VELO3D Releases Assure for 3D Metal Printing: Stratasys Direct Manufacturing as First Customer

With the release of the VELO3D Assure™ Quality Assurance and Control System for its Sapphire® 3D metal printers, VELO3D also brings on board a heavy hitter in their first customer as Stratasys Direct Manufacturing, a subsidiary of Stratasys, Ltd., will be the first to integrate Assure into their manufacturing processes.

VELO3D’s Assure™ quality control dashboard enables engineers to track the quality and progress of Sapphire® machines in real-time.

Assure offers unprecedented monitoring and substantiation of part quality, offering the following features:

  • Detects process anomalies
  • Flags issues
  • Highlights necessary corrective actions
  • Offers traceability

“Assure is a revolutionary quality-control system, an inherent part of the VELO3D end-to-end manufacturing solution for serial production,” says Benny Buller, founder and CEO of VELO3D. “Assure is part of our vision to provide an integrated solution to produce parts by additive manufacturing with successful outcomes.”

Upon receipt of their own Sapphire 3D printer earlier this year, Stratasys Direct not only began using Assure, but they produced an entire study from their evaluation, which included:

  • Monitoring integrity of builds
  • Validating bulk material density
  • Observing ongoing process metrics
  • Verifying calibration of the system

Assure predicts defectivity as a function of layer number. An increase in the defectivity metric is correlated with increasing defectivity in the bulk core of the part.

Before and during a build, Assure validates that critical parameters stay within control limits ensuring high quality parts. Clicking on individual squares reveals details on the underlying event.

These results were published in ‘Stratasys Direct Manufacturing Performs Field Validation of VELO3D Assure™,’ after the Stratasys Direct team used Assure for 12 weeks, verifying findings produced by VELO3D. They are now using the system in ongoing production efforts.

“AM can print parts and meet requirements for single units but scaling from a single part into serial production has been challenging. OEMs lack confidence in AM process control, and AM users struggle to demonstrate it. Without visibility into each part’s deposition lifetime AM becomes a risk,” states author Andrew Carter, Sr. Manufacturing Engineer at Stratasys Direct Manufacturing.

Assure boosts manufacturing techniques for the user as they can understand tool health better, calculate part quality, and perform field validation. Engineers 3D printed test structures during their study, producing wedges measuring 20mm x 41mm in width and length respectively. The wedges could be stacked into a tower shape, making a structure to match the build z-height. For each test run, they created two towers.

Test structure added to production builds to enable destructive testing. Image from ‘Stratasys Direct Manufacturing Performs Field Validation of VELO3D Assure™.’

Ultimately, 75 test structures were created and then analyzed via X-rays. Bulk porosity measured at 0.02 percent, and the researchers pointed out that there was no ‘single part exhibiting porosity higher than 0.1 percent. There were no deviations in print quality for the test builds.

Bulk defectivity measured on test parts by x-ray imagery. Image from ‘Stratasys Direct Manufacturing Performs Field Validation of VELO3D Assure™

“Stratasys Direct has built a culture of continuous improvement that means we are continually setting new standards for our industry on quality,” said Kent Firestone, CEO of Stratasys Direct Manufacturing. “We integrated Assure into our quality control workflow because it produces highly actionable insights. The user interface features intuitive graphs and charts that enable us to see and interpret the vast amount of data collected during builds. This information helps our engineers verify the quality of the build each step of the way and enables them to make quick decisions in the event of an issue. Assure helps us reduce production variation, improve yields, and circumvent anomalies to ensure consistent additive manufacturing.”

If you are interested in finding out more about Assure, check out the webinar on November 14th at 10 am PST, offered by Stratasys Direct. Click here to register. Also, if you are attending formnext in Frankfurt, Germany, don’t miss the joint press conference at the VELO3D booth (Hall 11, E79) on November 19 at 10 a.m.

VELO3D continues to be a dynamic presence in the 3D printing realm, from fabrication of a supersonic flight demonstrator to their efforts to expand on design and build limitations. What do you think of this news? Let us know your thoughts! Join the discussion of this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com.

Assure provides true z-height quantitative powder bed and part metrology. Note the sections of parts with red lobes indicating metal protruding >300um above the powder bed but still below control limits.

[Source / Images: VELO3D]

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Tuskegee University Selected by NASA to Advance Additive Manufacturing in Aerospace

The aerospace industry is a trendsetter when it comes to manufacturing. It is a major industry that evolved its expertise into lighter material, efficient engines and overall safer machines. Leveraging high technologies and reducing time-to-market is essential for the field to move forward, especially with a close future in the commercial development of low Earth orbit (LEO) and beyond. NASA is now accelerating manufacturing needs in the US space sector by selecting three minority-serving institutions to advance aerospace manufacturing. The space agency announced last week that Tuskegee University, in Alabama, will be one of three universities awarded grants through its Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP). Part of NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement, MUREP partnered with the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate to provide the students with the education and experience needed to help address manufacturing needs. Tuskegee will be looking into the impact of additive manufacturing on aerospace high-volume manufacturing and supply chain management.

“In recent years, the U.S. aerospace industry has struggled to meet the growing global demand for aircraft and parts, resulting in all-time-high order backlogs, unsustainable spare parts inventories, and lost opportunities for growth,” explained Firas Akasheh, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Tuskegee University and leader of the project as its principal investigator.

Through the project, entitled Impact of Additive Manufacturing on Aerospace High-Volume Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management: Workforce Alignment through Research and Training, faculty researchers and students at Tuskegee will collaborate with the Bell Helicopter team, an American aerospace manufacturer headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. Together, they will analyze current manufacturing and supply chain practices and develop executable 3D manufacturing plans for both helicopter and drone applications. In the drone track, university researchers will incorporate 3D printing into the design, build and test phases to improve the functionality and performance of these aircraft. The work will be conducted in increments to allow for continuous assessment of the quality performance of 3D printed parts.

Akasheh will lead a multidisciplinary research team that includes co-principal investigators Vascar Harris, a professor of aerospace science engineering; Mohammad Hossain, an associate professor of mechanical engineering; and Mandoye Ndoye, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.

During the next two years, the project will provide students with innovative opportunities to learn about designing and building aerospace parts using high-volume manufacturing practices, as well as supply chain management. It will also help Tuskegee’s College of Engineering expand its existing additive manufacturing facilities and capabilities for the benefit of future academic and research efforts.

“3D printing offers an incredible advantage to current manufacturing shortfalls that risk the nation’s aerospace industry maintaining its competitive edge and meeting its strategic requirements,” Akasheh continued.

Image Credits: NASA

Indeed, Akasheh is on the right track: a 2019 Ernst and Young report suggests that aerospace and defense players are also increasingly adopting digital and advanced manufacturing technologies in the design and production of their products. Advanced manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printing, help them reduce supply chain lead time, improve reliability and productivity, and simplify designs. For example, to further enhance its advanced manufacturing capabilities, GE announced the acquisitions of Europe-based Arcam AB and Concept Lasers and is establishing a “GE Additive Customer Experience Center” in Germany. Among original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), Boeing has about 50,000 3D printed parts flying on its commercial, space, and military products. Airbus, on the other hand, is focusing on using AM for not only prototyping and parts manufacturing for a wide range of aircraft, but also for spare parts solutions. Simplifying engineering by using can improve time-to-market, quality, product reuse, significantly cut costs, and supply chain complexity.

Other minority-serving institutions funded through this NASA cooperative include the University of Texas at El Paso that proposed a southwest alliance for aerospace and defense manufacturing and talent development, and Virginia State University, in Petersburg, that will create a pilot program to advance all fronts of manufacturing in the sector.

The MUREP Aerospace High-Volume Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management Cooperative will provide almost $1.5 million to fund curriculum-based learning, research, training, internships, and apprenticeships at all three institutions to meet the growing demand for expertise and techniques in high-volume aerospace manufacturing.

Tuskegee University students

For more than a decade, MUREP investments have enhanced the academic, research and technological capabilities of minority-serving institutions through multiyear grants. These institutions recruit and retain underrepresented and underserved students — including women, girls, veterans, and persons with disabilities — into STEM fields. Out of the total 3,289 enrolled students at Tuskegee, 62% are women, while 80% are Black. Encouragement and incentives are a great way to get people interested in the field of study. Additionally, if the gender gap in STEM careers will close sometime in the next 50 years, it will be with initiatives like MUREP that help us do it.

[Image credits: NASA and Tuskegee University]

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SCC recieves grant from NSF to develop Mobile Additive Manufacturing Platform

Somerset Community College‘s (SCC) Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AMCOE) in Kentucky has received a second National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education (NSF ATE) grant award for its Mobile Additive Manufacturing Platform (Mobile AMP).  The NSF ATE focuses on the education of technicians in high-technology fields. Its grant will be used to help the Mobile […]

NIST Photopolymer Additive Manufacturing Workshop: Roadmapping a Future for Stereolithography, Inkjet, and Beyond

Last week, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and RadTech, hosted the first Photopolymer Additive Manufacturing Workshop (PAM) 2019, in Boulder, Colorado. 3D Printing Industry was among the estimated 100 attendees present from October 29 through 30, who fought through the sudden snowstorm to discuss the topic:“Roadmapping a Future for Stereolithography, Inkjet, and Beyond.” More specifically, PAM 2019 […]

Post processing huge 3D prints: Metal & Bone + 3D Gloop #3DPrinting

Teaching Tech shared this video on Youtube!

Previously I 3D printed an enormous T Rex skull and custom life sized helmet by Markom3D. I was still coming to terms with the CR-10 Max so the quality was a bit average. In this video, I use a variety of techniques to transform these items into something I am proud of. The helmet now has a hammer tone metal appearance, the the T Rex skull has been weathered to appear like old, excavated bone.

This was really challenging for me, I’m super impatient with sanding and generally avoid these projects. With that in mind I’m thrilled with how they turned out.

See more!

FRESH News: SLAM Used to Fabricate Complex Hydrogel Structures With Gradients

There has been plenty of research on creating 3D printed hydrogels and using them to fabricate functional tissues. Biopolymer hydrogels, with properties that can be tailored and controlled, can be crosslinked to replicate tissue structures, and extrusion-based 3D printing is often used. But, the use of biopolymer hydrogels as 3D printing bioinks is tough, due to issues like low viscosity and trouble controlling microstructure variations. Some researchers have turned to embedded 3D printing methods, but this comes with its own laundry list of problems, such as having difficulty extracting the final product.

UK researchers Jessica J. Senior, Megan E. Cooke, Liam M. Grover, and Alan M. Smith from the University of Huddersfield and University of Birmingham created a method called suspended layer additive manufacturing, or SLAM, that can extrude low viscosity biopolymers into a self‐healing fluid‐gel matrix. The team recently published a paper on their work, titled “Fabrication of Complex Hydrogel Structures Using Suspended Layer Additive Manufacturing (SLAM).” It is worthwhile to note here that FRESH (Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels) is a super remarkably similar if not identical technology. So far we’re not getting involved with calling out which term should win here but we are leaning towards using FRESH because it will make it simpler for everyone going forward.

A schematic showing the production of a 3D bioprinted scaffold by use of SLAM.

The abstract states, “There have been a number of recently reported approaches for the manufacture of complex 3D printed cell‐containing hydrogels. Given the fragility of the parts during manufacturing, the most successful approaches use a supportive particulate gel bed and have enabled the production of complex gel structures previously unattainable using other 3D printing methods. The supporting gel bed provides protection to the fragile printed part during the printing process, preventing the structure from collapsing under its own weight prior to crosslinking. Despite the apparent similarity of the particulate beds, the way the particles are manufactured strongly influences how they interact with one another and the part during fabrication, with implications to the quality of the final product. Recently, the process of suspended layer additive manufacture (SLAM) is demonstrated to create a structure that recapitulated the osteochondral region by printing into an agarose particulate gel. The manufacturing process for this gel (the application of shear during gelation) produced a self‐healing gel with rapid recovery of its elastic properties following disruption.”

SLAM works like this: shear cooling a hot agarose solution throughout the sol–gel transition creates the fluid-gel print bed, as fluid gels behave like liquids once stress is applied. Then, the solution is put into a container in order to support the scaffold. Hydrogel and cells are mixed to produce a bioink, which is added to a bioprinter cartridge and extruded into the self-healing, fluid-gel matrix. The bioink is then suspended in its liquid state, and solidification is induced through crosslinking and cell media, which also provides the cell scaffold with metabolites. The construct is released from the supporting gel through low shear washing with deionized water.

The method prevents the initiation of gelation during 3D printing, which allows for great layer integration and “the production of constructs from two or more different materials that have dissimilar physicochemical and mechanical properties,” which creates a part with anisotropic behavior.

“To demonstrate clinical application, we recently created a structure that recapitulated the osteochondral region (the microstructure of which changes across a hard/soft tissue interface) as directed by microcomputed tomography (micro‐CT) imaging to provide accurate dimensions and was tailored to support specific cell phenotypes by controlling the microenvironment,” the researchers explained. “These complex scaffolds feature mechanical gradients that were similar to those found within the ECM and play a crucial role in preventing mechanical failure between interconnecting tissues as well as maintaining cell phenotype.”

The researchers needed to consider the mechanical properties of the fluid-gel print bed during SLAM 3D printing, as “they can impact on construct resolution and complexity.”

“Another embedded printing technique, freeform reversible embedding of suspended hydrogels (FRESH), developed by Hinton et al., uses a gelatin slurry support bath, however the rheological behavior of such material as a suspending agent for 3D bioprinting has not been investigated in depth,” the researchers wrote.

Additionally, they prepared fluid gels at different concentrations of agarose in order to find the best formulation for 3D printing uniform particle sizes, and investigated using needles with differing inner diameters, and a low viscosity dye solution, to find the optimal print resolution.

Optimizing print parameters within agarose fluid gel. A–G) Resolution of bioink printed within fluid bed support using multiple needle diameters and H–J) diffusion of dye through the gel at given time points.

“As the needle inner diameter was increased, the potential resolution decreased. Further, with larger needles, the printable filament thickness was more variable. This is likely due to both more material being extruded and also greater deformation of the fluid‐gel print bed. In very low viscosity solutions of low Mw (molecular weight), diffusion is also a limiting factor for resolution,” the researchers explained.

A) Intricate lattice prior to (left) and following extraction (right) from the bed. B) T7 intervertebral disc as CAD file (left) and lateral (middle) and apical (right) views. C) Intricate bulk structure in the form of a gellan spider. D) Carotid artery as CAD file (left) and during printing (right). D) Tubular structure (left) demonstrating material durability (middle) and perfusibility.

Alginate, collagen, gellan gum, and i‐carrageenan bioinks were used to demonstrate how many complex structures could be made. An intricate lattice structure showed off the scale and complexity that SLAM can achieve, while a T7 intervertebral disc was manufactured to show how the system can print large bulk structures and a spider was an example of 3D printing smaller, more intricate parts.

Several hollow and bifurcating structures, like a carotid artery model and a thick-walled tubular structure, were printed to show how the system can create geometries which are impossible without a 2D collector.

“These structures highlight the capability of this technique for freeform fabrication as large overhanging structures can be printed without the need for additional support structures,” the researchers explained.

The SLAM method can also deposit multiple layers laterally, horizontally, and within “a previously deposited extrude,” which allows constructs to be fabricated with the same biochemical and mechanical gradients that can be found in native tissues. The technique also uses microextrusion to continuously dispense bioinks, which caused better dispensing precision than the use of inkjet printing, and allows for more freedom with cell densities inside the bioink.

“Previous studies have indicated that the use of inkjet printers enables a reduction in print‐induced shear stresses applied to suspended cell populations compared with microextrusion methods, however, there are key features of the supporting bed utilized for SLAM that enable shear minimization utilizing microextrusion,” the researchers wrote.

Due to SLAM’s supporting fluid‐gel bed, low viscosity bioinks can be used – material viscosity can cause shear induction in bioinks, so it’s optimal for fabricating hydrogels.

“Using our system, it has therefore been demonstrated that the issues associated with cell shearing during microextrusion can be easily reduced, achieving admirably low shear stresses on cells that rival those seen during other forms of biofabrication including drop‐on‐demand techniques such as inkjet printing,” the team wrote.

A,B) Bilayer scaffolds using combinations of collagen‐alginate and collagen‐gellan. C) Large collagen‐core gellan‐shell scaffold and D) small collagen‐core alginate‐shell scaffold. E) Schematic of diagram showing control of cell behavior with attachment motif bearing complexes in the upper collagen gel and no attachment motifs for cell suspension within an alginate gel. F) Micro‐CT showing gradient porosity within a lyophilized collagen‐alginate scaffold. G) Confocal micrographs of Hoechst/actin cell staining of HDFs attached in the collagen layer and suspended in the alginate regions of a dual layer scaffold. H) Stress versus showing variations in gel strength and elasticity across a collagen‐alginate scaffold.

The SLAM method can also incorporate multiple biopolymer hydrogels into a single structure, which is important to “satisfy the mechanical, chemical, and biological variations that occur throughout native tissue.” The researchers demonstrated this capability by 3D printing an osteochondral construct, with ex vivo chondrocytes deposited into a gellan gum layer and osteoblasts into one of gellan‐hydroxyapatite. But they went even further, and used SLAM to 3D print integrated structures with different chemistries and gelatin mechanisms.

“Ionotropically gelled (alginate, gellan, and ι‐carrageenan) and thermally gelled (collagen) biopolymers were successfully integrated to form interfacing, dual‐phase scaffolds,” the researchers wrote.

The materials blended enough that mechanical failure did not occur – an environment that closely mimics the native tissue environment.

“Furthermore, this technique of printing integrated layered structures is not only compliant to printing different materials layer upon layer, but also deposition of a second material into the center of another. For example, in addition to producing layered constructs, it was possible to create 3D printed core–shell structures comprising a cylindrical core of collagen encapsulated within a gellan or alginate cylinder with various dimensions,” they continued.

“Another advantage of being able to deposit scaffold material precisely is that cell behavior can be spatially manipulated. Polymers such as collagens that are saturated with integrin binding domains allow cell attachment to the scaffold, whereas alginate and gellan do not naturally possess cell attachment motifs and instead, encapsulate cells with minimum attachment to the surrounding material.”

To learn more about the team’s use of SLAM to 3D print multilayer gradient scaffolds, I suggest you read the paper – they can explain it far better.

“In summary, we have demonstrated that the SLAM technique can be used to overcome the problems associated with using low viscosity bioinks in extrusion‐based bioprinting,” the researchers concluded. “The method enabled the successful fabrication of bulk, intricate, dual phase, and phase‐encapsulated hydrogels from a variety of biopolymer materials that are currently widely investigated in regenerative medicine. Furthermore, it was shown that controlled spatial gradients in mechanical and chemical properties can be produced throughout a single part with interface integrity between different materials. This allows for physicochemical properties of the structure to be designed accordingly with the ability to control porosity, mechanical gradients, cell distribution, and morphology.”

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

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Ultra Realistic Eyes Using 3D Printing and Casting

Eye jokes get cornea and cornea but this is a project you must see!

via Ikkalebob on instructables

In my pursuit to design an effective and reproducible 3D-printed eye mechanism, It became apparent that I would need a reliable system to make realistic eyes. In this instructable I’ll show you the process of making these eyes and provide you with the STLs so that you can make your own.

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