8 Cool Parts From Formnext 2024: The Cool Parts Show #78

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Attention to cost was one of the themes apparent this year at Formnext, the annual expo in Frankfurt, Germany, devoted to additive manufacturing technology. AM Media executive editor Stephanie Hendrixson and I talked about this in our podcast review of the show, and cost as a focus was apparent in some of the end-use parts that caught our attention. Among the selections we talk about in this episode of The Cool Parts Show are components delivering improved performance through additive manufacturing, along with others leveraging possibilities such as a thick layer height or dense nesting to allow for optimal cost-effectiveness. Watch this sampling of eight cool parts from Formnext 2024. | This episode of The Cool Parts Show is sponsored by Carpenter Additive

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Related Resources

• Formnext
• The Hans Weber AM system also produced a cool part from 2023
• Fuchshofer Advanced Manufacturing and another Eplus3D Formnext part, a one-piece rocket engine
• Aircraft interior component maker AM Craft
• Finland-based contract manufacturer Delva
• Valcun's Molten Metal Deposition
• Lore customized bike shoes and contract manufacturer Avid Product Development
• Lithoz Cerafab S320 machine for ceramic part production
• KraussMaffei PowerPrint
• On-site video reporting from Formnext 2024
• Stephanie and Pete's conversation about Formnext 2024 on AM Radio

Transcript

Peter Zelinski

On this episode, we're going to look at cool parts we saw at the Formnext expo in Frankfurt, Germany. Formnext, the biggest event of the year for additive manufacturing.

Stephanie Hendrixson

We spent time at the show meeting with exhibitors, learning about new technology developments, new applications and markets for 3D printing and of course looking for cool parts.

Peter Zelinski

So here we go. This is not comprehensive and this is in no particular order, but here are eight 3D printed parts that caught our attention at Formnext this year.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Alright. We'll start with this. This is a center console for a BMW Group Vehicle. It was on display in the Hans Weber booth, printed on one of their robot driven LFAM printers, large format additive manufacturing. It's a pellet-based system. The console is 3D printed from AKROMID PA11, a material from Akro-Plastics, and it is 40% carbon fiber, and also is a sustainably based material.

So this design consolidates what previously would have been seven different assembled parts into just one, including integrating the air ducts through the center console. It can be printed in about three hours and 40 minutes. There's a little bit of post machining that needs to happen before it's ready for installation, but it's pretty minimal.

And by changing from that conventional assembly to this 3D printed design, BMW Group was able to reduce the time it takes to make this part, to reduce the cost of the part, to reduce its weight by 30%, which translates to fuel savings and better efficiency in the vehicle. And all of these changes together have added up to a reduction in the carbon footprint for the full vehicle of about 70kg.

But what I think is really cool here is that this is a real serial production application for automotive. BMW Group is going to need 18,000 of these parts, and they're going to be going into vehicles very soon.

Peter Zelinski

This aluminum manifolds 3D printed through laser powder bed fusion on a machine from Eplus3D. It's for mining equipment. The manufacturer needed 150 of them. Was looking for an alternative to casting to produce this part. So the company went to Fuchshofer Advanced Manufacturing, additive manufacturing parts supplier. And that manufacturer used its Eplus 3D machine to explore different geometric choices in making this part to bring the cost down, for example, experimented with wall thickness, and it turns out could get the wall thickness down to 1.5mm.

And the part still delivers all of the functionality that it needs to. But the more impactful choice related to the layer height of the 3D printing. The manufacturer experimented with layer heights from 60 micron per layer in increments all the way up to 150 micron per layer, which worked, which was the final choice. And that range, that difference, took the build time for 12 pieces from 67 hours at that finer layer height, down to just 29 hours per build for that thicker layer height. Now that thicker layer height produces a coarser part, that is no problem for the functionality of this particular part.

And meanwhile, the manufacturer was able to validate that the part produced that way delivered all of the performance necessary, the build density necessary for this part to work.

And Eplus3D says that build time reduction, and of course correspondingly, less time spent on the machine was maybe the major factor in bringing the cost per part down to the point where the production cost for each of these parts was just about €100.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Alright, this next part might look familiar to anyone who traveled to or from the show this year. This is a 3D printed replacement armrest for a passenger aircraft.

It's made by AM Craft. This is a company that specializes in 3D printed replacement parts for aircraft interiors. So think overhead panels, seatback trays, lavatories. There are all kinds of reasons why some of these parts might break or become outdated, because the aircraft is changing the interior design, the systems get updated. And Am Craft is offering a way for airlines to get those replacement parts, either on a more rapid timeline or to source parts that may not be produced any longer.

So a typical lead time for getting a conventional aircraft replacement part is something like 6 to 8 weeks. AM Craft is working more in the 4 to 6 week range.

So AM Craft was able to produce several hundred of these armrests for an Eastern European airline. This is replacing a part that would have been an injection molded piece with an over molded cover. Here it is, all one solid piece of ultem 9095. To get the finish on the top, they sand and fill and then paint the surface so that it looks just like the part that it is replacing.

But as a result of this, AM Craft was actually able to improve the design of this component. So there's a box on the underside of the injection molded part, which was one of the points of failure. You'll notice that on the 3D printed version, they've made it a little bit thicker, a little bit stronger. Hopefully this part will be a bit more durable this time around.

A great example of how 3D printing is helping with supply chains, helping with replacement parts for a really critical application.

Peter Zelinski

Here is a high volume production job done through laser powder bed fusion.

These little valve components are produced through what has to be the most dense build packing I've seen in laser powder bed fusion insofar as number of parts per square inch of build plate. So there are about 1100 components produced per build. This is a real production part.

This is made by Delva, a finish additive manufacturing part producer. It is a tight tolerance part relatively so. So this little piece has a component that has to go through the diameter. And then these ribs on the outside mate with the inner diameter of a larger cylinder that it passes through.

There are two critical diameter tolerances. Each of them has a tolerance band of about 100 micron.

I talked with Delva's chief technical officer, Markku Lindqvist, and he described how to get those tolerances. Delva imagined some ways the part might distort during 3D printing, and they pre-distorted the CAD model to compensate for that. Printed all those different versions, figured out which one is most accurate, and then replicated that all over the build plate.

And it proved to be repeatable everywhere across the build plate.

This is produced on an older laser powder bed fusion machine, an EOS M270 machine, that Delva uses for tool steel. The material for this part is MS1 tool steel.

Delva got this job because the customer initially assumed these parts would be machined, but got a quoted price per part for machining of about €30 per part.

By contrast, this high volume, 1,100 pieces per build additive manufacturing approach produces a cost per part that is well under €5 per piece.

Stephanie Hendrixson

This next part is a fan for cooling data centers. It was on display in the Valcun booth. You might remember Valcun from a video that we did last year at Formnext. They have a platform for metal 3D printing with aluminum. Molten metal deposition, MMD, is the process, and they're able to print with aluminum welding wire that gets melted in a crucible before it's deposited through a ceramic nozzle.

The advantage of this process is that you end up with an aluminum part that can be anodized, can be welded, can be treated like any other aluminum component out there, including being assembled with off the shelf or more conventionally produced parts, which is the case here. So this fan consists of these nine different fins that have been welded to stamped plates.

And previously these fans were manufactured by extruding and then cutting the fan blades. But by changing to additive manufacturing using this system, they were able to optimize the fan geometry, realizing about 10% increase in efficiency. So there are about 600 of these fans needed per data center. And with that efficiency savings across all of them, if you were able to replace all of those fans, Valcun is saying that you could save about €500,000 in electricity per year, per data center.

So great example of how optimizing through additive manufacturing, design enabled by additive manufacturing, even if it's just for one component of an assembly, it can have really big impacts on efficiency and energy savings overall.

Peter Zelinski

3D printing is key to these shoes for competitive bicycling. They're provided by Lore, they are tailor made to the individual bike rider. I talked about this shoe with Lubrizol in their booth. If you think about it, in biking, the rider's foot is part of the power transmission system. And if there's a hard interface between the foot and the bike, then there's more efficient transmission of power. But that rigid surface means that the fit to the wearer has to be perfect for comfort. So the way that this system works, the rider goes to a retailer offering the Lore system, they get their foot scanned. And that scan data is the basis for customized manufacturing through 3D printing.

The hard soles are made of PA12 material in Multijet fusion, HP's process, and then the softer parts of the shoe that hold it on the rider's foot, also tailor-made components, are made in TPU for Multijet fusion supplied by developed by Lubrizol. And those parts are also made by Avid Product Development, a company we've covered recently which is also part of Lubrizol.

And then a final element for added stiffness, carbon fiber winding around the completed assembly.

So, 3D printing for footwear. We've seen customized insoles, for example. Here is a next step. Here's a fully realized 3D printed shoe tailor made to the wearer.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Next up are these Separonics ceramic membranes that are part of a water filtration system for water recycling. These are used in applications such as desalination, dealing with industrial wastewater, processing the brine from lithium mining. And they are produced by a company called Evove. The problem that Evove was having in manufacturing ceramic membranes in more conventional processes was that they had to deal with randomized porosity.

So you end up with pores that are different sizes, different distribution. And you have smaller pores that might get clogged more easily. You have larger pores that might be letting things through that you don't necessarily want, but by going to lithography based ceramic manufacturing, or LCM, using technology provided by Lithoz, they were able to actually tune the porosity to be exactly what they wanted it to be. And so each of these membranes is 10 centimeters in diameter. It's five centimeters tall. In the actual filtration module, you need 20 of these stacked together. The full filter module is like a meter long. By shifting to LCM 3D printing, they were able to tune the porosity, get it evenly spaced, get the pores exactly the right size, and realize a lot of benefits in the filtration system. They were able to reduce the energy usage of the system by 80%, improve the throughput by five times, and enable the recycling of up to 80% more water.

Peter Zelinski

This automotive battery cover was produced on a powerPrint machine from Krauss Maffei.

Larger deposition style additive manufacturing machine. Like a two meter by 2.5m build table. Twenty of these parts were made per build. And the automaker initially believed that it would need to produce these parts through molding.

The final full scale production run of these parts will be molded. This is the run of parts that has to be evaluated. It has to be tested. And so these parts have to be very, very close to the final production components. And it did not seem that additive manufacturing would produce parts that were close enough. But the powerPrint system uses an enclosed build volume and temperature control. And Krauss Maffei was able to validate that these parts could be 3D printed in the same 20% carbon fiber infill ABS material that will be used in the final production parts. Two properties that are very close to and repeatedly close to the final production parts. And that validation saved the automaker a lot because to obtain the prototype mold, forget the parts, just to get the mold would require an eight week lead time. By contrast, Krauss Maffei within two weeks was able to deliver all of the parts needed for this initial qualification run. You can also see here a tool. This orange tool was also 3D printed. It's a trimming fixture so that these 3D printed parts can undergo the same machining that the ultimate production parts also will go through.

This fixture was a tool that was provided with the parts, but that was the only tool needed. These parts were produced without any need for a mold tool.

Stephanie Hendrixson

That's it for this episode of The Cool Parts Show. But if you want more insights and takeaways from Formnext 2024, you can see our videos shot on the show floor and listen to our conversation on the AM Radio podcast. We'll put links to all that in the show notes.

Peter Zelinski

And here's something else we would love you to be a part of. The Cool Parts Show is five years old. We've been doing this show for five years, and to celebrate, we're going to try something new. We're going to do a livestream. It's on December 12th. We are going to share updates about cool parts we've covered on the show. We're going to respond to questions we get live from viewers. We're going to give away some swag. It will be a lot of fun. Please join us.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Again, that's Thursday, December 12th. It will be 8 p.m. eastern time. If you're on YouTube, you can actually sign up to get notified, get reminded about the live stream when it's going to happen. We really hope that you can join us.

Peter Zelinski

Sign up, join us, join us!

Thanks for watching.