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3D Printing News Briefs: August 21, 2018

We’ve got plenty of business news for you in today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, and a little scientific research as well. Kelyniam Global has acquired new 3D printing technology, while Rostec makes an investment in technology. One of the earliest SpaceX employees is now an advisor for another aerospace company, the Youngstown Business Incubator has received a federal grant, and SAE International recently hosted a 3D printing webinar. Auburn University has been chosen as the site of a new National Center of Additive Manufacturing Excellence, and a new study discusses 4D printed elastic ceramics.

Kelyniam Global Adds New 3D Printing Capabilities

Using medical models for surgical pre-planning is almost a clinical standard these days. In an effort to increase its current medical modeling skills, custom 3D printed cranial implant manufacturer Kelyniam Global, which works with health systems and surgeons to improve cost-of-care and clinical outcomes, announced that it has expanded its 3D printing capabilities with the acquisition of new technology. This new technology aligns with the company’s reputation as a premium supplier of cranial implants requiring excellence in design and quick turnaround times.

“This state-of-the-art equipment will enable Kelyniam to produce certain medical models on the same 24-hour turnaround schedule we offer for cranial implants. The ability to rapidly print ultrahigh resolution models with high accuracy across our entire platform is a significant differentiator in our industry,” said Kelyniam COO Chris Breault.

Rostec Investing in Industrial 3D Printing Development

Russia’s state technologies corporation Rostec (also Rostek and Rostekh), which develops products for high-tech and communication systems, has invested nearly 3 billion rubles to create a specialized center for industrial 3D printing. The Center for Additive Technologies (CAC), with a goal of reducing the amount of time and money it takes to launch new products, will offer customers a full range of services and advanced 3D printers. The CAC’s main task will be introducing industrial 3D printing to high-tech industries that could really use it.

“Industrial 3D printing is becoming one of the indispensable attributes of modern industry. We see the high potential of this technology and introduce it into our production practice,” said Anatoly Serdyukov, the Industrial Director of the aviation cluster at Rostekh State Corporation. “For example, in the JDC today, about three tons of parts per year are produced by the additive technology method. The holding plans to widely use them in the serial production of promising Russian gas turbine engines, which will be certified in 2025 – 2030. The creation of a specialized center will expand the scope of this technology and produce parts for such industries as aircraft building, space, high technology medicine, automotive industry.”

Project participants calculate that the CAC’s first pilot batch of parts will be manufactured there sometime in 2019.

Former SpaceX Employee Becomes Advisor to Relativity Space

Aerospace company Relativity Space hopes to one day 3D print an entire rocket in an effort to lower the cost of space travel, and has been working hard to achieve this goal over the last few years. The company has fired up its 3D printed engine over 100 times so far, and just a few months ago received $35 million in Series B Funding. Now, Relativity Space has announced that Tim Buzza, one of the very first employees at SpaceX – another company working to 3D print rockets – is one of its official advisors.

Jordan Noone, Relativity Space Co-Founder, said “When I was at SpaceX, Tim’s stellar reputation for breadth and depth of engineering and operations was legendary in the industry.”

Buzza spent 12 years helping to develop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft and will advise Relativity Space on organizing the company structure, launch site selection and trades, rocket architecture, structures and avionics, and more.

Federal Grant Awarded to Youngstown Business Incubator

The Youngstown Business Incubator (YBI) is about to receive some new 3D printing software and hardware, thanks to a federal grant. Recently, the Appalachian Regional Commission awarded $185,000 in federal funding to YBI. The new 3D printers and 3D printing software that the grant will fund, in addition to being a boon for YBI, will also help to strengthen its frequent area partners Youngstown State University (YSU) and America Makes.

“Each additional piece of equipment further strengthen us as a national and international leader in additive manufacturing technology and this is a key part of that process,” said Michael Hripko, YSU’s Associative Vice President for Research.

SAE International Recently Held Additive Manufacturing Webinar

Last week, global engineering organization SAE International hosted an hour-long additive manufacturing webinar, called “Considerations When Integrating Additive Manufacturing into Aerospace and Ground Vehicle Development and Production Environment,” for members of the mobility engineering community. The discussion, moderated by the organization’s Senior Global Product Manager Audra Ziegenfuss, was led by four guest speakers: Dr. John Hart, the Director of MIT’s Center for Additive and Digital Advanced Production Technologies (ADAPT); Bill Harris, a Technical Fellow with Lockheed Martin; and Adam Rivard, the Additive Manufacturing Director for LAI International, Inc.

Topics covered during SAE International’s webinar last week included novel AM methods that translate to automotive and aerospace applications, the risks involved in introducing 3D printed, flight-critical parts, and the anticipated timeline for general acceptance of 3D printed parts by aerospace customers.

Auburn University Site of New National Center of AM Excellence

Recently, Auburn University in Alabama, ASTM International, and NASA launched two new centers of excellence in additive manufacturing with the shared goal of speeding up research and development, standardization and innovation in 3D printing. Researchers at Auburn’s National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence (NCAME), will conduct interdisciplinary research, while also striving to grow effective collaboration between industry, government, academia, and not-for-profit.

“The Center of Excellence is going to facilitate us bringing together the best technical experts in industry, government, and academia, and that’s going to help us develop the very best standards for this emerging technology,” said Katharine Morgan, the President of ASTM International.

New Study On 4D Printed Elastic Ceramics

3D printing EDCs. (A) 3D printed large-scale elastomeric honeycomb. (B) 3D printed microlattices and (C) honeycombs of PDMS NCs and first EDCs and second EDCs.

Shape-morphing assembly is a great technology for applications in 4D printing, biomaterials, life sciences, and robotics, and multiple materials like ceramics, silicone, and polymers are used. But, we’ve not yet seen much in the way of ceramic structures derived from soft precursors that allow for elastic deformation. Polymer-derived ceramics (PDCs) have some excellent properties, such as high thermal stability and chemical resistance to oxidation and corrosion, and their microstructures can be fine-tuned through tailored polymer systems.

While we’re seeing a lot in the way of 3D printing soft materials, current ceramic precursors are not flexible and stretchable. Guo Liu, Yan Zhao, Ge Wu, and Jian Lu with the City University of Hong Kong published a paper, titled “Origami and 4D printing of elastomer-derived ceramic structures,” that explains how they developed silicone rubber matrix nanocomposites (NCs) that can be 3D printed and deformed into elastomer structures with complex shapes and transformed into mechanically strong EDCs.

The abstract reads, “Four-dimensional (4D) printing involves conventional 3D printing followed by a shape-morphing step. It enables more complex shapes to be created than is possible with conventional 3D printing. However, 3D-printed ceramic precursors are usually difficult to be deformed, hindering the development of 4D printing for ceramics. To overcome this limitation, we developed elastomeric poly(dimethylsiloxane) matrix nanocomposites (NCs) that can be printed, deformed, and then transformed into silicon oxycarbide matrix NCs, making the growth of complex ceramic origami and 4D-printed ceramic structures possible. In addition, the printed ceramic precursors are soft and can be stretched beyond three times their initial length. Hierarchical elastomer-derived ceramics (EDCs) could be achieved with programmable architectures spanning three orders of magnitude, from 200 μm to 10 cm. A compressive strength of 547 MPa is achieved on the microlattice at 1.6 g cm−3. This work starts a new chapter of printing high-resolution complex and mechanically robust ceramics, and this origami and 4D printing of ceramics is cost-efficient in terms of time due to geometrical flexibility of precursors. With the versatile shape-morphing capability of elastomers, this work on origami and 4D printing of EDCs could lead to structural applications of autonomous morphing structures, aerospace propulsion components, space exploration, electronic devices, and high-temperature microelectromechanical systems.”

Discuss these stories and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below.

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A Miniature Company is Now Selling 3D Printer Resin for Formlabs Printers

Lately, I’ve been super intrigued by the open and closed ecosystems in 3D Printing. On the one hand, you have very top-down arrangements that Stratasys, 3D Systems, and Formlabs have where everything is very Apple-like. Nice smooth experiences and the materials, software, and printers are all dialed in. Everything works in concert with each other but the prices of consumables are typically high. The contrast to that is the sloppy, chaotic, uncoordinated open FDM ecosystem where there’s a lot of choice but little refinement. Open FDM is a cacophony, a chaotic school kids lunch hour of a thing while these closed ecosystems are sedated chamber orchestras guided by the ticking of the conductor’s baton. I see these two systems very much in contrast to each other. At the moment if you want cheap parts then open chaos is your choice while ease of use will always be better with the closed ecosystems.

Then I get an email from the Collector’s Showcase, a company that makes painstakingly finished military miniatures. They’ve deployed Formlabs 3D printers to manufacture miniatures and now have come up with their own resin. To go from making collectibles to making your own resin and putting it on the market is an unexpected step to make the least. I then also learn that this company is 3D printing rather a lot of these miniatures and that they’re reshoring some of their manufacturing to the US from China. This was more than enough fuel for me to interview of Collector’s Showcase and also of DigitalForge3D the new low-cost Formlabs resin vendor. We talked to Brian Levy of Digital Forge3D to find out more.

How does a collectibles company end up making resin?

As prices have risen in China for our productions we knew we’d have to move some production back to the US. Using 3D printers for the production was a natural for us as we’d been creating 3D prototypes for years. But having calculated the price of our models relative to FormLabs material price we knew it would be absolutely impossible to use their resin for the 3D print manufacturing studio we wanted to start. Don’t get me wrong their resins are excellent with great attributes. However they are priced for prototyping only not production. So we hired on material chemists that had extensive backgrounds in uv curable resin manufacturing to create our own. It took about six months until we developed a formulation that emulated the best properties of the FormLabs Grey resin. We were able to develop this resin at a price point that made manufacturing with the Form2 viable. In other words our part cost gelled with our wholesale pricing formula perfectly.

Why do you use 3D printing in the first place?

“Brian, one of the main principles in the company, came from the 3D product development side (working in the video game industry since the late 90’s). And we’ve been using 3D modeling tools with 3D printing tools for years. In fact, this marriage made some of the success of TCS possible. While most companies were still hand sculpting prototypes in China TCS was making and printing them in 3D from the onset, saving time and money.”

Why are you moving production back to the states?

“Pricing at China factories has begun to overshoot the cost of components that we need to run our business. This has a lot to do with “hot money” that the government has been printing to continue to goose their economy. This “hot money” has created a lot of local inflation. In other words we simply can’t afford to work solely with China as a lot of china factories have simply priced themselves out of the market. The 3D print revolution, while quite nascent, is at an adequate entry point for domestic manufacturing. We find that some part sets are actually cheaper than manufacturing in China!”

Why grey resin?

“Grey is a classic color that personifies “chiaroscuro” or light and shadow in visually measuring the correctness in various shapes. In addition, it’s a fabulous color for an initial paint surface as its medium undertones never detracts from the primary part color.”

How much is it and what is the performance like?

“The new Grey is the most cost effective material for the Form2 out there. We priced it at $79.00 a liter but added extensive price breaks if it’s ordered in quantity. In fact we’ve been shipping pales and even drums of it to individual customers with greater discounts. Our competitors really can’t even compete. For instance we have one particular competitor that prices their liters lower at $70.00 per. But the actual cost is much more. That’s because an extra 40% of their material sticks to parts like glue: only to be washed away in the alcohol bath never to be seen again. Unfortunately, this competitor packs a heavy weight dilutant into their formulation that has adverse properties. Sadly it’s hard for customers to notice the loss as most are just using it for prototyping. Customers actually get half the number of parts from our competitor than they would from our formulation.”

How many parts do you print with it? 

“We have quite a few Form2’s so we’ll do runs as low as 500 pieces to over 1000. The Form2 is an incredible printer. Elegant in its basic composition and being on its third iteration it’s almost bulletproof. We simply replace the PDMS coating now and again and the machines do the rest.”

Is that viable, aren’t labor costs high-cost components?

“Absolutely, we wouldn’t want to manufacture items in the US that have a lot of labor time in decoration (painting). That’s why we stick to items like vehicle models and structures. We do still keep a lot of work that requires hand painting overseas. But as 3D color printing moves to the fore in the years to come that should change too.”

How does the production work step by step?

“It’s much the same as in China but instead of making solid polyresin models as they do in latex molds, we create what we call “hollows” in our 3D printers. The hollow structures are about 2-3 millimeter in thickness and then are filled with ballast. This creates a heavy solid piece but with a fraction of the resin cost had we printed it as a solid.”

Do you see more people using Formlabs printers to manufacture? 

“I think Formlabs machines are an excellent entry point for batch manufacturing. The thing that’s prevented most batch manufacturing from occurring has been the cost of UV curable resin. But this is a problem we’ve solved with our new resin. It’s customers that come to us for 20 liter pales and 60 liter drums that have been able to set up large-scale manufacturing with the Form2.”

Do you think other hardware manufacturers will work towards manufacturing printers?

“We know of several 3D print manufacturers that are in development right now working towards that goal. We can easily envision the next generation of 3D SLA manufacturing printers that print faster, with fewer supports and are even cheaper to run. So the future looks quite bright for boutique manufacturers wanting to set up shop on their own.”

What would lower costs for you when using 3D printing to manufacture? 

“Of course, material cost had been the biggest budgetary issue for us and we hope we can get our formulation costs down even more. I would also say better VAT’s that perhaps don’t require so many PDMS window swap outs would be second.”

So there is a third option besides open and closed, a half-open ecosystem. What does this mean for Formlabs? Will they sell less photopolymer resin because of this? Or wil they sell more 3D Printers?  Does it mean that it has just become more attractive to manufacture with Formlabs’ machines? Does DigitalForge3D harm them because they’re competing with a very profitable part of the Formlabs ecosystem? Or will the company enable them by bringing more innovation to its platform? Will we see this happening time and time again with other companies snapping away at parts of the ecosystem? I see this as a real risk to companies that have opted for the traditional razor and blades model whereby the consumable causes the profit and the initial item is low margin. A company that relied too much on one element of their ecosystem to generate money may be doomed if this happens. It would be advisable to make money on the machine and also perhaps to have recurring service revenue to offset any possible decline in material usage. I’m not sure what our industry will turn out to look like but look forward to finding out.

 

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EDU Program Spotlight: Maria Carrion and Núria Diago

With the help of Shapeways, student designers Maria Carrion and Núria Diago were able to take their project, Be (in the) Water, to the next level.

“Thanks to the EDU grant [from Shapeways] and the versatility of additive manufacturing, we found a way to explore within different materials to find the best option in the quickest and cheapest way,” the Barcelona-based 3D designers said.

As Carrion and Diago finish up their six-year studies at Eslisava University, Barcelona’s School of Design and Engineering, they’ve begun to transform their idea of upgraded nose swimming clips into a reality.

A deep dive into 3D printing

Be (in the) Water nose clip

“Be (in the) Water started as a goal to redesign and upgrade the current nose swimming clips for synchronized swimming that one can find in the market and that is used by every person that practices this sport, being a beginner or an elite athlete. It is a nose swimming clip based on a generative design structure which has been specifically adapted to the nose surface of each user, regulating the relationship between the body and its surroundings playing the role of a second skin.”

3D design and printing are at the heart of Be (in the) Water. For starters, Carrion and Diago use 3D design software to scan each user’s nose, creating a personalized product. From there, once the clip has been designed virtually, 3D printing is used to make it into a fully functional product.

Be (in the) Water 3D modeling process

Nose scanning combined with 3D printing allows each piece to be custom designed

“We see [3D printing as] a tool that will change the way designers understand design as well as upgrading the products that one can find in the market. 3D printing is something that came so fast and it is changing every day, that is why we have had to discover and get into it by ourselves, reading, going to conferences, events, meeting people who are involved in the topic and finding our own way in this ever bigger new field. The piece couldn’t have been developed with traditional manufacturing processes as none of them could ever get such a delicate, precise and tricky structure,” they told Shapeways.

Searching for the perfect materials

Through Shapeways, Carrion and Diago were presented with a large array of materials to choose from. And while this was certainly an advantage when it came designing, it also presented some challenges for the young creators.

“Our main challenge has been to find the right material as there are lots of constraints for a piece that has to be in contact with chlorinated water and at the same time has to allow skin contact. It also needs a specific stiffness, but also some flexibility. But sincerely, the large amount of options we found thanks to the Shapeways material library and their clear explanation of every one of them helped a lot.”

With the many material options provided through Shapeways, Carrion and Diago have been able to continuously try out new versions of their product, aiding in the already tricky trial-and-error process.

Be (in the) Water product workflow

Be (in the) Water product workflow

“For the material selection, we used different materials aiming to see their strengths and weaknesses, like elastomer plastic,” they said. “That’s why we used flexible materials although we knew that it was not adequate in terms of structure for a nose clip, but using them we got inspired to find other possibilities like combinations of more than one materials. We also tested metallic and plastic materials available in Shapeways with which the nose clip becomes totally functional with a professional finishing. Now we are testing the materials on the context and polyamide is so far the material that better fulfills the technical requirements such as a good relationship between flexibility and rigidity, skin adherence, impact resistance and recyclability.”

Looking ahead

And now, as Carrion and Diago prepare to graduate next year and enter the workforce, the success of their student project has given them the confidence needed to blaze forward. When asked about whether they envision turning Be (in the) Water into a business, they said, “We believe in the future of the project, and after some market studies we know that there is a gap which can be filled with this functional and aesthetic nose clip. It would be a dream come true to see Be (in the) Water available for all synchronized swimmers who appreciate our product.”

They added, “Trust in the possibilities of 3D printing because it can be a source of inspiration by itself.”

Are you a student or a teacher?

You may be eligible for a 15% discount through our EDU program. Learn more.

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voxeljet’s James Reeves announces automotive additive manufacturing production line

Industrial 3D printer manufacturer voxeljet is working on an additive manufacturing production line for the automotive industry. The so-termed “VJET X-IOB” system is reportedly “ten times faster” than the company’s currently available 3D printers, with full integrated pre and post processing capabilities. Speaking to James Reeves, Managing Director at voxeljet UK who broke the news, I […]
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Crack-Free Hastelloy X Developed for Additive Manufacturing

Representative optical micrograph of stitched 50× images from the cross-section of an as-built cubic sample from its polished state.

Hastelloy X is a nickel alloy that is categorized as weldable, yet tends to crack during additive manufacturing. In addition to nickel, the material also contains chromium, molybdenum and iron, and it has been theorized that the specific concentrations of each metal may have something to do with its tendency to crack. The additive manufacturing industry has been focusing on formulating a crack-free version of Hastelloy X, and in a new paper entitled “Fabrication of Crack-Free Nickel-Based Superalloy Considered Non-Weldable During Laser Powder Bed Fusion,” a group of researchers successfully processed the alloy via additive manufacturing without cracking. Furthermore they did this without having to change the material itself.

The Hastelloy X powder was obtained from LPW Technology and processed using a Renishaw AM400.

“The powder particles were spherical in morphology, having a particle size distribution D10 = 19 µm, D50 = 41 µm, and D90 = 62 µm,” the researchers state. “Cubic samples of 1 cm3 were produced under Ar atmosphere and analyzed in the as-built and annealed condition.”

(a) SEM montage of the cylindrical sample and higher magnification images of the (b) top, (c) middle and (d) bottom of the sample. The regions where (b-d) were taken from are highlighted on the montage.

Cross-sections of samples were prepared for microstructure evaluation using traditional metallography techniques, and the samples were evaluated using electroetching, a light optical microscope, and scanning electron microscopes. Heat treatment was carried out for one hour followed by water quenching.

The testing showed that the material maintained a crack-free microstructure.

“Columnar grains parallel to the building directions were evidenced through EBSD in the as-built condition,” the researchers explain. “Likewise, a typical microstructure for LPBF Ni-based superalloys was found, with smaller columnar structure size than reported elsewhere in literature. The presence of Mo-enriched carbides (~50 nm) was confirmed through EDS line scans obtained using an FE-SEM; these Mo-enriched carbides are presumed to play an important role in the cracking mechanism of this alloy.”

(a) EBSD map taken from the central region of the sample after heat treatment; and (b) its corresponding pole figure; SEM micrographs taken at (c) 5000× and (d) 1000× showing the microstructure of the sample after heat treatment

Hastelloy X is a desirable material for a number of reasons. It possesses a high resistance to oxidation as well as high-temperature strength. While it may be prone to cracking during additive manufacturing, it is a remarkably resistant to stress-corrosion cracking when used in petrochemical applications. It also exhibits good ductility after prolonged exposure to high temperatures.

Because of its high heat and oxidation resistance, Hastelloy X is frequently used in industrial furnace applications, as well as in gas turbine engines. Its value as a material means that it is well worth the time and work involved to develop it for additive manufacturing, particularly as additive manufacturing becomes more and more important to the aerospace industry. Curiously, materials that have shown themselves to be crack-free during welding can still form cracks during additive manufacturing, so specific formulations of these materials must be developed for additive manufacturing. This particular paper shows that crack-free Hastelloy X can be successfully additively manufactured, which is promising for many applications in the future.

Authors of the paper include Oscar Sanchez-Mata, Xianglong Wang, Jose Alberto Muñiz-Lerma, Mohammad Attarian Shandiz, Raynald Gauvin and Mathieu Brochu.

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

 

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NYU Encode Printed Parts With Anti-Counterfeiting QR Cloud

The fight against piracy and counterfeiting is an age old one for many modern industries in the digital age. As such, it’s been been on-going concern for 3D printing for quite a while, especially considering the amount of industrial leaders worrying about losing their printed parts and digital models to counterfeit copies. It’s no surprise […]

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Biohackers 3D Print DIY Chemical Reactor For Medicine

Founded by mathematics professor Michael Laufer in 2015, the Four Thieves Vinegar collective has made its goal to provide cheap alternatives to various important medicines. They’ve provided wonderful open-source solutions to all sorts of medical products such as downloadable medicines and printable devices. In keeping with this mission, the group has now unveiled their DIY chemical reactor […]

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WashU’s 3D printed Lotus House debuts at China’s Solar Decathlon

Students from Washington University in St. Louis’ (WashU) Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and School of Engineering & Applied Science have designed and fabricated a 3D printed energy-efficient residence aptly named the Lotus House. Unveiled earlier this month at the Solar Decathlon China 2018, the Lotus House takes inspiration from the Chinese […]