, a Faro ScanArm for larger specimens, and surface scanning equipment from Alicona which sit alongside a row of desktop printers from Ultimaker, Elegoo, Prusa and Formlabs –all benchmarked, not with your typical ‘3Dbenchy’ but rather a very on-brand Dippy the Dinosaur skull.

Requests come into the lab from just about anywhere – sometimes the other side of the world. The museum recently worked with Western Australia Museum to digitize a set of six marsupial skulls for further research – why fly 18 hours if you can study a digital model? As Tom explains, it’s all about asking conservationists what their problems are and opening them up to using 3D scanning and 3D printing technologies as a solution.

“It's very much a dream scenario because I just get to play with all of this kit,” he added.

Some requests, however, can be a test of nerves, like the project currently under NDA which involved the surface scanning of five objects – the only five of their kind in the world – to record the most detailed surface models possible before destructive DNA testing. Or how about a pair of tiny 3mm herring ear bones, one calcified, one non-calcified, which were scanned using the Alicona Infinite Focus Microscope, and then scaled and printed at 15cm to better show wear and growth marks for display at a gallery in Finland?

When dealing with trickier specimens, 3D printing can come in handy. Tom is able to print ‘jackets’, traditionally made out of soft clay, to handle delicate objects – like the set of gemstones which were put under a microscope for chemical analysis but so small they needed a custom holder to keep them in place. Bigger pieces can benefit too.

“I was scanning a femur of an Iguanodontian, which are around 14 meters tall – so the femur is almost as big as me,” Tom explained. “But because your femur is designed to attach to the hip and knee and to support weight in that direction, when you lie it on its side, it's not designed to do that. So, we've had a couple of them sitting in cupboards which just break and snap in the middle. When we make jackets for them, I feel a bit safer!”

3D printed mountings - the fixtures used to hold specimens during analysisare another easy win and provide a better fit for objects and take less time to make. Traditionally cut to size from conservationapproved foam, Tom can instead scan a specimen using the Creaform GoScan if it’s in the field or the FARO ScanArm in the lab, and reverse engineer a custom mount using something like FARO’s RevEng toolkit and send for printing. What can

typically take a month to produce manually now takes less than a day, depending on print time. Mountings can also be used to display artefacts in the public galleries, either as fully 3D printed custom mounts or 3D printed contact patches. Selecting and testing the right material however is crucial for stable, long-term applications. So far, only two materials out of 13 possible resins for the Formlabs Form 3 have passed Oddy testing for permanent use, while a further six have passed for up to six months use, which could potentially be useful for short term exhibitions or during transportation.

Then there are pieces like the 3D printed baryonyx claws, of which there are several in various materials across the lab – and another in my pocket to take home – that were 3D scanned and 3D printed to give visitors the opportunity to handle during public engagement demonstrations. 3D printed replicas are a way for visitors to get up close to specimens that would otherwise be too fragile or too small to be handled. And even better for Tom's nerves - if you drop a 3D printed replica, you just print another one, no problem.

There’s also a good chance if you’ve perused the halls of the Natural History Museum, you may well have already happened across some 3D printed parts in action.

“There are things out on display here that are 3D printed or that were cast from a 3D printed mold directly above us in the museum,” Tom said.

Sophie the Stegosaur, for example, lives upstairs and is the most complete stegosaur skeleton in the world – with the help of a few 3D printed elements. The museum

is also currently working on a project with University of Cambridge to create the world’s first full fossil of an Ichthyornis. The data is being gathered as part of a global effort which has resulted in a full 3D image of what researchers have determined the Ichthyornis looked like. Tom will help reconstruct it, using 3D printing, to deliver what will be the first physical example of the Ichthyornis that has existed since they were alive.

“I don't see any reason not to have a 3D printed element on display,” Tom argues. “It’s cool that there are fossils on display and there always will be, but completing the skeleton so that people can see what it looks like, with a 3D print, it's exactly the same thing.”

The centrepiece of the museum’s main Hintze Hall is a 23-metre-long blue whale skeleton. In fact, a massive project in 2015 to 3D scan Hope the blue whale during an ambitious move from the museum’s Mammal Hall, is one of the reasons this lab was created. But perhaps even bigger than a 3D whale scan are Tom’s ambitions: to build a digital library of everything in the museum. Today, that’s around 4 million specimens.

“I don't see any reason why we don't just digitize everything because it makes life so much easier,” he explained. “Researchers can say, ‘I want to see X specimens,’ and rather than it being a few weeks for them to find it in collections and bring it down to me, it could just be a library they download from and do their measurements. We can validate the model and the measurements so that everybody has confidence that what they've downloaded from us is absolutely accurate.”

If you caught Tom's talk at TCT 3Sixty this year, you'll know he is passionate about outreach, ensuring younger generations have a chance to not only learn about the artefacts inside the museum, but also the technologies bringing them to life in new ways. In a recent project, Tom 3D scanned a lizard from the museum’s spirit collection (specimens preserved in jars of spirits) and 3D printed a set for an experiment involving different strength magnets and a leaf blower to illustrate natural selection to a class of schoolchildren. It’s all about weird and wonderful solutions.

“I don't want there to be any barriers to anything because everyone's curious and everyone should be entitled to the same level of access,” Tom added. “The more people we can get involved, the more weird-like solutions we can come up with.

“If one kid then goes into science, then brilliant. My job's done.”

He is also keen to promote communication between different departments and further afield, collaborating with neighbouring institutions such as Imperial College London and the V&A museum to share knowledge and resources. Ultimately, the lab could provide a valuable service for the industry.

“I just want to further science,” Tom concluded. “I want people to enjoy it and be able to do weird stuff. I don't want just one person saying, ‘I don’t know how to do that,’ to put a stop to some research.”

“I don't see any reason not to have a 3D printed element on display.”

SHOWN: 3D PRINTERS INSIDE THE MUSEUM'S 3D LAB

SHOWN: 3D PRINTED REPLICAS AND CUSTOM MOUNTS

I’LL SHARE MY BANK CARD AND PIN BEFORE I SHARE MY AM DATA!

Rob Higham, CEO of Additive Manufacturing Solutions Ltd, says we should stop and think about why we are so obsessed with classing our data as IP. Spoiler: your data isn’t worth the spreadsheet it’s written on…

Many before my time in AM, and many since, will have fallen into the trap of protecting what we believe to be valuable: our beloved data.

Let’s look at value by the Oxford Dictionary definition of “how much something is worth compared with its price.” You can see why we protect this data. If we are producing data via AM, it will inevitably cost a great deal to generate. However, there are numerous areas we are not thinking about.

Here is perhaps the next obvious question: “okay, even if I get on board with this, the data shows our competition what we are able to do and therefore gives them targets to exceed?”

Good. Competition is healthy, without competition you will stay still. Continual development is needed.

“What is the point in sharing data if it is

not valuable?”

So, to that end I will conclude with a request: just take a look at some data, design values or an average from a project and some variation data. What does it show? Does it show your learning? What is the problem with sharing your learning?

Could they make them identical or even

method for the perfect roast potatoes: this is IP. The ability to develop egg structural titanium parts for aircraft all USP, your showcase capability that

to cover them in engine oil rather than the

So, if you are running Scalmalloy with the

Let us consider this example: you go for a family picnic, your aunt makes her “world famous” egg mayo sandwiches. Everyone loves these eggy delights; everyone also knows it is egg mayo. If we were to tell others it was egg mayo, could they simply go make their own egg mayo sandwiches? Of course. Could they make them identical or even better than your beloved aunt? Who knows. The recipe is key. Your aunt, the famous Colonel’s seven blends of herbs and spices, and maybe your own method for the perfect roast potatoes: this is IP. The ability to develop egg sandwiches, roast potatoes or primary structural titanium parts for aircraft all have a process as the secret weapon. This is what you have created with your investment. A process that allows repeatable world class sandwiches, spuds, or parts. This capability is your USP, your showcase capability that brings your customers great benefit and your shareholders their revenue. If the next time you make your special roast potatoes you decide it is a good idea to cover them in engine oil rather than your secret oil preference, are they still roast potatoes? Of course. Would anyone like to eat them? Unlikely. Your data is therefore the outcome of the process. So, if you are running Scalmalloy with the right, wrong or indifferent parameters, your materials data is how you close the loop. It is NOT of any value in isolation.

Now this is a great question, and one I think will take a little imagination. If Robert AM and Roberta AM, arch-rival

happen? The end customer would benefit from knowledge share; could Robert and Roberta start to open their eyes to money developing the same materials? Could they understand that the material,

Your current production data should show low variation across builds. Well done, making sure your customer sees that repeatability is crucial. Your competitors however are not competition. They are another organization desperate for success, balancing the investment to

making sure your customer sees that however are not competition. They are another organization desperate for success, balancing the investment to profit ratio that allows AM to grow. Unless we change our perceptions and build a cautious but still collaborative environment, there is a chance companies may move away

from AM.

to the application? Is it possible that by sharing “nominal” data and nominal

Now this is a great question, and one I think will take a little imagination. If Robert AM and Roberta AM, arch-rival organizations for the same customers, started to share data – what would happen? The end customer would benefit from knowledge share; could Robert and Roberta start to open their eyes to the possibilities, perhaps avoid wasting money developing the same materials? Could they understand that the material, machine, application love triangle is complex, and different materials and processes provide different capabilities to the application? Is it possible that by sharing “nominal” data and nominal variation that we could help others?

Why should we do this? Put simply: because if the technology loses,

Why should we do this? Put simply: because if the technology loses, we all lose.

On the flip side, if we support the uptake of AM technology and share our learnings with two simple data points (nominal and variation), each organization could save thousands on development costs, ultimately leading to more jobs and more AM uptake. I believe that these tiny data points are not our IP, but an indication of our journey. Informing our rivals, our friends and industry of our

uptake of AM technology and share our learnings with two simple data

development costs, ultimately leading to more jobs and more AM uptake. I believe that these tiny data points are not our IP, but an indication of our our friends and industry of our journey is less about who is the “best” and who is truly wanting to support the growth of technology.

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