3D Printing News Briefs, July 3, 2020: ExOne, 3D Printz & Monoprice, CNPC, Liqcreate

We’re talking about business and materials in today’s 3D Printing News Briefs. First, the ExOne Company has been added to the Russell 2000 and 3000 Indexes, while 3D Printz has signed a distribution deal with Monoprice. Moving on, CNPC is introducing a new aluminum alloy powder for additive manufacturing, and Liqcreate has released its own new 3D printing material.

ExOne Added to Russell 2000 and 3000 Indexes

This week, the ExOne Company announced that it has officially been added to the Russell 2000® and 3000® Indexes. FTSE International Limited, trading as FTSE Russell, is a British provider, wholly owned by the London Stock Exchange, that creates and manages a variety of stock market indexes, data, and analytic solutions in order to meet its clients needs. Roughly $15 trillion is presently benchmarked to its indexes, now including ExOne, which was added after the 2020 Russell annual reconstitution of its indexes closed at the end of the US stock market’s day on June 26th.

“We are optimistic about our long-term growth prospects and believe that the inclusion of ExOne in the Russell indexes is validation of the progress we are making with our binder jetting 3D printing technology, the strength of our backlog and the breadth of our updated machine portfolio,” stated ExOne CEO John Hartner. “We look forward to the increased exposure to the investment community.”

3D Printz Signs Distribution Deal with Monoprice

3D Printz director Peter Roberts with the Monoprice printer

3D printing specialist 3D Printz Limited is now the UK supplier of Monoprice 3D printers after signing a distribution deal with the company. The Monoprice printer that 3D Printz is currently stocking comes fully assembled, and at an affordable price as well, which is why the Shropshire company, already a distributor for Magigoo, 3D Gloop!, Micro Swiss LLC, and Antclabs, is glad to supply it. Through this new partnership, will be able to provide some of Monoprice’s 7,000 affordable, high-quality products to customers.

“Our collaboration with 3D Printz means we have a reliable partner to help grow our business in the UK 3D printing industry,” said Christoph Esser, Monoprice sales director for Europe. “We are hoping to expand our working relationship to include more items from our product line before the end of this year.”

CNPC Produces New Aluminum Alloy Powder for AM

Vancouver-based company CNPC Powder announced that its Automated Metal Production (AMP) line is now producing a brand new range of aluminum alloy powder designed specifically for powder bed fusion (PBF) 3D printing. The company already produces many other metal powders, including copper and iron alloys, stainless steel, and nickel, and its new aluminum alloy material exhibits good sphericity and flowability. CNPC says that the material could be valuable to large-volume additive manufacturing applications in the aerospace and automotive industries.

“We have achieved success with our AMP line and suite of Al alloys by redesigning atomisation beyond existing atomisation capabilities, such as VIGA, PREP and EIGA. This bottom-up redesign has allowed for increased efficiency and lower production costs, all while improving flowability and sphericity, almost eliminating impurities, and increasing output,” the company stated.

Liqcreate Releasing New Material on 4th of July

Professional-grade 3D printing materials manufacturer Liqcreate has announced that its latest material, Liqcreate Flexible-X, will be available for purchase through its distributor network starting on July 4th. The soft material, perfect for open source DLP, LCD, and SLA 3D-printers in the 385 – 420 nm range, is an opaque black photopolymer with 55 Shore A hardness, excellent tear strength, and an elongation up to 160%.

With its durability, excellent rebound, and toughness, Flexible-X, part of Liqcreate’s line of engineering materials, is a great choice for manufacturing industrial-grade flexible touch and elastic parts.

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Ireland: Characterizing Mechanisms of Metallic 3D Printing Powder Recycling

In order to cut down on material waste, and save money, laboratories will often reuse leftover metal AM powder. A trio of researchers from the I-Form Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Ireland published a paper, “X-ray Tomography, AFM and Nanoindentation Measurements for Recyclability Analysis of 316L Powders in 3D Printing Process,” focusing on better understanding and characterizing the mechanisms of metallic powder recycling, and evaluating ” the extent of porosity in the powder particles,” in order to optimize how many times recycled powder can actually be reused in the powder bed fusion process.

Many “risk-tolerant applications,” like in the aviation and biomedical industries, will not use recycled powder, because any part abnormalities that can be traced back to the material can be unsafe and expensive. Parts 3D printed out of recycled powder need to have mechanical properties, like hardness and effective modulus, that are comparable to those of fresh powder parts.

“In order to reuse the recycled powders in the secondary manufacturing cycles, a thorough characterization is essential to monitor the surface quality and microstructure variation of the powders affected by the laser heat within the 3D printer. Most powders are at risk of surface oxidation, clustering and porosity formation during the AM process and it’s environment [1,2],” they explained. “Our latest analysis confirms the oxidation and the population of porous particles increase in recycled powders as the major risky changes in stainless steel 316L powder [3,4].”

A common practice before reusing recycled powders is sieving, but this doesn’t lower the porosity or surface oxidation of the particles. Additionally, “the subsequent use of recycled powder” can change the final part’s mechanical strength, and not for the better.

“Here, we report our latest effort to measure the distribution of porosity formed in the recycled powders using the X-ray computing technique and correlate those analyses to the mechanical properties of the powders (hardness and effective modulus) obtained through AFM roughness measurements and nanoindentation technique,” the researchers wrote.

They used stainless steel 316L powder, and printed nine 5 x 5 x 5 mm test cubes on an EOSINT M 280 SLM 3D printer. They removed the recycled powder from the powder bed with a vacuum, and then sieved it before use; after the prints were complete, they collected sample powders again and labeled them as recycled powders.

“Both virgin and recycled powders were analyzed by number of techniques including XCT and Nanoindentation. XCT was performed by X-ray computed tomography (XCT) measurements were performed with a Xradia 500 Versa X-ray microscope with 80 KV, 7 W accelerating voltage and 2 µm threshold for 3D scan,” they wrote.

“To measure the roughness of the virgin and recycled powder particles, we performed Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and confocal microscopy using the Bruker Dimension ICON AFM. The average roughness was calculated using the Gwyddion software to remove the noise and applying the Median Filter on the images as a non-linear digital filtering technique.”

The researchers also ran nanoindentation on multiple powder particles, under a force of 250 µN for no more than ten seconds, in order to determine “the impact of porosity on the hardness and effective modulus of the recycled powders,” and used an optical microscope to identify pore areas on the powder.

XCT imaging of powder. (a) 3D rendered image of 900 recorded CT images, (b) region of interest, (c) internal pores in particles indicated in a 2D slice, (d) identified pores inside particles after image processing.

The XCT images were analyzed, and “a region of interest” was chosen, seen above, from which pore size and interior particle distribution were extracted.

AFM image on a particle showing the boundary of mold and steel and the area where surface roughness was measured.

Software was used to process the AFM topography images of both the virgin and recycled powders, and the team applied nanoindentation on different locations of the particles, with a force of 250 µm.

(a) powder particles placed on hardening mold for nanoindentation, and (b) an indent applied on a particle surface.

They determined that the reused powder particles had about 10% more porosity than the virgin powder, and the average roughness of the powder particle surfaces was 4.29 nm for the virgin powder and 5.49 nm for the recycled; this means that 3D printing “may increase the surface roughness of the recycled particles.” Nanoindentation measurements show that the recycled powder has an average hardness of 207 GPa, and an average effective modulus of 9.60 GPa, compared to an average of 236 GPa and 9.87 GPa for the virgin powder, “which can be correlated to porosities created beneath the surface.”

Pore size distribution in virgin and recycled powders extracted from image processing on XCT measurements.

“The pore size in recycled powders has a wider distribution compared to virgin counterpart. The main population of pore size is around 1-5 µm in virgin powder which slightly reduces to bigger size but for a smaller population. There are also bigger pores in recycled powder but with a smaller population,” they noted. “On the other hand, looking at higher pore population in virgin powder (around 10 µm size), we believe that the out-diffusion of metallic elements to the surface occurs during laser irradiation.”

Surface roughness plots from AFM measurements on powder particles. Average roughness calculated by Gwyiddion software.

The recycled powder hardness, which is smaller than in the virgin powder, “could be attributed to higher pore density in recycled particles,” since porosity causes the powder to be “more vulnerable to the applied force resulted in smaller hardness.”

While change in grain size of the powder particles can lead to reduced mechanical properties, the team’s AFM and SEM results did not show much grain redistribution in the recycled powder. But, their nanoindentation and XCT results did find that higher powder porosity can decrease both the hardness and modulus of the particles, which “will damage the mechanical properties of the manufactured parts.”

Hardness and effective modulus of fresh and virgin particles by nanoindentation.

“We have previously presented our achievement on surface and size analysis using SEM and XPS analysis. Here, we focused on pore distribution in both powders and correlated that to surface roughness, hardness and effective modulus obtained from nanoindentation analysis of the powder particles,” the researchers concluded. “The results indicate that pores population is about 10% more in recycled powders affected by the laser heat and oxygen inclusion/trap in the powder, which in turn, increases the surface roughness but reduces the hardness and modulus of the recycled powders. The pores are filled with gases (such as Argon or Oxygen) since these gases are not able to skip the melt and have a lower solubility in the melt throughout the solidification process.”

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Additive Industries CEO Daan Kersten Steps Down as Firm Receives $14M Investment

One of a newer generation of metal laser powder bed fusion (PBF) manufacturers, Additive Industries is continuing to grow rapidly. The latest news is a $14 million investment from its existing shareholder, Highlands Beheer. With the funds, the company aims to expand its product portfolio, speed up its technological development strategy and shore up its working capital. This last use for the investment is meant to ensure financial resilience for the company amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Outgoing Additive Industries CEO Daan Kersten (L) with Jonas Wintermans (R). Image courtesy of Additive Industries.

Highlands has acquired the shares of the startup’s CEO and co-founder, Daan Kersten, who will leave the company by June 30, 2020. In the interim, Chief Technology Officer Mark Vaes, who has been with Additive Industries since 2013, will fill the role. Kersten said of the decision:

“This substantial investment confirms the long-term commitment of Highlands to the growth ambitions of the company and it allows Additive Industries to make yet another significant step on its mission to revolutionize the productivity for the additive manufacturing of high-quality metal parts. After eight intense years of fast growth I feel the time is right to make way and hand over the reins to new leadership.”

The firm has quickly rolled out a modular metal PBF system with a high degree of automation and throughput. By reducing the need for operator intervention, the MetalFAB1 system is able to produce parts more rapidly, with pre- and post-processing operations happening in parallel to the build job. The next step in its roadmap was the development with SMS Group of automated factories called the Scale4Series, in which parts can be printed and post-processed automatically. In the process, Additive Industries has earned a number of high profile partners and clients, including Airbus/APWORKS, Volkswagen and the Sauber F1 team.

Cutaway of the MetalFab1 from Additive Industries. Image courtesy of Additive Industries.

As Highlands is increasing its share of the 3D printing firm, it’s worthwhile to learn a bit more about the company. In fact, Highlands now says that it owns Additive Industries, in addition to a cigar machinery manufacturer, ATD Machinery, and NTS Group, which produces optomechatronic systems and mechanical modules for original equipment manufacturers. Interestingly, the CEO of NTS is also stepping down this August.

A rendering of the Scale4Series in development by Additive Industries and SMS Group. Image courtesy of Additive Industries.

Highlands is owned by the Wintermans, a Dutch family that founded and ran Royal Agio Cigars, one of the largest cigar manufacturing businesses in Europe, before selling it to Scandinavian Tobacco Group last year. The family divvied up 10 million Euros among its employees as a part of the deal. Highlands maintains its ATD business, meaning that it will continue to focus on the tech side of cigar making, but its investment in Additive Industries and its ownership of NTS Group signifies a continued shift in the family’s business operations overall, which previously had been making cigars since 1904. The sale of Royal Agio seems to suggest that the transition of Highlands from a cigar company to a tech company is near complete.

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NeuBeam: New Electron Beam Metal 3D Printing Emerges

After several years of research and development, Wayland Additive is now showcasing its new electron beam powder bed fusion (PBF) process dubbed NeuBeam. The U.K. company claims that its tech has numerous advantages over other metal PBF processes, including both laser PBF and other electron beam systems.

The company was spun out of Reliance Precision, a roughly 100-year-old engineering firm that relied on a series of Innovate UK grants to develop a new form of electron beam PBF based on processes related to electron microscopy and electron beam lithography. Licensing the technology from Reliance, Wayland is now in the process of commercializing its NeuBeam technology with the goal of delivering machines to six customers by 2021.

Parts printed by NeuBeam, without the formation of a “sinter cake”. Image courtesy of Wayland Additive.

Wayland CEO Will Richardson suggests that, using principles developed from the semi-conductor industry, NeuBeam is able to neutralize the charge accumulation that occurs with traditional electron beam PBF (hence the “neu” in NeuBeam), thus broadening the printing parameters of the system. The result is greater stability for electron beam PBF overall and opening up more flexibility than found with laser PBF. In turn, a wider range of materials can be used with NeuBeam than with other PBF processes.

Richardson describes NeuBeam as “a hot part process rather than a hot bed process,” in that heat is applied only to the part being printed and not to the whole bed. Instead of generating a “sinter cake” associated with electron beam PBF processes, Wayland’s technology allows for the free flowing of powder once the build is complete, reducing the amount of post-processing required, reduced energy consumption and, the company claims, parts free from residual stress. By eliminating thermal stresses, as well as gas crossflow, and by simplifying powder removal, Wayland suggests that much larger parts can be made than with traditional electron beam technology.

Geometric complexity offered by NeuBeam 3D printing. Image courtesy of Wayland Additive.

As a newer metal PBF company, Wayland Additive has jumped ahead of the stalwarts of the industry by introducing real-time in-process monitoring from the start, using structured light scanning, electron imaging and high speed infra-red cameras. This can be used to adapt the system during the printing process to tune microstructures as the part is being built. This also aids in material development, as the parameters can be changed on the fly for metal-specific optimization.

Electron beam PBF has been primed for new advancements for some time, with very few competitors in the field. The primary manufacturer of electron beam PBF systems is Arcam, now a subsidiary of GE Additive, whose electron beam melting (EBM) technology has been the standard bearer for electron beam PBF since the company first began selling systems in 2001.

However, the technology has been limited due to the reasons mentioned above and more. The charge accumulation that NeuBeam addresses, for instance, causes powder scattering and “smoke events” that distort printed layers when they occur and thus damage the entire part. Breaking up the layer cake and removing unused powder is an arduous process that necessitates the use of coarse materials to limit the risk of explosion when bead blasting parts. All of this limits the metals that can beeasily printed with the technology, mostly titanium alloys and cobalt chrome. In turn, Arcam itself has targeted just two industries with EBM, aerospace and medical implants.

More recently, however, new entrants like Wayland Additive are beginning to offer alternatives. In addition to a Chinese company called Xi’an Sailong Metals, JEOL , a Japanese maker of electron-beam based metrology and inspection technologies, is working with the Japanese Technology Research Association for Future Additive Manufacturing to develop an electron beam process.

This will certainly make the electron beam PBF market more interesting and will likely provide further competition for laser PBF companies that dominate the market, like EOS. And, because Wayland has reportedly developed methods for overcoming EBM’s drawbacks, there’s no doubt that GE is attempting to do the same.

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Hybrid 3D Printing Profile: DMG Mori

DMG Mori is one of the largest machine builders worldwide, generating about $3 billion in revenue each from its Japanese and German divisions. Though its position in the 3D printing industry is comparatively limited, it is growing, which is why we thought we’d take a look at DMG Mori its role in additive manufacturing (AM).

A 1960’s era Mori Seiki MH 1500 lathe. Image courtesy of HASUDAI MACHINERY CO.,LTD.

DMG Mori began as textile manufacturing equipment maker Mori Seiki Co. in 1948, which ultimately led to the production of machine tools by 1958, from which it has not since diverted.  Early machines included manually controlled lathes before the introduction of numerically controlled lathes, then vertical and horizontal machining centers. These various machine tools continued to improve up to the present day.

An important component of DMG Mori’s current operations is its German division, DMG Mori AG, which first became a partner of the Japanese company in 2009. The largest manufacturer of cutting machine tools in Germany, DMG Mori AG was founded as GILDEMEISTER by Friedrich Gildemeister in 1870 and, by 1910, was a mass manufacturer of turret lathes, multi-spindle automatic lathes, milling machines, and vertical and horizontal milling machines.

While new automation features and orders from a quickly industrializing Soviet Union allowed the German company to succeed during the depression of the 1920s, the two World Wars saw Gildemeister nearly shut down by Allied forces twice. After World War Two, the company began to boom as the German economy recovered, with Gildemeister ultimately releasing numerically controlled machine tools in the 70s. From the 60s through the 90s, the company made important acquisitions. By the time of the 1995 acquisition of Deckel Maho AG, it was an established European powerhouse in manufacturing machine tools.

As Mori Seiki’s partnership Gildemeister, deepened and the Japanese company increased its ownership shares in the German manufacturer, it changed its name to Deckel Maho Gildemeister (DMG) Mori in 2013. By 2016, the Japanese and German divisions were officially integrated into a single conglomerate.

It wasn’t until 2015 that DMG Mori entered the AM market with its first hybrid manufacturing system, the LASERTEC 65 3D, which incorporated a directed energy deposition (DED) head into a five-axis milling machine. The system features a 2.5-kW diode laser for DED at rates of up to 1 kg/h. Since then, the company continued to release hybrid machines. In 2016, the LASERTEC 4300 3D was added to its portfolio, which included DED, 5-axis milling and turning functionality. Its most recent hybrid system is the LASERTEC 125 3D Hybrid, unveiled at Formnext in 2019.

The new LASERTEC 125 3D hybrid from DMG Mori.

In 2017, DMG Mori acquired a majority stake in early metal powder bed fusion (PBF) company Realizer and released its first PBF 3D printer, the LASERTEC 30 SLM, to the market. This was followed up by the LASERTEC 12 SLM, which is smaller and designed specifically for thin-walled components.

Printed metal parts typically require heat treatment, which hardens the metal, before other post-processing operations can be performed, meaning that hybrid machines can’t necessarily move directly from printing to machining without heat treatment in between. However, the newest LASERTEC 125 3D hybrid can deposit material with a hardness of up to 63 HRC, DMG Mori suggests allows users to skip the heat treatment step when harder metals are used.

DMG Mori bills all of these systems as part of a larger collection of four process chains. While the hybrid systems are able to perform all of the additive and subtractive functions necessary for 3D printing, the SLM machines and the LASERTEC 65 3D (a pure DED system) can be complemented with CNC machines offered by the company. Workpieces 3D printed with these systems can be finished to proper tolerances and surface quality on a milling machine or previously milled base plats and bases can be have objects printed onto them without the need for support structures.

Now that the Japanese conglomerate is firmly settled in the additive space, it has begun offering AM consulting services. This includes verifying the printability of parts, redesigning parts for AM, engineering new components and product categories, simulation and topology optimization, 3D printing of prototypes and small series, courses and training, and consultations dedicated to overall strategy.

Because DMG Mori has developed laser PBF, DED and hybrid machines, it would appear to be an important contender in the AM space. Perhaps, in the near future, we’ll see the company release a hybrid PBF system, like Matsuura offers, or laser-based machining, like Trumpf. As impressive as hybrid 3D printing technology appears to be from the outside, we will have to see more success stories coming from industry before we can truly assess its place in the larger AM and manufacturing markets.

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Scott Dunham: SmarTech Industry Forecasts for Metal and Medical/Dental 3D Printing

The 2020 Additive Manufacturing Strategies (AMS) event ended earlier this week in Boston. The summit was focused on the business of 3D printing in medical, dental, and metals, so it makes sense that Scott Dunham, the Vice President of Research at SmarTech Analysis, was on hand to give everyone a sense of where we are in these industries, just like at last year’s AMS. SmarTech provides the additive manufacturing industry with industry analysis reports and consulting services, and Dunham began with the company’s metal additive quarterly advisory services. These reports are compiled using data from 10-12 consecutive quarters.

Dunham noted that the messaging and adoption rates have changed for metal AM, and that while we’re all still “working towards the same goals,” we are “drilling down to specific solutions and challenges.”

“Metal additive manufacturing is in a strange place right now,” he said. “From 2016 to 2018, there was lots of hype, lots of investments and growth and attention paid, and the growth was aggressive and accelerated. But now, the past couple of years, we’re in this period where people are saying, ‘What’s happening? We though this technology was supposed to revolutionize things.’ Growth rates don’t always line up with perceptions.”

He got into some of the specific factors that are going into the challenges the metal AM market is facing. There’s a large disparity between metal AM hardware and metal powder sales, which Dunham said tells us that metal 3D printers are viewed much differently than the machine tool systems to which people compare them.

“Right now, the machines are not viewed or utilized in the same way that other popular manufacturing tools are, so people are still looking at this as a longer-term opportunity that still needs development work and may not necessarily always be the right tool for high-volume serial production,” he explained. ” Users now understand they can’t just drop it on the shop floor like a CNC machine. This in some ways is a barrier to growth. There are still plenty of investments being made, though, but maybe we don’t expect those days to last forever now. We may be ending the phase of early adopters and innovators who want to make these investments.”

In the years 2014-2016, the sale of metal machines was averaging just below 30%, then climbed up closer to even, but are now dropping again a bit. According to SmarTech, non-metal 3D printers are still generating most of the hardware sales, but Dunham said we should see more of a 50/50 split into the mid 2020s.

SmarTech has a theory that this leapfrog effect is due to the current two-tiered market scenario. The advanced market focuses on serial applications and high-volume production, while the legacy market consists of applications that have around for a long time, maybe resembling a factory floor, such as injection molding and tool inserts, jigs and fixtures, prototyping or limited series, medical and dental models, and one-off high volume components. Dunham said these markets are both important, but that they each have a “different set of considerations.”

He pointed out that this advanced market will soon grow to over $4 billion worth of AM hardware sold.

“We consider this side of things a little bit further ahead of polymer machine sales,” Dunham explained. “That’s why there’s so much focus on metals.”

So, where is all this growth in the metal AM market coming from? Dunham said that hardware sales is a “good indicator of the pulse of the industry,” and that SmarTech is seeing a lot of growth on what Dunham called “the fringes,” like some of the new companies coming up over the last few years, as well as the legacy manufacturing companies adopting the technology for the first time. He referred to the newer companies, such as Desktop Metal, HP, Markforged, Trumpf, and VELO3D, as “challengers,” while the legacy companies were called “incumbents.”

Next, he talked about metal 3D printing service bureaus, which see a global market of a little over $2 million.

“It’s a pretty big opportunity on the metals side, but not as big as we think it should be, or as big as polymer service bureaus,” Dunham said. “But the footprint of metal additive manufacturing in the healthcare industry is very important, and will continue to be so.”

Dunham pulled up a slide about powder bed fusion technology, noting that because the dental industry was so mature in terms of AM adoption, it actually skews the production data in the top two graphs

Bound metal processes, like binder jetting, are currently used often for tooling, and SmarTech forecasts that applications for this technology in prototyping and end-use components will rise. Dunham said that powder-based DED 3D printing is currently “heavily skewed” towards end-use components, in addition to prototyping, and that the “vision of this will likely not change much in the future.

Moving on to the market value of metal parts produced with 3D printing, Dunham said that this number is “hard to assign,” but that investments by end users are likely just south of $5 billion. However, there are lots of high-value parts to consider, which contributes to that number.

“By 2025, we expect that all metal 3D printed parts will exceed 20 billion,” he stated.

In terms of project applications for metal AM, healthcare leads the pack, with crown and bridge substructures and hip implant components at the top of the list. If you remove medical applications from the equation, we’re looking at using the technology to repair high-value turbine blades and aircraft parts, valves and pumps in the oil & gas & energy sector, and more medium-sized industrial components.

“If you’re a supplier in the industry, these are what will succeed,” Dunham said. “The incentive here is to invest in different approaches to metal additive manufacturing.”

Dunham summed everything up by saying that while metal AM is still demonstrating value, entry barriers, such as financial reasons, are also high, which does deter growth somewhat, and that a multidisciplinary approach to it is necessary for growth to continue.

Then I followed Dunham out and into the next room for the SmarTech medical 3D printing forecast, which was wisely titled “Healthcare – the Backbone of Additive Manufacturing.”

“Within the healthcare segment, there are many ways that AM has been and will continue to be leveraged,” he stated. “There are some very industrialized serial, serious manufacturing applications in healthcare, so emphasis is put on the customization of these devices.”

He noted AMS 2020 has a theme of looking at business cases, which is why it’s so heavily focused on dental and orthopedic 3D printing applications.

“We don’t think these are more impactful or important, but these are areas that we’re seeing more challenges and work here,” Dunham explained.

Excluding software numbers, the healthcare portion of the AM market – combining medical and dental applications – is a little over $3 billion dollars; truly, “the backbone of the industry.” These revenue numbers have gone down a bit, because there’s a lot of attention being paid to industrial markets, but Dunham said that SmarTech forecasts a stabilization, stating that healthcare will “continue to be important to overall industry structure for at least the next several years, and into decades.”

As has been previously mentioned, in comparison to other industries, dental is “fairly mature overall in its adoption of additive manufacturing.” If you’re looking at metal AM used in healthcare, you get into the orthopedic sector, which means you’re looking at implants.

“The longer that we can gather clinical evidence for these implants the better,” Dunham said, noting that this will help ‘build confidence’ with metal 3D printing in the medical field.

Some OEMs are bringing AM in-house, so that they can better control the process to try and ensure a good outcome. A lot of factors go into making medical implants, and if something goes wrong, “clinical efficacy is damaged.”

As of yet, there isn’t a huge push by OEMs for non-metal 3D printed implants, but SmarTech believes this is coming later, for materials like ceramics, and especially for craniomaxillofacial (CMF) implants.

There are plenty of business use cases for metal orthopedic 3D printed implants, and while the hip is still in the lead, about a third of 3D printed implants made now are are spinal. But Dunham said that hip implants won’t dominate the production numbers forever, as the 2025 forecast shows more diversification coming.

Moving to the dental side of things, companies are seeing a lot of success with high speed vat photopolymerization technologies, which Dunham said was expected. But what they didn’t count on was the aligner segment looking to get into powder bed fusion.

“No one process has everything locked down, and we can all benefit from more competition to push the technology forward,” he said.

Dunham said we should expect that 3D printing will ultimately follow the “trend of machines in dentist offices.”

“We expect a pretty healthy growth in investment by dental offices and clinics, though dental labs are still where it’s at from a hardware perspective.”

Dunham pulled up a slide that showed numbers from 2018, and forecast out to 2027, that show specifically what’s going to keep driving the sale of materials and hardware for dental applications. Looking at things like direct aligners and aligner tools, models, surgical guides, and denture bases and trays, it’s clear that he’s correct when he said that there is a lot of “diversification going on out there.”

Stay tuned to 3DPrint.com as we continue to bring you the news from our third annual AMS Summit.

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below.

[Photos: Sarah Saunders]

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3D Printing News Briefs: November 25, 2019

We’re finishing the week out with some more formnext news for 3D Printing News Briefs: Poly-Shape presented a metal 3D printed Francis Turbine at the event. Moving on, Etihad Engineering opened a 3D printing lab for aircraft parts with EOS and BigRep, and Y Soft launched an online collection of 3D lessons for educators.

Poly-Shape’s 3D Printed Francis Turbine

At formnext 2019 last week, French company Poly-Shape presented something rather unique: a 72 kg Francis Turbine made with its Directed Energy Deposition-powder (DED-P) metal 3D printing technology. Turbine components are often used in the aerospace and energy industries, and DED-P printing can be used to fabricate the raw part, with its complex geometry, in less than 3 days; in fact, the Francis Turbine was printed in just 55 hours.

“The DED-P process is operated within a 5-axis CNC machine thanks to a material depositing system,” a Poly-Shape press release stated.

“By minimizing the needed allowance (typically < 1,5 mm), the part machining is reduced to finishing operation. In case of hard to access areas, the DED and the machining production can be sequenced such as the tool accessibility would be released.”

Etihad’s 3D Printing Lab for Aircraft Parts

Bernhard Randerath, VP Design, Engineering & Innovation, Etihad Engineering; Abdul Khaliq Saeed, CEO, Etihad Engineering; Markus Glasser, SVP EOS; H.E. Ernst Peter Fischer, German Ambassador to the UAE; Marie Langer, CEO EOS; Tony Douglas, Group CEO Etihad Aviation Group; Martin Black, CEO BigRep.

Etihad Engineering, a division of the Etihad Aviation Group, partnered with EOS and BigRep to open a 3D printing lab. It’s one of the first airline MROs in the Middle East that’s received approval from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) for designing, producing, and certifying cabin parts made with powder bed fusion technology, two years after receiving approval for filament 3D printing. The laboratory is located at the Etihad Engineering facility, adjacent to Abu Dhabi International Airport, and houses two industrial 3D printers – the EOS P 396 and the BigRep ONE. It was opened officially in a ceremony last week, and in recognition of the relationships between Etihad, EOS, and BigRep, was attended by His Excellency Ernst Peter Fischer, German Ambassador to the UAE.

“The launch of the new facility is in line with Etihad Engineering’s position as a leading global player in aircraft engineering as well as a pioneer in innovation and technology,” said Bernhard Randerath, VP Design, Engineering and Innovation for Etihad Engineering. “We are extremely proud to collaborate with EOS and BigRep to expand our capability and support the UAE’s strategy to increase production technology and cement its position as a global aerospace hub.”

Y Soft Launches be3D Academy for Educators

The Y Soft Corporation has launched its be3D Academy, available as part of its YSoft be3D eDee 3D printing solution for education. There are many benefits to using classroom 3D printing as a tool for learning, and adoption in schools is growing fast, but developing lesson plans that incorporate the technology can be difficult, due to lack of knowledge or access. The company’s new online collection of teacher-tested 3D lesson plans in STEAM subjects make it easy for educators to teach in 3D. The be3D Academy lesson plans provide tools like student worksheets, presentations, video tutorials, and 3D model files, all of which can be made on the YSoft be3D eDee printer with its certified filaments.

“3D printing is particularly valuable in the classroom to convey complex subjects. When students can touch and adjust physical objects they have created, understanding increases. Comprehension of STEAM subjects can be difficult, and be3D Academy’s lessons make concepts interesting and fun. be3D Academy lesson plans range from creating castles to understanding geometric shapes and volumes to creating a Da Vinci bridge as a science learning project,” said Elke Heiss, the Y Soft Chief Marketing Officer.

The be3D Academy is open to all educators looking to add 3D printing to their classrooms.

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The post 3D Printing News Briefs: November 25, 2019 appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

3D Printing News Briefs: November 20, 2019

We’re starting out with some formnext news in today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, as the show is currently taking place in Frankfurt this week. SCANLAB is introducing a new scan system control extension at the show. We also have some metal stories today – Desktop Metal has launched 4140 chromoly steel for its Studio System, while QuesTek Innovations and the German Aerospace Center are exploring the potential of a high-temperature aluminum alloy. Moving on, XJet’s Carmel 1400 AM system was installed at KU Leuven University. Finally, Additive Minds investigated EOS 3D printing without the use of supports.

SCANLAB Integrating Process Data into 3D Printing

Laser scanning solutions manufacturer SCANLAB GmbH is at formnext 2019 this week, and will be introducing a scan system control extension that uses a smart data-acquisition interface that reads external sensors. It’s a functioning model of an intelligent interface, and can integrate sensor data into scan system control – giving AM users the ability to inquire about, and evaluate, centralized process data.

Two tradeshow demonstrators were created that show how diverse the integrable sensor range is. The first incorporates a surface-temperature pyrometer into the scan head control, and the sensor system’s data merges with laser beam position data. In the second, an OCT (optical coherence tomography) sensor from Precitec is integrated to measure the powder bed’s surface topography. Visit SCANLAB at formnext this week at Booth B41, Hall 12.0.

Desktop Metal Launches 4140 Chromoly Steel for Studio System

Massachusetts-based company Desktop Metal is expanding its material portfolio by launching 4140 chromoly steel for industrial applications for its office-friendly Studio System. 4140 is a versatile material, with high tensile strength, abrasion and impact resistance, and toughness. DM Studio Systems users can now use this material to 3D print parts like connecting rods, couplings, pinions, press brake tools, and more for industries including automotive, agriculture, industry, and defense.

“As global demand for the Studio System grows, Desktop Metal is broadening its materials portfolio to include 4140 chromoly steel, enabling designers and engineers to print a broad variety of critical industrial applications, such as couplings, forks, pinions, pump shafts, sprockets, torsion bars, worm gears, connecting rods, and fasteners. Now, teams around the world will be able to leverage the Studio System to iterate quickly on 4140 prototypes and ultimately produce end-use, customer-ready parts faster and more cost-effectively,” said Desktop Metal’s CEO and Co-Founder Ric Fulop.

QuesTek’s 3D Printable Aluminum Alloy

Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) technologies leader QuesTek Innovations LLC and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) are working on a joint project to explore the potential of QuesTek’s new 3D printable high-temperature aluminum (Al) alloy. The material, able to perform at temperatures between 200-300°C in its as-built condition, is being developed by QuesTek under several US Navy-funded Small Business Innovation Research awards, and is believed to be the first powdered Al alloy to meet necessary requirements without any subsequent heat treatment. The DLR will be 3D printing demonstration components with the material, which can be used to fabricate more lightweight precision components like heat exchangers.

“The accelerated design and development of a printable aluminum alloy capable of meeting so many current needs is especially exciting, as it will enable concurrent design of material composition and component geometry,” stated Greg Olson, QuesTek Chief Science officer. “Based on our internal test results, we see broad application of this material in manufacturing components for aerospace, satellite, automotive and high-performance racing.

“We are particularly pleased to be collaborating with the DLR. Their unrivaled reputation, expertise and close relationship with industry needs will bring an important new scope to our efforts.”

XJet’s Carmel 1400 3D Printer Installed at KU Leuven University

Professor Shoufeng Yang, KU Leuven, shakes hands with Avi Cohen, VP of Healthcare and Education at XJet.

For the first time, a 3D printing system has been installed at a European academic institution. XJet recently delivered its Carmel 1400 AM system to the KU Leuven University in Belgium, where it will be used to for university research and to help develop regional 3D printing medical opportunities. The 3D printer, and its proprietary NanoParticle Jetting (NPJ) technology, will be put to good use at the European research center, as academics will used it to explore medical applications and AM educational and research purposes. XJet’s zirconia material will also be used to 3D print ceramic medical models.

Since the Carmel was installed, we are already reaping the benefits. The XJet system offers the high levels of precision and exceptional detailing required, levels which were previously impossible or extremely time-consuming in post-processing. The use of soluble support materials, with no harmful powders, makes it a much easier process and opens up opportunities to innovate that simply did not exist before,” said Professor Shoufeng Yang, who is heading the AM research at KU Leuven. “It’s an amazing and fantastic technology for R&D in universities and for the manufacturing industry, and it’s very exciting to be a part of. I believe that this is the best ceramic additive manufacturing method which can be easily upgraded into future multi-materials additive manufacturing, which is a grand challenge in the AM industry.”

XJet is also attending formnext this week – you can find the company at stand #C01 in Hall 12.1.

3D Printing Without Supports

Image credit: EOS

Michael Wohlfart, DMLS Process Consultant for the EOS Additive Minds Process Consulting team, wrote an article on LinkedIn, titled “Building without support? Possibilities and limitations,” about the design aspect of printing without supports in metal powder bed fusion technology, which can reduce build time, material consumption, and cost. The three main reasons for supports are heat transfer, residual stress, and recoater forces, but there are workarounds for all three. In recoater forces, forces are acting on the part while spreading powder, and the recoater will wipe away parts not connected to the baseplate. Prop supports, such as cones and stacking parts, can be used to negate the need for a baseplate connection. Wolfhart discussed a few examples that were 3D printed on an EOS M290 out of titanium.

“Let’s move on to a more advanced design and even incorporate stacking,” Wohlfart wrote. “Since Christmas season is coming up, how about a Christmas tree designed with Siemens NX and pimped with nTopology? By turning it upside-down, the tree is self-supporting and the tree trunk can act as a shell for the next tree. You can see a small overlap of 0.1 mm in x-y-direction between the lattice and the solid parts in order to assure a good connection.”

To learn more, check out Wohlfart’s LinkedIn post.

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The post 3D Printing News Briefs: November 20, 2019 appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

Air Force Institute of Technology develops high-strength steel for 3D printed munitions

The U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) has developed a method to 3D print high-performance Air Force steel AF-9628 for weapon applications. Led by Captain Erin Hager, and sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Munitions Directorate, this powder bed fusion (PBF) technique enables the production of steel exhibiting higher tensile strength than conventional […]

3D Printing News Briefs: August 3, 2019

For this edition of 3D Printing News Briefs, we’re starting off with a celebration – Scansite created 3D printed replicas of the spacesuit that Neil Armstrong wore for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. Moving on to business and metals, 3D Hubs has hired a new Managing Director for the US, and DigiFabster published a case study. IAM 3D HUB’s newest technological partner is ArcelorMittal, and finally, SmarTech Publishing released some new research on metal powder bed fusion.

Scansite Creates 3D Printed Replicas of Famous Spacesuit

Just over 50 years ago last month, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, and people around the world have been celebrating this important anniversary. In 2015, the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum launched a Kickstarter campaign to conserve, preserve, and digitize Armstrong’s spacesuit from that fateful day; this year, to commemorate the anniversary, the museum contacted Scansite to create 15 extremely faithful replicas of the suit for its 50th celebration of the moon landing. The interactive, life-sized “Apollo at the Park” replicas were made to display at 15 MLB ballparks around the US, together with an augmented reality app so visitors can learn important facts about the Apollo 11 moon mission.

“Baseball parks are the perfect venues for new generations to learn more about that summer night on July 20, 1969. The spacesuit replicas allow us to bring a piece of Apollo to Americans everywhere,” said Ellen Stofan, director of the National Air and Space Museum.

Scansite conducted high resolution 3D scanning of the original spacesuit, which was tricky because it features many details and different materials. The company used both a Breuckmann structured light scanner and a Faro touch probe to acquire the scan data, which resulted in a file with over 5.3 gigabytes of data. The data was edited, using surrounding topology of each hole in the information as a guide to fill everything in, and Scansite created a full-scale 3D print of the spacesuit, in 16 separate panels, on a Voxeljet 3D printer out of porous acrylic material. The sections were glued together to create the master model, which was then used to make a mold; finally, each replica was hand-sanded and painted, finished with a tough, autobody clear coat, and mounted on an engraved granite base.

3D Hubs Names Robert Schouwenburg as US Managing Director

Online manufacturing marketplace 3D Hubs announced that Robert Schouwenburg, the former COO & CTO of Shapeways, will be joining the company as its Managing Director for the USA. The company recently announced an $18 million funding round, which it’s been using to expand its team in the US, including opening a new North American headquarters at Chicago’s mHUB. Schouwenburg has over 20 years of experience in the industry, and will be working with the Chicago team to better service the company’s North American customer base, in addition to expanding 3D Hubs’ CNC machining services offering in Chicago.

“We’re at the start of ‘industry 4.0,’ an era when automation and data exchange will accelerate manufacturing technologies, and 3D Hubs is uniquely positioned to become a leader in this upcoming industrial revolution,” stated Schouwenburg.

DigiFabster Helps MakeItQuick Lower Costs and Increase Revenue

3D printing software and services provider DigiFabster recently released a case study about its customer MakeItQuick, a UK 3D printing service bureau. DigiFabster helps machine shops and service bureaus like MakeItQuick generate more new revenue, while lowering the cost of labor-intensive activities such as order entry, project management, and quoting. MakeItQuick teamed up with DigiFabster not long after it launched, and quickly started seeing results – the company was able to reduce quoting costs by up to 95% and order transaction costs by up to 85%. This allowed MakeItQuick to scale quickly and grow their revenues by 25% a month.

“The software handles 90% of our quotes without the need to manually review every part that is submitted. The time savings were immediately evident,” said Marco Massi, the owner of MakeItQuick.

“We save even more once a quote is confirmed. All the order details are at hand, giving us the opportunity to analyze the data and decide on the best way forward.

“In less than a year with DigiFabster, our revenue has grown steadily. We’re now experiencing a 25% monthly revenue increase, paving the way for our future success.”

IAM 3D HUB’s New Technological Partner

The latest technological partner of AM technology incubator IAM 3D HUB is ArcelorMittal, one of the world’s top steel and mining companies. The company, which has a presence in 60 countries and an industrial footprint in 18, will support the Barcelona-based hub with its technologies, materials, and knowledge to allow for new applications of and metal materials for 3D printing. The two share similar objectives, but ArcelorMittal hopes to use its experiences to contribute a new point of view.

ArcelorMittal’s membership in IAM 3D HUB will allow it to develop new metal 3D printing materials, as well as leverage the hub’s end-to-end solutions platform and work with stakeholders. By incorporating this company, the hub is welcoming a new member in the value chain of 3D printing “as a material developer.” It joins technological developers like HP, Renishaw, and Wacker Chemie, strategic partner Fira de Barcelona, and post-processing specialist Abrast by Coniex.

SmarTech Publishing: New Research Note on Metal Powder Bed Fusion

Less than a year ago, 3DPrint.com’s owner, 3DR Holdings, acquired an interest in industry analysis firm SmarTech Markets Publishing, and we continue to have a great relationship. If you’re ever interested in reading the firm’s latest data reports or market studies, you can find them all under the Research tab on our home page. Speaking of research, SmarTech’s VP of Research Scott Dunham, who has prepared the company’s Additive Manufacturing with Metal Powders Report for the last five years, recently released a research note on metal powder bed fusion, titled “Who Will Win (and Who Will Lose) the Metal PBF Marathon?”

“Despite what headlines, technologists, and marketing executives would have you believe, the metal 3D printing “race” is a marathon, not a sprint. To continue with the metaphor, we’re probably in about mile 10 of the race today –certainly not at the beginning anymore, but also quite a long way from the end. We are now about twenty three years since the first commercial metal powder bed fusion (PBF) systems came into view,” Dunham wrote.

“With so many closely comparable suppliers of metal PBF equipment now vying for market share, this begs the question, who has what it takes to make it? Everyone in the race today is working toward similar visions of an “Industry 4.0” future that hinges on metalworking going fully digital and highly automated from end to end, from prototyping all the way up to scaled production, with varying levels of customization capabilities based on industry needs along the way.”

Dunham goes on to list some of the technology’s “standout traits,” and names the company’s predictions on how the metal PBF race will turn out: which companies will be the front runners (EOS, GE Additive, Trumpf).

To learn more, check out SmarTech’s recently published “Powder Bed Fusion Markets, A Metal Additive Manufacturing Market Analysis.”

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The post 3D Printing News Briefs: August 3, 2019 appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.