Published 9/26/2022

Additive Manufacturing at IMTS 2022: In the AM Pavilion, and Beyond: AM Radio #26A

Applications and technology for additive manufacturing — not just 3D printing — were widespread across the International Manufacturing Technology Show. Listen to our live discussion recorded during the event for observations on AM at IMTS.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Executive Editor, Additive Manufacturing

Transcript

Stephanie Hendrixson

Additive manufacturing’s presence was significant at the 2022 International Manufacturing Technology Show. We've got updates from IMTS and the Additive Manufacturing Conference coming up on AM Radio.

Peter Zelinski

The AM Radio podcast is brought to you by The Cool Parts Show, a video series dedicated to highlighting unique, unusual and innovative 3D printed parts. Watch episodes at thecoolpartsshow.com.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Welcome to AM Radio, the show where we tune in on what's going on in additive manufacturing. I'm Stephanie Hendrixson. And I'm joined by both of my co-hosts today, Pete Zelinski. Hi, Pete.

Peter Zelinski

Hi, Stephanie.

Stephanie Hendrixson

And Julia Hider.

Julia Hider

Hey, everyone.

Stephanie Hendrixson

So last week, all three of us were at the International Manufacturing Technology Show, IMTS, North America's largest trade show for manufacturing technology. So, of course, that includes additive. And we were there sort of in two different capacities.

Peter Zelinski

Yeah, IMTS –- International Manufacturing Technology Show — in Chicago, biggest manufacturing event in North America, Julia and Stephanie and I were there all last week, it has become a big setting for additive manufacturing, along with a lot of other manufacturing technologies. So, we were there covering the additive technologies on display, and also covering our own Additive Manufacturing Conference.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Yeah, so we've got two different conversations for you in today's podcast. In the second half of the show, we're going to focus on the AMC, the Additive Manufacturing Conference. And in the first half, we've actually got a prerecorded conversation about IMTS, the overall show and all of the different additive manufacturing things that we saw. So we actually had a chance to record that conversation live on the AM4U stage in the AM Pavilion. So it's gonna sound a little bit different than the show typically does. But we hope that if you didn't make it to IMTS, or you just didn't get a chance to take in both of these events, you will get something out of this episode. So with no further ado, we're gonna jump right into the live recording. And if you've already heard this, feel free to skip ahead to the conference discussion in the second half.

We'll go ahead and get started. This is a live recording of our podcast, AM Radio. My name is Stephanie Hendrixson. I'm joined on stage by my colleagues, Pete Zelinski. Hi Pete.

Peter Zelinski

Hi Stephanie.

Stephanie Hendrixson

And Julia Hider. Hi, Julia.

Julia Hider

Hi Stephanie.

Stephanie Hendrixson

So the three of us work for Additive Manufacturing Media, we cover production applications for 3D printing, we do that in a couple of different ways. We have our magazine, our website, video series, like The Cool Parts Show, and this podcast, AM Radio. And this show is really kind of where we compare notes, tell stories, talk about the things that we've seen and try to make sense of it all, we say that we tune in to what's really going on in additive manufacturing. So we've been at the show for five days here at IMTS. We've seen a lot of stuff. And we're going to try to just kind of summarize the things that we've been seeing throughout the week. And we've got three or four sort of big buckets to get through. We're not going to tell you everything that we saw there, saw here, obviously, but going to try to identify some of the big overarching themes.

Peter Zelinski

Sounds good.

Julia Hider

Let's do it.

Stephanie Hendrixson

All right. So we are speaking right now on the AM4U stage, we're in the Additive Manufacturing Pavilion over here in the West Building. And that's where a lot of the 3D printing is located here at IMTS. But it's not the only place. So I think the trend that I want to start with is additive manufacturing that escaped the additive pavilion that was elsewhere at the show. Just a couple examples. I saw some things in the South Building this week, in sort of the machining centers area. So for example, there's a company called One Click Metal, they were a spinout of Trumpf originally, they're they're on display here in the INDEX booth, so INDEX makes turning centers, and they now have a controlling stake in One Click Metal. And this company does like sort of small-scale laser powder bed fusion. It's a really small build volume. It's good for like R&D research type applications, and also maybe like tool and die, some, some things that might happen at like a smaller shop. And so that's an example of a 3D printer that is nowhere near the Additive Manufacturing Pavilion, and I saw other examples of that throughout this week.

Peter Zelinski

One Click Metal?

Stephanie Hendrixson

One Click Metal.

Peter Zelinski

Yeah, that's IMTS is like maybe the most important event for additive manufacturing, but it's not specifically focused on additive manufacturing. And I think we've had that experience before and kind of knew that going in that there's this additive pavilion which, which we’ll say the Additive Manufacturing Pavilion, it is now big enough to get lost in. So it's a, it's officially a part of IMTS now, but yeah, that additive leaks out into all the other pavilions, too. So I get One Click Metal like I didn't even see that at all. Yeah, other examples?

Stephanie Hendrixson

Other examples, so a company you might recognize Mitsubishi EDM/MC machinery systems. So an EDM company, they do laser technology, they do lots of different things. They are premiering their laser, DED, directed energy deposition machine here at the show. It's already available in Japan, but they're now bringing it to the United States. And it's, it's in there, it's in their booth with the rest of their equipment, they didn't put it in the additive pavilion, they kept it all together. So another example.

Julia Hider

Yeah, I actually saw this in the KUKA Booth. KUKA makes robot arms. We've talked before about the idea of mounting a 3D printing head on a robot arm to make a 3D printer, it’s good for large parts, in particular. So at the show, KUKA is highlighting some of their system partners. And there were a couple that do 3D printing applications. There was one in there related to metal and one related to polymer. So one of their partners is Orbital Composites. And they have a special system for mounting the robot that's customizable. So it's kind of like a big frame and you can mount the robot in different places along the top and the side depending on what part you're making and how big it is. And you can mount multiple robots along this frame. So they have a big setup in the middle of KUKA’s booth where they're 3D printing a drone, like a UAV out of I think it was nylon filament.

Stephanie Hendrixson

That's a polymer example that wasn't in the pavilion.

Julia Hider

Then yeah, on the metal side, they had One Off Robotics and they were showcasing a DVD application with a KUKA robotic arm and 3D printing had from Meltio.

Peter Zelinski

Can I push back on this a little bit? So you're talking about additive, additive equipment in other pavilions of the show, but I had some experiences of the opposite of that. Metal, metalworking equipment and metal cutting and forming equipment in the additive pavilion, you know, maybe the most striking example of that is Desktop Metal is here with their figure machine, which it is, it is tooling-less sheet metal forming. There's this ceramic ball that works to digitally deform sheet metal and there's more to it than that, it's like what is supporting the sheet from the backside is also important and part of the process but for, for maintaining like the structural integrity of the sheet while it's being deformed. It's not a 3D printer. It is arguably 3D printing adjacent because it uses that digital deformation uses slicer technology to program so you could argue that the figure machine, it's a forming machine, but it is sort of 3D printing the empty space within the sheet metal but another one, okay, metal cutting equipment in the additive pavilion. EDM Network, wire EDM provider, having a great show because they're in the EDM pavilion and they have wire EDM that, that is continuous wire and protects against wire breaks without needing to use flushing to get the fluid into the part, into the cut. They've got a different system than that and the thing about separating laser powder bed fusion parts from the build plate it is just gnarly geometry all the time and prone to wire breaks. And they've got a system that guards against that, wasn't made for for additive but additive is proving to be a fantastic application, and bonus, Esprit CAM software, computer aided manufacturing software, has an additive module that might be used to program a powder bed fusion build, but also is long established CAM provider for wire EDM. So the same model that was used to program the build could then be used to program the path of that wire EDM. So don't just like straight-line cut like a saw to separate the part from the build plate, but sort of follow along the part like precisely remove the support structures. So it’s, EDM network is having what they said was quite possibly their best IMTS. And like 90% of the leads they're getting are for additive.

Julia Hider

That's pretty impressive.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Okay, so okay, there's bleed-through in both, in both directions. I will see to that.

Peter Zelinski

Can I say, I think, I think that is maybe one of the scenes, like one of the signs of where we're at with additive manufacturing right now is that it is, it is so sufficiently established as a production process, that it is coming naturally into conversation with the other established part-making technologies. And and we're seeing bleed-through in IMTS, but throughout manufacturing, I think we're seeing that the ways casting and additive are interrelating, machining and additive, like, yeah, but the show is kind of indicative of what's going on in the larger scope of production.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Alright, so let's go there next. I think the next big topic we wanted to discuss was, like digitization, specifically digital twins. So I attended a Siemens press event earlier this week. And they talked about the digital factory, they talked about tools for simulation, not just of additive builds, and other types of manufacturing processes as well. But also, how do you simulate an entire factory? So they've got tools where they can actually build out a production floor, put different 3D printers in there, put powder handling equipment, maybe automated guided vehicles, and you can really just play around with things before you, you build it out. So you're creating, maybe at first just a simulation of what you want to build that then that model can carry forward and it can be the digital twin of what's happening in the real world. So Tim Bell of Siemens gave this great example of a company that they helped, that had this goal to manufacture so many products per year, they were going to do it additively. And they thought they needed 60 laser powder bed fusion printers to do this. But they came to Siemens, because they wanted to sort of check their assumptions. And it's sort of difficult to do those calculations without help. And so Siemens built out the factory for them. And, you know, using their target production number was able to figure out actually, they didn't need 60 printers, they needed something like 38 printers. And so they were able to sort of right size the factory by simulating it first, and now they have this model, that's exactly what their factory looks like, they can keep track of what's going on, they can track jobs that are moving between machines, and they have this this tool to use going forward.

Peter Zelinski

Okay, so what that immediately makes me think of is, if you go over to the EOS booth, they're showing this planning table that they use to help volume production customers rationalize how much capacity they need. And it's, um, it's a digital representation of the factory, a digital twin of the factory, but it's got physical twins too, because there are like, like dollhouse miniatures of their additive machines and postprocessing equipment. And by, by manually moving machines around the factory layout, and there are physical dials to adjust to set things like the shift strategy of the plant. Because additive manufacturing has a pacing and a workflow and production requirements unlike any other production process. They're long builds, but they're super unattended. And parts can be nested in one build. And a longer build sometimes can be better than a shorter one, if it ends precisely when there's a shift change and so getting all that timing right. So like like rationalizing build times with a shift strategy might actually result in the need for fewer machines. And then there's the question of how much postprocessing equipment you need for the machines, what ratio you need. All these variables interrelate perhaps in counterintuitive ways. So EOS has found that, and they're using this with customers that are moving to higher and higher volume production, like yeah, let's like grab the dollhouse machines and move them around. And then there's a digital representation that responds to this physical movement and they use that as a tactile manual tool to conduct a digital analysis of the manufacturing capacity needed.

Julia Hider

Pete, I have to ask are the mini machines, are they 3D printed?

Peter Zelinski

Um, boy, that is, that is now the obvious question that I didn't ask. I don't know. They better be.

Julia Hider

It only makes sense. So I mean, speaking of digital twins and sort of physical twins, in the case of Pete's example, I was in the Formlabs booth. And they're showing off their partnership with Hasbro on the selfie series customize action figures. I don't think it's available quite yet, I think maybe later in the fall, but when it is available, people will be able to make a personalized action figure with their own face. So there's an app that scans your face, and you select the skin color and the hair and the body type. And there are a whole bunch of different options, characters from Marvel and Star Wars and Ghostbusters, and my personal favorite from my childhood, Power Rangers. So Hasbro takes the scan of your face, and then they print a custom head in their factory, using the Formlabs Form 3 SLA printers, they assemble it on a conventionally manufactured body, and then it's shipped to the customer. So not really related to digital twins in the traditional sense, but it's like a really fun, cool mass customization application that I wanted to mention.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Yeah, so taking the digital twin like one step further and making it a physical miniaturized twin. There's got to be other applications for that. And I'm sure we'll learn more.

Julia Hider

I'm excited to see.

Stephanie Hendrixson

All right, so we'll move right along to our next big bucket. And I think this one, it does sort of fall within the additive manufacturing pavilion. I think, you know, we're sitting here in the AM4U stage, we're at the front of the additive pavilion, and just behind this pavilion is the tooling and workholding pavilion. And I think that you know exhibitors are smart and they know the attendees of the show. And I saw a lot of tooling in the Additive Manufacturing Pavilion, both cutting tools and other types of industrial tools like molds and things. So I wonder if we could just dive into some examples there.

Peter Zelinski

So yeah, I've got one. Velo3D, laser powder bed fusion systems, and they're getting pretty well established in like, aircraft parts, particularly fluid-carrying ones like fuel system or hydraulic components. And, like, I think they're into like oil and gas type components, too. But they're making parts. They're not known for tooling, except now they find themselves getting into that. They've learned to 3D print maraging steel. And the great application they're finding for that is inserts to die cast tooling. And the thing I'm learning about EV production, electric vehicles, is in the interest of lightweighting, they they aim for very, very large castings of chassis to eliminate the fasteners and the weld points. And so these, these big die cast tools are prone to localized areas where there's heat concentration or heat challenges. And so 3D printed tooling here, inserts with internal cooling channels, solves that problem and ultimately allows for the lightweighting that the EV needs. And so yeah, and as a result of sort of mastering maraging steel for their platform, Velo3D now sees sort of a big future in tooling.

Julia Hider

Yeah, also on the mold tooling side, Mantle is at the show, and their big news is that they've officially launched their production system. So that includes their hardware, their software and their materials. And they're showing off the hardware for the first time, they have some big photos in the booth that show it off. And interestingly, the hardware includes a furnace. And, you know, they're targeting moldmakers who up until this point have no need for experience with a sintering oven, whereas HP, which introduced its metal jet binder jetting system doesn't include a furnace because the assumption is that users of this machine already have that hardware in that experience.

Peter Zelinski

I'm really interested in that but so like the furnace is not a complicated part of the system. But yeah, that part of approaching a brand new market for the technology in Mantle's case, moldmakers that are used to using machining to make their products. Part of winning easy acceptance for their system is just taking care of the of the secondary equipment that's needed to and you're right, a much larger equipment provider like HP, like adding a furnace offering as part of their system would be relatively straightforward for them to do, but they feel like no, we don't need to go there with that with that attended market.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Yeah, and HP is targeting a different type of user, they're looking at high-scale production type situations where you're going to have multiple printers, you're going to be running lots of jobs. Whereas Mantle, you probably just need one printer for your mold shop to support your needs. And you can use the furnace that comes with the system. I also just want to note that I saw some other different types of tooling at the show that we don't necessarily always encounter at events. So I wandered through the 3D Systems booth the other day, and they recently acquired Titan Robotics. So large format, polymer 3D printing, and almost all of the parts that are sitting around the Titan printer are actually molds and patterns. So they've got like molds for sand casting, and they've got some like layup molds, and things like that. And so they're really, really emphasizing tooling on that platform. And then one other one that I would kind of throw out there, and this, this connects to Mantle as well. We've heard Nexa3D talk a little bit about their blow molded tooling for PepsiCo, Mantle's got a blow mold tool in their booth as well. So we're seeing like, some things beyond what we maybe conventionally talk of when we just say the word tooling as a kind of shorthand.

Peter Zelinski

Yeah, exactly. I guess what I think about in your, in your Titan Robotics example, like big, big patterns. Pattern making is a craft and an art and possibly becoming a lost art. Like in that example, specifically, that's when I see maybe 3D printing providing an alternative to a skilled trade that many would find very difficult to hire maybe right now.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Absolutely. So I think as we're coming to the end of our session here, I want to just kind of give us kind of an open ended opportunity to talk about some off topic things. So let's each share, like one thing that you saw that that you want to talk about.

Julia Hider

Pete, you go first.

Peter Zelinski

I’ll go first. So mine's maybe a little bit fuzzy, but it has to do with, there are certain additive processes that are pretty well established now, or ideas in additive that are pretty well established, but it's like they're not fixed. So Mantle is a new process, but the existing processes are getting better and getting more refined too. And that refinement is bringing them into, as I say, into interaction with conventional processes. And like it's an example of this. Nexa3D has like a next level selective laser sintering system that they're showing here. And Avi Reichental, CEO of the company, he sort of talked about the, the growing case for SLS as an additive process that among production scale applications, there's a bias toward thermoplastic rather than photoplastic materials. SLS can give you components that aren't identical to injection mold, but really close, because it's still a polymer that's being melted. And so an SLS part as a compliment or replacement for molded parts for bridge production, or for supply chain interruption, he's kind of talked about, we're going to have to face a situation of a perpetually broken supply chain. And their system, so much of the innovation has to do with software and the level of software control they're now bringing to multiple machines being run in parallel and key performance indicators to track how well the builds are doing, just production SLS, and it's not production SLS taking over utterly, but he sees more production SLS running in parallel as solutions alternatives when molding isn't quite delivering. So it's like the existing process advancing and coming closer into closer support and contact with the existing process. I guess like another quick example of that is hybrid metal additive and machining in the same platform, so Phillips is a Haas distributor — Haas, well known machine tool maker — and they will, Philips will retrofit a metal additive head to a Haas machine. So kind of lower cost metal hybrid platform, but also easier metal hybrid platform because it uses Meltio’s additive heads so it's not a powder process, but it's just wire spool is all you have to maintain for material changeover. Yeah, so it's kind of long winded. I hope, I hope you guys are better than that.

Julia Hider

You go next, Stephanie. Mine's kind of big picture.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Okay, so something I noticed in multiple places across the show floor is just this emphasis on like the user experience and accessibility with 3D printing. So I mentioned One Click Metal earlier. And like that is really kind of what they want to be like one-click metal 3D printing. And so they put a lot of work into trying to make this a very simple machine to operate, and to contain the powder and make sure everything's safe. They have these like canisters of powder. And so like changing, putting the new material in is just a matter of like plugging in this cartridge. And then when your print is done, it gets collected in a different cartridge that can go straight into sieving. And it all stays contained, it's really, really a, really sleek and easy to use interface. And they've done some work on the software side to make the design process easy as well. And I think there are some other places that we saw this across the show floor, so coming back to Mantle just briefly, I was in the booth yesterday, and I wish I could remember who said this, but someone said that, you know, they've tried to make the sintering furnace so simple that if you can operate a microwave, you can operate the sintering furnace, like they've done all the work with the material profiles, so that you're successful with that piece of equipment and without having to be an expert in metallurgy or sintering. And, and even on the software side, I was in the Autodesk booth over in the East Building yesterday. And they've got a new update for Fusion 360 that's all about making it easy to put lattices into your 3D printable parts. And so it's all volumetric modeling. So it never goes to mesh, so it's really fast. And so they've given users a couple of like, predetermined lattice types. So there's kind of like your gyroids and different cells that look really familiar. But you also have the option to create your own cell shape. And while I was saving it, there in the booth in the ten to fifteen minutes that we were talking, I actually saw what this looks like to just make your own cell shape for a lattice and then plug it into this geometry. It's really fast. It's really simple. And you don't get to the point of having to like create the mesh around the model until you're ready to print. So you're saving a lot of time. And also, it's just like a really fun tool to play with, like I saw, I feel like I saw that over and over across the show.

Julia Hider

Yeah, I agree. I saw a lot of just people making things easier to use, especially over in the inspection area as well.

Stephanie Hendrixson

I think that's partly a reaction to, Pete, as you mentioned, like workforce. It's hard to find people who are skilled at some of these things. And the more we can automate and simplify, that helps manufacturers…

Julia Hider

Reduce the amount of training time needed to be productive.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Yeah. But I also think like improving the experience for the operator making it something that's kind of fun to use, kind of sleek, kind of modern. Win win.

Peter Zelinski

Yeah, like that. We shouldn't understate the significance of that. The just, the experience of the work of manufacturing, like you're describing, like a, like a, a digital part creation experience that sounds like fun.

Julia Hider

Yeah. Yeah. So I guess it's my turn. I just sort of wanted to talk, you know, big picture like this is a really interesting show for additive manufacturing. Like you said, this is the most important show for additive manufacturing that's not about additive manufacturing. You know, there are some companies that have been launching new products, but that's not really the focus. It's about a lot of people to talk about case studies and showcasing already successful applications of how people are using this technology.

Peter Zelinski

All right. Sounds like a great place to wrap it up, a great capstone.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Yeah, I think we'll wrap it up there. So thank you for joining us for AM Radio Live. If you like what you hear, you can find us on Spotify, on Apple, any place that you might want to listen to your podcasts as well as GBM.media/AMradio. Thanks for listening.

Peter Zelinski

I'm Pete Zelinski.

Stephanie Hendrixson

And I'm Stephanie Hendrixson.

Peter Zelinski

You've heard us on AM Radio, but we want to tell you about another great place to learn about additive manufacturing, our video series The Cool Parts Show.

Stephanie Hendrixson

In each episode, we highlight a cool 3D printed part that has something to say about where additive manufacturing is headed.

Peter Zelinski

Join us as we explore the world of custom medical devices, try on the next generation of sustainable footwear and even follow 3D printed parts to Mars.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Find all the episodes and subscribe on YouTube or at thecoolpartsshow.com

Peter Zelinski

Welcome back. Okay, so first half of the episode you heard the live recording that Stephanie, Julia and I made at IMTS, kind of like our real-time, on-the-spot impressions of the show. Another big part of IMTS for us is the Additive Manufacturing Conference. This is our annual conference. We've been holding it since 2014. We focus on additive manufacturing for production applications and, yeah, every IMTS year we hold it at IMTS. The conference is about to evolve, about to level up next year 2023. I hope we get around to talking about that before this episode is done. But first, like, let's just have a conversation for the people who didn't get to attend our conference. Let's just take a moment and maybe some just some impressions, some takeaways from the Additive Manufacturing Conference this year. Where do you guys want to start?

Stephanie Hendrixson

So yeah, our conference this year, it was a day and a half of presentations, all as you say about like production additive manufacturing. And as I sort of just like looked back through my notes and kind of reflected on the different presentations that we saw, the thing that struck me was that there were a lot of new and emerging solutions for 3D printing with metals. Just to give you a couple of examples, like the keynote that we had on Thursday morning was from HP. We had Ramon Pastor and Meaghan Ferris from HP, the metals division, on stage talking about the new Metal Jet S100 solution, which was probably the biggest additive manufacturing launch at IMTS this year. So we know that HP has been working on this this metal binder jet technology since 2018. That's when they kind of first announced it, actually also on stage at our conference. But they've made a lot of progress in the last four years, they've really built out a full system. So it's not just the printer anymore. There are these little mobile build units that you can pull in and out of the printer. And then they plug into like a powder sieving station and a curing station. And then there's like a powder reclamation station as well. And so they've really tried to optimize it for serial production and scalability.

They also had somebody on stage with them from Schneider Electric, Michael Lotfy. And Schneider is one of the alpha partners that has been working with HP over the last few years to kind of finesse and optimize this product, which is now out on the market. Schneider is using it for these air filters for circuit breakers. But they've got a number of different alpha partners that are doing lots of different things with this technology. Like binder jetting is not new by any means, but this is an example of like a new player entering the market, bringing something different to the additive manufacturing industry.

The other thing that I noticed was like we had a lot of directed energy deposition. We saw presentations from Norsk Titanium, plasma arc DED for really large scale printing, Melanie Lang from FormAlloy talked about powder-based DED. And then like one of the surprising things that came out near the end was we had a presentation from Essentium where they talked about how they're getting into micro wire DED. So this is a polymer 3D printing company now getting into metals.

Julia Hider

Yeah, also on the DED front, there was a presentation from Baker and they were talking about wire arc additive manufacturing. So again, big parts and robots, which were a big trend, basically everywhere else at IMTS this year.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Yes. So just like kind of thinking about like that cross section, all these different types of DED, everything from the large scale robots down to the micro wire, and then kind of throw the metal binder jet in there as well. It just sort of struck me that our conference this year didn't have a whole lot of powder bed fusion in it. And that's sort of interesting because I feel like powder bed fusion is one of the most commonly used types of metal 3D printing. But maybe like we've got to a point where it's matured maybe it's not, I don't know, quote unquote, news anymore. And maybe that's why we got like this other mix of metal processes in our program this year.

Peter Zelinski

I kind of hear what you're saying. And I kind of think I hear it, I see it a different way. Like laser powder bed fusion was there, we had a presentation from TAE Technologies. And they're making technology for fusion like they're trying to transform our whole energy supply by developing fusion technology and they work with EOS, they use laser powder bed fusion machines. Like they described how making fusion work means combining magnetic fields, vacuum, particle beams, high voltage to sustained plasma so they're the super complex components. Artem Smirnov is the person from TAE Technologies who presented, one of the parts that he talked about it was called and I am not a fusion expert, but the part was called a neutral beam dump and it, in the original version it had just tons of welds and that took hundreds of hours to produce. Additive, on the EOS equipment, they're using literally a tenth of the time to manufacture the same component. And like I guess what I see in that is like, yeah, the advance of DED was really striking in our conference, but what it kind of speaks to is additive is so young, particularly additive for metal part production, that these technologies are still coming into their own and still arriving. And yeah, I think laser powder bed fusion is probably the farthest along in its arrival. But that just means it's finding these really advanced intricate parts. And yeah, I guess I resonate sort of with the point you hinted at Stephanie, that success and arrival, like the beginning of that is for these technologies to maybe become less visible, because you have, they're serving the applications that they can do really well.

So with laser powder bed fusion, we sort of know the extent of what it can do, and it's considerable. And now we're seeing with the DED, like, we don't know the extent yet. And we're still finding it. Yeah. So with what Essentium showed, so the speaker Elisa Teipel, I introduced her I was the one sort of emceeing at that moment and brought her to stage and I talked about Essentium’s production technology for polymer. I actually didn't realize in that moment where she was going, that she was going to introduce their microwire DED machine. But so clearly, like, the possibility they're exploring is fine resolution, intricate, precise geometries with DED. And I guess we're seeing that in these various other presentations like precision and speed are both advancing the range of what's possible. Norsk Titanium, Carl Johnson, their CTO spoke from Norsk. And so they've been using DED for a while they're established suppliers with various aerospace OEMs and tier manufacturers. But the level they've come to now, he described how they're doing a lot of testing to determine if and when HIPping is needed, and discovering the applications in which they can skip HIPping, which is a huge time and cost savings. And then they're also exploring how little machining they can get away with doing. If they can get closer and closer to net shape, then the chance to reduce machining time is the is one of the best opportunities they see for saving cost for their customers. So all of that kind of thinking and development work is going into the ways DED is being applied to production.

Julia Hider

Yeah, it's interesting that you brought up what, you know, Norsk is looking into with machining and trying to reduce that because Baker actually got its start in additive as a machine shop, they specialized in really big parts. And so they were acquired by Lincoln Electric to help machine some of these really large DED parts that Lincoln Electric was making with their WAAM technology. And that actually leads into another theme I think we saw in the conference, which is AM interacting with conventional processes, including machining.

Peter Zelinski

Totally, right. So established, you know, so called conventional manufacturing processes had a bigger footprint in our additive conference this year than they've ever had. And I think that's a sign of the extent to which additive manufacturing in production is finding its place, becoming established in various applications. And that is very naturally bringing it into conversation with these other part production processes.

Julia Hider

Yeah, so one of the presentations that covered this really well was from Scott Smith of Oak Ridge National Lab, he talked about additive for subtractive. Throughout his presentation, he referred to 3D printed parts as preforms like castings or forgings, and how you need extra stock to account for shrinkage and residual stress and what gets machined away. But there were a lot of other really interesting considerations as well, including designing 3D printed parts with features for fixturing or locating or reducing chatter in machining.

Peter Zelinski

I loved Scott Smith's presentation. It was so interesting because it was so blunt and commonsense. An additive part is a near net shape part generally, it's a very, very, very near net shape part, but it still has to be machined. And actually the nearness of the net shape can be challenging in machining. He talked about the frequency with which parts don't clean up, meaning the quote unquote preform, there's there's a flaw somewhere in the design and it doesn't quite contain the intended final shape. But he also he talked about adding features to additive parts for locating, for fixturing, for stiffening during machining, one of my favorite words is going to be fiducials. He described how attaching 3D printed polymer parts to metal 3D printed parts and these and these added on plastic features are just references for scanning and probing. Scan the whole thing with these reference geometries there. And then it gives you this handy reference to probe off of to find the finished part inside the form. But he also got into really basic stuff, too, that I think is really useful in thinking about how to efficiently apply additive for metal components. He's saying, you know, don't print threads, you're not helping me by printing threads.

Julia Hider

Or his rule for what was it? If you would mill a hole, then you should print it, but if you drill the hole, then you should just drill it.

Peter Zelinski

Yeah, that's right. That's right. That was another great one. He said,if you print a crooked hole, I'm gonna drill a crooked hole. Okay, so speaking of commonsense, downstream processes. So, Stephen Feldbauer spoke from Abbott Furnace Company and kind of talked about like sintering furnace considerations for additive parts.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Yeah, this presentation was really interesting, like, this is something that you can sort of take for granted. If you're using metal binder jet, like you need a sintering furnace, you need that step in the process. And a lot of times, we see companies that have adopted this technology, they have like a batch style furnace where you know, you print your batch of parts, you put it in there, and then eight to 12 hours later, maybe you get to take your parts out, maybe longer than that, Stephen kind of made the argument that actually like the batch furnace doesn't make that much sense for additive manufacturing, especially for doing like high mix, low volume. And so Abbott has developed this continuous sintering furnace, specifically for AM. And there's advantages to that, because you can actually change the temperature, you can change the sintering conditions as you're feeding parts into the furnace. So you don't have to stop production, you don't have to totally change over if you need to do a slightly different process for a different material or something like that. And so actually, I thought he made a pretty compelling argument for the continuous furnace, as opposed to the batch,

Peter Zelinski

Right. But it was a continuous furnace tailored to additive. And I guess what that made me think of is, we know this manufacturer RMS, and they're, they're a medical part producer, and Julia wrote this article about how they're an established machining facility, but once they started succeeding in additive, they actually had to establish a new and different machine shop that was tailored to additive and paste for additive. And we'll link to that story in the show description. And they're on my mind, because they were at our conference, we saw them and talk to them at the reception, it was really cool. But here again, with Abbott Furnace, it's a case of additive manufacturing is taking its place in production and is coming into sufficiently widespread use that downstream capabilities, even though they're established capabilities, like furnaces and machine tools, efficient additive manufacturing makes it worthwhile to tailor those capabilities to what additive specifically needs.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Yes, so we saw how additive manufacturing is changing the downstream processes changing the way that you think about things like machining and sintering. But there are also like other conventional processes that 3D printing is interacting with that we saw examples of. There were quite a few presentations this year that had to do with different types of tooling. So just one example, Sarah Jordan from Skuld, talked about this lost-foam casting process that they do. And so it's similar to like lost-wax casting where you might print or otherwise, you know, make a sacrificial wax pattern and then build a ceramic shell around it. But in their case, they are able to either print the foam directly, or sometimes they print the tool and blow the foam into it. And so the advantage of that is you don't have to burn the the foam out before you cast it. So you sort of save a step there, you can cast directly into that, that foam form. So that was sort of an interesting example, in the casting world. But we saw other types of 3D printed tooling across the conference as well.

Julia Hider

Yeah, you know, on a similar tooling note Nexa3D and PepsiCo gave a presentation about 3D printed tooling for blow molding. Pepsi developed this special system that uses a 3D printed insert made from I think it was PEEK, and they put this into a shell, and they've been able to get 10,000 shots out of these 3D printed mold forms. Whereas their previous experience with 3D printed mold tooling would result in like 200 samples. And the cost is much cheaper, and it's much faster than you know, traditional mold tooling as well. So they've had really good success using this for prototyping and they're working on extending it into bridge production now.

Peter Zelinski

So Thangthip Tekanil of PepsiCo talked about that. The ways they're using these Nexa3D blow mold inserts as part of their as part of their hybrid tooling solution, and the speed with which they're able to innovate new bottle designs because of this approach to blow molding. There was another molding related presentation at the conference. So then actually, as it happened, also involving Nexa3D.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Right, so we saw Nexa3D onstage later in the conference, Izhar Medalsy, along with Carsten Jarfelt from AddiFab and Glen Mason from Wilson Sporting Goods. So Wilson is also using Nexa 3D to make prototype tooling. But they're doing it with this AddiFab process. So it's called freeform injection molding. And basically, the idea is that you can 3D print a tool, shoot your polymer into it, you know, whatever type of molding material you would typically use. And then you can dissolve the tool away. And so this is a great way to do prototype tooling to just test out designs, test out ideas. I think most of what Wilson Sporting Goods is doing right now sort of takes that form. But because the material is dissolvable, it also allows for really complex geometries, things that you wouldn't typically be able to mold because there would be no way to open the mold again, or to get the tooling back out. But because you can just take that part and kind of drop it into a bath and let it sit for a little bit, the innovation here is really sort of like that material that you can, it's strong enough that you can print it and then mold with it, but then it can just be dissolved away.

Peter Zelinski

So different material possibilities, I guess so one more tool example at our conference Fouzi Bahbou of GE Additive gave a presentation on the work that GE Additive is doing in electron beam melting for tool steel. And the example he cited throughout his presentation was it was like a really complex tool form like a gear hub, like a tool like that has a lot of steps if it's made from forging and cutting, but using EBM to get this near net shape form with minimal machining at the end speeds the process. And in addition, it allows because of the high temperature of EBM, it allows for higher carbon content for higher hardness of the tool compared to like laser powder bed fusion. And they're developing not just tool steel made that way, but also tungsten carbide where we're just the binder melts, but not the tungsten carbide particles within the 3D printing build. I guess we've talked a lot about tooling. But before we leave it, Stephanie, you very quickly mentioned Sarah Jordan of Skuld. And she had a line in her presentation that I thought was really striking, a comment she made. You know, she started her presentation by reminding all of us how commonplace castings are in our lives. And she made the assertion that like we're never farther away than like 10 feet from a casting at any time. And so she sort of tested the audience to help them understand that. She's like, if you're wearing a wedding ring stand up, if you're into, sort of gave commonplace examples like of castings that we interact with all the time, that we forget our castings, but her comment was that's eventually the destiny for additive, that eventually, additive becomes invisible, just like casting has become invisible. That's where it's heading. And that's where it's going as it starts to succeed. And, like I thought that was a pretty striking reminder, and it sort of gets us back to like, we're just beginning to see that with laser powder bed fusion. It's less visible at our conference, if it is, only because it's the farthest along in succeeding. And I like think of, thinking about the far trajectory of additive like that, that maybe brings us to like, like one more quick theme we should talk about. And it's just sort of like the broad cultural changes around additive manufacturing.

Stephanie Hendrixson

Yeah, so first of all, I loved Sarah’s presentation. I loved that activity at the beginning and the point that additive is going to become invisible, but I think there's a long way to get there. And so something we heard throughout the conference is how like, additive is this process, but it's also a culture and we're all still trying to figure out like, what is the right culture around additive? How do you really make it successful? Like who are the right players? And how do you think about it? A throwback to the Wilson sport presentation, Glen Mason had this slide where he asked, you know, are you farming? Or are you hunting? There are manufacturing businesses that are farming, where you know, you sort of keep doing the same thing, you cultivate the customers or the work that you already have. But additive manufacturing really lends itself more to the hunting perspective where you're looking for new opportunities, and you're going after them and you're not just trying to do the same thing that you’ve always done. And I think we saw other examples of presenters really kind of pointing out like the different mindset that additive takes and the different parties that need to be involved.

Julia Hider

Yeah, another example of that we saw was Gregory Dudder’s presentation. He's with Hummingbird Additive and his presentation was called Culture Shock in AM from the Executive Suite to the Manufacturing Floor. And one thing about his presentation that struck me was that he made the point that if you're using AM properly, it's going to cause a culture shock, you can't avoid it. So you have to figure out how to manage the process successfully. And he had a whole bunch of suggestions for how to do that from building the right team to finding the right business case and not taking on too much at once.

Peter Zelinski

Keselowski Advanced Manufacturing was kind of down that path. They were a presenter too.

Julia Hider

Yeah. So Scott Volk from Keselowski Advanced Manufacturing, he talked about creating an integrated manufacturing strategy, which requires collaboration between additive, subtractive, process engineering, program manufacturing and quality. And one quote he said that I wrote down was, “We don't want to make the most beautiful additive part, we want to make the most beautiful use part.” So AM is just one part of this larger manufacturing strategy.

Peter Zelinski

I wrote down a quote from Scott Volk, too, so yeah, he had this sort of like workflow or discipline flow graph, and he sort of showed how manufacturing usually works and how they expected it to work going in. And it was like from CAD design, to additive to machining to quality, quality to shipping in a straight line. But that didn't work because all of those different stakeholders interact and sort of affect the design and the product and the process. And so now they've got a different arrangement, where it's a circle where all of those stakeholders are at the table together from the beginning. And they figure out from the beginning how to do an additive manufactured part. But he sort of, he was talking about the pitfalls of that linear approach of that one department hands it off to another department approach. And he said that, like he discovered in the case of some jobs, his quote was, “We were so focused on making a perfect additive part, we forgot we have to machine it.”

Stephanie Hendrixson

I guess what it makes me think of is another presentation, Laura Ely, from the Barnes Global Advisors, she was talking about qualification and how like, there are all kinds of stakeholders that need to be involved to qualify additively manufactured parts. But one of the things that she said was metal AM is a team sport. And I think you could maybe just edit that and just say AM is a team sport, you have a lot of people that need to be involved, you have a lot of things that you need to think about. And it works better when there's like a cross functional group looking at these parts and carrying them through the process.

Peter Zelinski

Our friend Tim Simpson sort of gave a talk about the ways that he's struggling with that as an educator. Tim Simpson, professor with Penn State University and a frequent contributor to Additive Manufacturing Media and, and he gave a presentation sort of on workforce development and education for additive manufacturing. He tried to map out the sorts of knowledge areas and skills and attributes that are germane to work in additive manufacturing, and that prospective employers seem to need and it's it's this very diverse array of specific engineering skills combined with soft skills, or even just personal attributes. It's like, it's like a materials engineering knowledge, on the one hand is important, but also, curiosity and imagination are important as well. He pointed out how there's this realm where companies really struggle for what they need in their engineering leaders. And it has to do with making the business case for additive manufacturing, seeing the opportunities, championing the opportunities, pushing into new, lucrative areas for additive manufacturing, making the business case, but universities he very candidly admits, just don't tend to focus there. An engineering university tends more to focus on the engineering considerations of the process. And so even in a fundamental way, the culture of how you prepare engineers is different for additive as well, compared to other manufacturing.

Stephanie Hendrixson

All right, so that sounds like a good stopping place for this conversation about the Additive Manufacturing Conference. Coincidentally, this might actually be our last conversation about the Additive Manufacturing Conference, because it is about to transform into something else. Do you want to talk about that, Pete?

Peter Zelinski

Yeah, we'll go out on that. We had the chance to announce something at our Additive Manufacturing Conference this year, on a previous episode of this podcast, and we'll link to that we talked about our company's partnership, relationship with the creators of the Formnext show, and how we will be launching a Formnext USA trade show. You can go listen to that for details, the fully realized Formnext Trade Show coming to Chicago, that's a big project and it's still a couple years off, but along the way, some other things are gonna change. And one of which is, as part of that partnership, our Additive Manufacturing Conference is going to change. It's going to expand. It'll be a bigger event next year and it'll become the Formnext Forum and that's the name it'll go by from now on starting in 2023. The debut the launch of the Formnext Forum, it will be in August in Austin, Texas, August 28 through 30, specifically, mark your calendars and we hope to see you there.

Stephanie Hendrixson

All right. Join us next year at the Formnext Forum and thank you for listening to this episode. If you liked the AM Radio podcast, please share it with a friend, leave us a five-star review and thanks for listening.

Julia Hider

AM Radio is recorded with help from Austin Grogan and Seth Cooper. The show is edited by Alex Lytle and Stephanie Hendrixson. Our artwork is by Kate Bilberry. AM Radio and Additive Manufacturing Media are products of Gardner Business Media located in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm Julia Hider. Thanks for listening.