Formnext 2022: Ceramics, Robots and Other Perspectives From Near and Far: AM Radio #30

Additive manufacturing’s largest trade show returned to its pre-pandemic strength in 2022. Exhibits across the Messe Frankfurt convention center in Germany pointed to trends in 3D printing of ceramics, the future of automation for additive machines, and a decided pivot away from support structures whenever (and however) possible. Established companies in other sectors including metalcutting, injection molding and forging joined startups and other exhibitors fully dedicated to AM. In this episode of the AM Radio podcast, I talk with Additive Manufacturing Media editor-in-chief Peter Zelinski about what he learned in Frankfurt, and share the discoveries I made from afar via digital means, including social media. Listen above or wherever you get podcasts, or read on for the transcript. 

                                

Transcript

Stephanie Hendrixson  00:05

Additive manufacturing's biggest trade show, Formnext, returned to its pre-pandemic strength for 2022. Technology trends and more from the show on this episode of AM Radio This episode of the AM Radio podcast is brought to you by PTXPO, the trade show for North American plastics professionals. Join Additive Manufacturing Media and sister brand Plastics Technology for PTXPO 2023, coming up in March. Find more information at plasticstechnologyexpo.com. This is the AM Radio Podcast. I'm Stephanie Hendrixson. I want to welcome you to the show today and I want to welcome my co-host Pete Zelinski back to the studio. Hi, Pete.

Peter Zelinski  00:48

Hi, Stephanie.

Stephanie Hendrixson  00:49

So you just recently traveled to the Formnext trade show in Germany. And you brought a lot of information and observations back with you. And that's what we're going to talk about today.

Peter Zelinski  00:59

Yeah, Formnext, the most intense week of the year for additive manufacturing. The Formnext trade show in Frankfurt, Germany, biggest show in the world devoted to additive manufacturing and its promise for industrial production. Lots of new technologies, new ideas are introduced every year at this show. Our team looks forward to this show a lot. That's why it was it was a big blow what happened this year, kind of at the last minute, we discovered you, Stephanie, couldn't go to Formnext.

Stephanie Hendrixson  01:32

Yeah, so, just to address the elephant in the room, a couple of weeks before the show, I suffered an injury. For all of the orthopedic nerds out there, which there are probably some because this is additive manufacturing, I have a fractured fifth metatarsal. And unfortunately, it was not going to be healed in time for the show. And I had to sit this one out, which was unfortunate.

Peter Zelinski  01:52

Yeah, it just wasn't a good idea to go, there was no, there was no practical way for you to go. And we had to pivot, like you and I have a whole system for covering Formnext. And that system was out the window. And only one of us went.

Stephanie Hendrixson  02:06

Yeah. And I've thought about that a lot in not going to the trade show, just like, how do we cover a trade show? And what are the missing pieces that we have to pick up now? And I guess on reflection, I think there's really sort of two goals that we have. One is going and meeting with people and talking to people and trying to sort of get that pulse on the additive manufacturing space. What are the new technology developments? What are people thinking about? At the same time, we're also trying to get really visual content out of this, like we're looking for things that look interesting, that we can interact with, that we can stand in front of, and film videos about, that's become a major part of our show. And so for this Formnext, we had to kind of pivot and figure out how to do some of those things in a different way.

Peter Zelinski  02:44

Yeah, we pivoted, I stretched and you figured out things you could do remotely to support what I was doing there. And the video part of it, a member of our sales team, Michael Schwartz, thank you, Michael, we figured out some basic things about how to do on-the-show-floor video quickly, well, and he was really adaptable to like quick lessons in what we're trying to do, but I will say not having you there was a huge loss. I don't ever want to do that again. But I think we did a pretty good job despite the circumstances.

Stephanie Hendrixson  03:24

Yeah. So I mean, while you guys were running around Frankfurt, doing the show the way you normally would, I was not fully on Germany time, but I was getting up early browsing social media, reading all the new press releases that had come in and was just trying to figure out okay, what is happening there on the ground? And what are some interesting things that I can direct you to. If you have a few minutes free, like these are some things that either would look great on video or or seem like there might be something visually compelling there, or just those those technology advances that seem important to the industry.

Peter Zelinski  03:36

And that that little that device, you sending me these email reports of what you're seeing at a distance, that actually worked. So great, super concise descriptions of what you're seeing organized by hall, the Formnext show within the the massive Frankfurt facility, it's in four different halls, you know, 11.0 11.1 12.0 12.1. And so if I suddenly had 10, or 15 minutes free, I would just look at your email, Oh, where am I? I'm in Hall 11.1. Okay, let me see an 11.1 thing. And I would basically like parachute into one of these really interesting encounters about something you'd seen. And because of your description, I kind of already knew what I was looking for going in. And I could have a really quick conversation, as far as this attempt to have one person to try to do what two people would normally do, like your support from a distance was super helpful. I'm glad to hear it. I mean, I don't want to give the impression that it's possible to fully experience Formnext digitally from a distance. It was definitely challenging. Like there were certain things that were almost clickbaity in how photogenic they were? And like I saw them over and over on social media, and it was it's sort of hit or miss whether you get the context along with that, like, am I seeing this flashy thing? Just because it's flashy? Or is there a deeper story to it? So I miss kind of that sense of discovery, even though I was able to kind of point you to some some of the interesting things on the show floor. Yeah, so the experience of Formnext, it is a very visual event. So much of 3D printing technology is visually compelling. And yet, the technology advances invariably have sophisticated backstory to them and nuanced implications for what they might mean. And so there's always a conversation needed to understand the importance of this thing that we're seeing. And sometimes the conversation is the entire thing. There are some aspects of the technology that aren't visually compelling, but are sort of profound in the in the potential promise or disruption they're bringing. And I guess I say all that to say that when I got back, and when you and I started talking about what I saw there, and some of the sort of the bigger picture trends and developments, I saw that there, some of it was surprising, because some of it was different than impressions you were gathering at a far distance, and some of it was things you completely would have missed at a distance, because you had to be there to understand.

Stephanie Hendrixson  06:26

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So on that note, we should say that all of the videos that you recorded at the show are out there and available, we will link to them in the show notes. There's also a very nice piece that you wrote, just kind of summarizing all of these different trends and things that you saw, which we will also link. And that's going to be sort of the basis for our conversation today. We're going to talk about a couple of those, those big ideas. So where do you want to start, Pete?

Peter Zelinski  06:49

I want to talk about ceramics. The big, broad development I kept encountering is different options from many different exhibitors all related to expanding the opportunities for using ceramic material through 3D printing. And to say ceramics, that is a broad class of material. But it is a very different broad class of material from metal and polymer. And Formnext 2022 was an event where I experienced most broadly and most profoundly the extent to which 3D printing is going to open the door to ceramic opportunities alongside these other production material categories we're more accustomed to.

Stephanie Hendrixson  07:40

Yeah, so this was one that was sort of difficult to trace from afar, like in retrospect, like I see the threads of it, and I was aware of some of the different pieces. I even directed you to one of the companies that is an example of this, Wasp. So they have large format printers for PEEK and for clay. But when I learned about this company, and listed it as something that you might want to look at, like I actually didn't even know that they had the clay printer on site, I thought that they had the polymer printer and sort of directed you there on that basis. And it turned out that actually they had a really neat setup for their clay printer that we have video about now.

Peter Zelinski  08:14

Yeah, clay is a ceramic. That that was a ceramic application focused as much on aesthetics as functionality. But Wasp had this opportunity to develop a system for mass production of clay vases. And it involved a lot of things like continuous feed of the of the claim material and a gentle system for moving finished parts out of the way. And yeah, we have a video of it. But there were also many more functional applications of ceramics like functional in an engineering sense. And that's what's really driving this is that ceramics have all these useful properties potentially. They are hard, they're inert, they're non-conductive. They're heat resistant. And it's just, it has been challenging until now to manufacture with ceramics. And part of that challenge now is going away. So Nexa3D showed components 3D printed with a ceramic that is that is partially bound in polymer. And it provides a really interesting bridge tooling possibility. You might not think, for example, of like an injection mold being made of a ceramic material, but for a way to get a quick, hard mold that can do a fairly large number of shots like yeah, that's a possibility. I guess another one that really struck me is the company Nanoe showed filament that carried ceramic powder, so filament for a simple deposition-style 3D printer, and the useful property that they're taking advantage of is permittivity. It's how ceramics permit more of an electromagnetic field to be converted to stored energy. And what this is all about is potentially the responsiveness of the component in a communications-type application. And so 3D printing with ceramics, you could make these really intricate compact parts for communication systems that take the place of maybe a much bigger, dish-shaped structure for capturing a signal. And the interesting thing about that is if you're gonna do deposition-style, 3D printing of ceramics, you lose potentially some of those useful properties that I described, like maybe the part in the end isn't as hard as that ceramic material could have been potentially. But that's not the property that's that's necessary in this particular application, like a simple way of capturing the permittivity. Yeah, 3D printing is opening that door.

Stephanie Hendrixson  11:00

Nan-oh-ee. Okay. I've been wondering this whole time how to how to say that. In the case of extruding material that has ceramic in it, or the Nexa3D example that you gave, like, is there postprocessing after the fact? Or are those parts kind of ready to use as-is right off the printer?

Peter Zelinski  11:17

There's, there's sintering. In the case, so the Nanoe example. And we're kind of familiar with this. And so like we've seen, like deposition-style metal 3D printing in much the same way. And so there's yeah, there's a de-binding step, and sintering and de-binding to get the polymer that's basically a delivery mechanism for the ceramic, get it out of the way to leave behind a fully dense ceramic part.

Stephanie Hendrixson  11:41

Gotcha.

Peter Zelinski  11:41

But then, in addition to that, there are players in 3D printing of ceramics that we’re already accustomed to, and are already established in that space, and they've moved farther. And so Lithoz is an example that comes to mind. We did a Cool Parts Show episode involving Lithoz, and different types of ceramic materials that figure into medical implants. But so they were showing a ceramic part, and I like, I think, maybe for an electronics type application, but it was this very precise ceramic pin. And their build volume of their compact machine enables production volumes of 444 of these pins per build, so like, a production scale quantity, because it's such a small part. But I guess like that, that shows the big idea here, like, why are so many manufacturing things metal or plastic? Well, so metal is a very hard durable material, but it's also a ductile material. And that is everything that is what allows for getting a clean, predictable chip in cutting. And so you can precision machine a metal part in a very practical way. And we know that. Plastics, plastics gives you the ability to form the material in a liquid state at a fairly accessible temperature. And then you get to have the solid that you want at the end of that, that's really practical. And so we use these materials, partly because they have the properties they want, but also because they are manufacturable in a practical way we can manufacture with them. Ceramic is a another broad category of material as broad as polymer, as broad as metal, but 3D printing offers a way now to give us ceramics without those kinds of manufacturing difficulties. So there is this third big window of material possibilities that we should get ready to see more ceramic parts in the future.

Stephanie Hendrixson  13:49

All right, more ceramic parts in the future. I hope next year at Formnext I'll be able to see some of those parts as well. Shall we move on to our next topic?

Peter Zelinski  13:56

Sure. Next topic. So another thing I observed at Formnext this year is for whatever reason, a larger incidence of established manufacturing names present at Formnext with additive manufacturing offerings. There have always been established companies innovating into the additive space. I don't know why, but this year there like seemed to be a larger population of those that I was encountering.

Stephanie Hendrixson  14:24

That's interesting. I think I saw a little bit of that in some of the pre-show press releases and stuff like that. But I'm curious like what did you encounter on the show floor that stood out?

Peter Zelinski  14:34

One of the first encounters I had just after landing and going straight to the show, GROB, established successful machine tool builder, metal cutting machine tool builder, and they were there at Formnext with their liquid metal printing technology. Metal 3D printing, also kind of a deposition-style wire goes through a heated nozzle and a magnetic field directs droplets of metal. And so 3D printing a form that way, they were showing their liquid metal printing machine. They were showing parts, they were there as a metal 3D printing technology provider.

Stephanie Hendrixson  15:12

And this was sort of the the premiere of that machine, too, I think.

Peter Zelinski  15:15

Yeah, they had put out press about that earlier. But yeah, this was the first show I've seen it at. And talking to them was interesting, too. They're very open about they're trying to figure this out, they kind of are at Formnext for the sake of the encounters and curiosity and maybe idea-seeding that they can put out there for where this capability might go and what it might be used for. At one point, I asked the person at GROB I just happened to be in conversation with about it, like, what are the applications you see for this machine? And he said, "Well, we're GROB, so automotive?" And he just sort of said it as like, yeah, we'll start with the places we know. But if this technology takes us into different sorts of applications, and lets us excel in different areas, like we want to be ready for that, too.

Stephanie Hendrixson  16:09

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I imagined some of the other companies entering additive kind of from the side like that are probably thinking in a similar way. Like let's start with the industries and the applications that we know, try to fill those gaps and then if we find use cases beyond that, like sure, why not.

Peter Zelinski  16:24

So KraussMaffei is another example of this, plastics equipment maker, injection molding machine maker, and they were there with an SLA additive machine and a deposition-style additive machine, two different plastics part making additive platforms. And to me the reason for this is apparent in plastics part production, bridge production is increasingly becoming an active and valuable part of how a new plastic component is rolled out. Put off the commitment to mold tooling for a little while, or accept the lead time that mold tooling requires. But meanwhile, in the beginning, when a lower part quantity is required, do your production, do your mass production, through 3D printing, kind of ramp up into full production that way. That's an attractive way to go to market, it's an attractive way to put off locking in the design when maybe you think tweaks might still be coming. And so a plastics, part production equipment maker like KraussMaffei, like they obviously want to be part of that if bridge production is going to become a big part of the way production is done in plastics, then, yeah, they want to be able to build that bridge to when their other types of established equipment take over.

Stephanie Hendrixson  17:52

There's one other example of this that I want to ask you about because I encountered it just by reading about it and I got the impression that there might be something interesting to look at in the booth, but I really had no idea. So Otto Fuchs, I read that they had some way of combining the powers of DED with the powers of metal forging. Couldn't really picture it, couldn't really figure out from afar, like what was going on there. But I think that's one of the booths that you that you stopped in.

Peter Zelinski  18:17

Yes. So this is a metals company, they do forging, they do casting, they're more than a century old, founded in Germany. And they were they're showing forging in combination with directed energy deposition. They had some parts on display that sort of exhibited the way they're thinking about these capabilities together. And so the thing about a forging is, a forging with extreme features, like maybe there's a fin that sticks way out of the forged part, or maybe there's a deep pocket or deep recess, extremities call for more tooling, like extremities, basically call for additional hits with the forging press. And so more stages, more tooling, that's more expense. So what if you could have a forged part that's really just mostly forged? It's forged in all of the core areas of the part, but the extremities are just added through directed energy deposition. And so directed energy deposition by itself might not provide a cost effective or maybe not even sufficiently functional way to get the part but letting it be mostly forged, but then saving yourself a lot of time and a lot of expense and a lot of tooling, just by getting the extremities 3D printed on, like they're working out that sort of optimization of how to use these capabilities in harmony with one another.

Stephanie Hendrixson  19:54

That makes a lot of sense. So it's, it's sort of a hybrid process, use the forging where the forging is economical and it makes sense and then use the DED for adding these extra features that would be difficult to do otherwise.

Peter Zelinski  20:06

And I think we're gonna see more and more of that, we have to see more and more of that. In our current exchange, we were talking about bridge production. That's another hybrid process that's using 3D printing where it makes sense and then and then letting go when something else is more cost effective. And that's what we've said all along about additive manufacturing. It's not a replacement for what we're doing today, but it expands the circle of what's possible and in some cases even expands the circle of what the existing processes are able to realize.

Stephanie Hendrixson  20:34

All right, I think we should take a break and when we come back we've got a couple more topics to get through.

Peter Zelinski  20:38

Yeah, robots.

Stephanie Hendrixson  20:39

Robots after the break. This episode of the AM Radio podcast is brought to you by PTXPO, the event for the plastics industry in North America. If your business is involved in plastics processing, moldmaking, or additive manufacturing for plastic parts production, this is the event for you. With more than 100,000 square feet of exhibits, PTXPO offers the latest in plastics technology. Immerse yourself in free educational sessions, experience equipment demonstrations and participate in numerous networking opportunities. PTXPO will connect you with solutions providers who can unlock the right answers for your operation. Join Additive Manufacturing Media and sister brands Plastics Technology and MoldMaking Technology for PTXPO 2023. The event takes place March 28 through 30 in Chicago, Illinois. Find more information about attending exhibiting or sponsoring this event at plasticstechnologyexpo.com. And we're back. And as promised in the second half, we're gonna kick things off by talking about robots.

Peter Zelinski  21:43

So robots. Yes, this was interesting. We talk a lot about how additive manufacturing and robots go together. And there are all kinds of ways they interconnect. Robots are a good way to do 3D printing and 3D printing serves robots, enabling them with with end effectors, things like that. Formnext this year was the show where many different exhibitors making additive machines were clearly telegraphing they're ready for robots. They expect robotic automation in production, robotic loading and unloading of 3D printed parts. And they're ready to go there. The most prominent example of this, Stratasys was showing this whole big robot-served 3D printing production line. And there were six different origin machines, and the robot would unload them and the parts would go to a conveyor that would go to a washing station. It was a whole big thing. And it was, it was really impressive. Other companies, I'm thinking of 3D Systems, for example, showing the new design of their machines and showing notably how the design had been engineered such that there was easy access for a robot to reach inside. There were other examples of this. And I did keep hearing, we don't have any installations of this yet. No one's asking us for this yet. But we know it's coming. And I guess what I see in that is, we are moving fully into production applications of additive, including many manufacturers seriously considering that and that puts the weight on the equipment providers to be able to communicate, we're going to be there with you for this journey. We're going to be able to support the scale and functionality and automation that you're going to ultimately need to bring to this like we're pre-thinking that for you. And that message was one I kept encountering all through the show this year.

Stephanie Hendrixson  23:54

It's so important because we've even talked about this on the podcast before, people do crazy things to try and make automation work with their printers right now because that integration like that pre-thinking hasn't been done on most of the machines that are out in the field right now. And so to get us to the next place with additive, with production, with automation, the builders need to be anticipating these things and it sounds like they are so that's, that's great.

Peter Zelinski  24:18

BMF, Boston Micro Fabrication, they make DLP machines for really tiny, precise 3D printed parts. And the new machine they were showing, one of the features they were promoting, the door will open automatically, so a robot can reach inside. And in other long, long, long established types of manufacturing hardware, that's sort of a basic unexpected thing, but it's not universal among 3D printers that there's an automatically opening access for robot part handling.

Stephanie Hendrixson  24:53

Yeah, such a simple thing. This was interesting to me because I felt like I saw pictures of robots all over social media and like hat tip to Tuan Tranpham who's with Azul 3D right now, he posted this like collage on LinkedIn that was like every robot that he saw at the show and called it like Pokemon hunting for robots. And it just seemed like these things were all over the show. But from afar, it was just hard to figure out, like, what message that was sending or like, what all these different robots independently were doing and how it all kind of came together. So hearing about the way that builders are anticipating automation and thinking about it in this way, kind of crystallized the the purpose of all the robots for me, or at least some of the robots.

Peter Zelinski  25:35

So yeah, the the the number and incidents of robots is something you could pick up from a distance. Here's another example of one of those things that you sort of had to be there to start to see and it started to dawn on me after after I had a sufficient number of encounters: an increasing intolerance of support structures and embracing and developing solutions and platforms that allow supports to be avoided or minimized. Examples of this: EOS has a plugin that's coming, I think, for for Autodesk design software and for metal 3D printed parts, laser powder bed fusion parts, a capability for optimizing the support structure aspect of the design to reduce the supports down to only what is necessary by, in some cases, tolerating unsupported overhangs in the part where process control over the build parameters, laser parameters can allow that feature to be produced effectively without supports. That is a software and control option, but I saw mechanical approaches, mechanical developments that were aimed at avoiding supports. So a builder named Metrom, worked with the Fraunhofer Institute (IWU). And there was this this wonderful, high speed, precise parallel kinematic platform, basically five axes of part motion beneath the extruder in 3D printing, all aimed at keeping the part feature orthogonal to gravity all the time, so that you could build crazy forms, angled forms, overhung forms without supports. Another mechanical innovation I saw is a company, Duplex, a startup, was showing, again FFF-style 3D printing, but with a nozzle pointing up in tandem with a more traditional nozzle that's pointing down. So it's, it's 3D printing from both ends simultaneously. And that under-the-part nozzle is basically acting as the support structure because it's supporting the part as it's extruding out the material to build it. And so this this 3D printer was building from two directions at once.

Stephanie Hendrixson  27:59

Support-free options for printing in both metals and polymers. We actually have videos of both of the polymer machines that you mentioned, but Duplex 3D was one that I saw on LinkedIn. And I just have to ask, there's this thing in the middle of the part, which I guess I would call a build plate, but it seems to be the same plastic that's being printed on either side from both nozzles. What is the thing in the middle? And how did they get rid of it?

Peter Zelinski  28:22

Yeah, so let's try to run a podcast, I think I can talk this out verbally. What is that square in the middle? The part they were printing is a kayak paddle. And it was being printed from from both ends at once. And it's a real kayak paddle for a real sporting goods manufacturer. So if you're gonna do 3D printing where two nozzles start in the middle, and basically print the part outward, you can't have just a free standing middle there in space you start with. So the way that the machine starts, there is a table that extends out from the side of the machine on the inside, this temporary table is flat against the inner wall of the machine like a Murphy bed, and then it folds out temporarily to start. And so the upper extruder nozzle, the traditional one starts printing on that table, and it starts by printing a square with the middle section of the part lightly held by little supports within that square. And then clamps come from the side and hold that square on its two edges from the side. And then the Murphy bed table drops out of the way. And so it's holding that square from the side and then printing the rest of the part. So it's not true that it's 100% free of supports because it does have this square thing in the middle, but it's pretty easy to break that away at the end and be left with just this part that otherwise doesn't have any gravity-related support structures to it.

Stephanie Hendrixson  30:00

See, this is what I mean, this is the kind of context and information that I missed out on from not being there.

Peter Zelinski  30:06

Well, so, that this very example was like, huge across-the-ocean teamwork between us, because I learned about this from your email alerts. I had a moment free, I was in the hall for this machine. Oh, that that booth is right over there. Let me run over there and look at this. And then the whole thing that I just described, like that's the thing I didn't understand looking at it, like, how does this even start? How does this work? I couldn't even sort of formulate the question right. And then through some back and forth conversation with with the contact I found standing right there, I got a grasp of how this machine works and how they figured it out. But I wouldn't have known about it, if not for you. And you and I wouldn't have this understanding of it if I wasn't there able to look at it and ask my dumb questions.

Stephanie Hendrixson  30:57

Yeah, exactly. All right. So I think our last big topic that we're going to talk about, it's actually going to be a lot of little things. So I want to leave space for us just to share some of the weird, quirky little discoveries that you made at the show floor and that I made through social media and the Internet.

Peter Zelinski  31:14

I want to hear yours, because I didn't get to all of yours. There was no way to so what did you see at a distance, I want to hear some of that.

Stephanie Hendrixson  31:21

So one of the things that stood out to me, and I think I must have seen this on LinkedIn. Prusa had something they were calling the automated farm system. And Prusa is this company that's really well known for making hoppy desktop 3D printers. But this is an example of this company that we don't typically think of as industrial offering what looks like a very industrial focused system. So it's basically eight of their printers kind of in this box. Somehow there is automated unloading, that happens. So this is another example of that automation trend. I don't have all the details, because that's pretty much all that I know. But I thought this was a really interesting example of how a more consumer focused company is now almost like those other established manufacturers kind of moving sideways into the more industrial additive manufacturing space and kind of providing a product that's dedicated to that.

Peter Zelinski  32:09

Here's what I can add to that. Prusa's booth at Formnext was mobbed. It was so crowded, even if I wanted to wade in to figure out this thing that you were describing. I don't know that I could have. So it was a well-attended show. Sometimes I was late for appointments, because I just couldn't get down the aisles fast enough because there were too many people. And I love that, it's wonderful. Like it shows the level of enthusiasm for additive manufacturing, the curiosity about it, but Prusa's booth in particular, I was walking by, I couldn't believe the crowd, I stopped and took a picture of it, maybe we'll include the the photo in the post with this podcast episode. But it's like, yeah, they they drew a crowd.

Stephanie Hendrixson  32:51

That's cool. That explains a lot. So one of the other things that I noticed along with all of the robots, it seemed like there were tons of bikes at the show, like lots of people printing bike parts and showing off completed bikes in their booths. I'm not going to try to name them all. But one thing that stood out to me was that I saw a different company that had printed a bike ramp. And they had this video on LinkedIn of somebody actually riding a bike and like kind of doing like a little bit of a jump on this ramp in their booth. The company is Enlarged 3D (Enlarg3D) or Enlarged. They are based in the Netherlands. And they do lots of large format 3D printing, they use this printhead from CEAD to print with polymers, I believe with polymer pellets. They make furniture, they make statues, they make decorative things. But they've also found this really cool application in making stuff for like skate parks and bike parks like these different ramps and things like that.

Peter Zelinski  33:41

Let me get this straight. So it's a big show. And it just shows like you can't see all of it. I did not see anything like what you're describing. So you're saying somewhere in Formnext they were doing like trick bike jumps.

Stephanie Hendrixson  33:52

Like there was like BMX biking happening somewhere in one of these halls.

Peter Zelinski  33:57

Didn't see it. Okay, that's amazing. I want to hear more. I'll let me jump in. Here's just a couple of notable things I saw whether they fit a category or not. One of the things Desktop Metal was showcasing was their binder jet technology for wood. This is their Forust system. And it's fully realized now and and they're commercializing this and part of what they needed to get to to be able to introduce this system is a supply base for wood material. So I think like oak and maple are the options available right now. There's a binder, it's binder jet, you you print complex geometric forms in wood, there's not sintering the way we'd understand it, but the part is left to cure. And then it's finished. And so we started talking about ceramic as this whole other material category, ultimately, is wood going to be a broad material category we associate with 3D printing also? That's really interesting to me.

Stephanie Hendrixson  34:56

Yeah. So I saw a little bit of buzz about this on social media, as well, you mentioned that the source of the maple and the oak was kind of a sticking point that they've solved. Where does that material come from?

Peter Zelinski  35:07

And I learned just a little bit about this, but part of it, it is reclaimed scrap from other woodworking operations. And the consistency and properties of that raw stock are particularly important, like it's not like they're putting sawdust in this machine it's binder jet. And so the exact parameters necessary for effective 3D printing, that's something they no doubt had to work out with and control with, with the supply with the sources that they found. But for at least a couple of wood materials, they've got that now and are ready to support 3D printed production parts in wood.

Stephanie Hendrixson  35:45

So 3D printing as a destination for waste from other processes. I love that circular economy, sustainability, let's do it.

Peter Zelinski  35:53

Yes, again, another weird thing, newcomer to Formnext, company called Axtra3D, and they do stereolithography and digital light processing in the same build at the same time. Stereolithography gives you really fine detail. Digital light processing is more of a bulk thing, it's an entire layer all at once. And the coordination is part of their whole recipe. But by getting the stereolithography step just right, it can ensure that the DLP energy that still exists at the very edges of the layer, the stereolithography step can coordinate that with that just right so that the energy density going into the layer is uniform, even at the edges. And so it's very fine detail forms produced very quickly.

Stephanie Hendrixson  36:48

That is something that I think I read about in advance and could not really wrap my mind around. So these two processes are happening, like at the same time or in sequence, like if you have a circle that's being printed, is it like the DLP projector comes on and then an outline is traced or is it happening like at the same time?

Peter Zelinski  37:06

Like what you just said, like the like the DLP does the broad brushstrokes, and then stereolithography does a pencil trace around it, it happens really fast. And I did see it play out through the screen of the machine while it was explained to me. You said earlier, trouble getting your mind around it. I'm not, I was there. This is one I'm not sure I 100% have my mind around it yet. But what it does show is by using processes together, just like you say, we're still figuring out what the trade-offs are in additive processes. And by using processes in tandem, maybe there are trade-offs we don't have to make. What are some other interesting things you saw at a distance?

Stephanie Hendrixson  37:48

So the the last two that I will share are instances where I thought that a company did a good job publicizing something that is difficult to publicize. Chromatic 3D Is this company that produces polyurethanes for deposition-style printers, they also produce their own printers now, and materials are sort of difficult to show off at a trade show, like it's tempting to just kind of put like the wall of filaments up in your booth or something like that, and show like just the raw material. But I thought that they came up with a creative way to show people the capabilities of what their material does. And so this photo that I saw on LinkedIn, they had like an exercise trampoline in their booth. But instead of the metal springs, they had replaced all the springs with printed elastomer. And they were inviting people to come into their booth and jump on the trampoline. And like what a great illustration of how trustworthy and durable and useful these materials are. Like if I can trust this trampoline with these springs that were 3D printed, what else can these materials do?

Peter Zelinski  38:51

That's great. So there was a trampoline to jump on that I also missed at Formnext. Chromatic great little company. You've written about their 3D printing of flexible materials. We should link to that article.

Stephanie Hendrixson  39:03

Yeah, yeah, we will do that. And then the other one that I will throw out there is a company that offers software, another really difficult thing to depict in a tradeshow booth. But I was scrolling through LinkedIn. And I happened to be following this other company polySpectra that produces high performance photopolymer resins, and some parts made from their resins were on display in this other company's booth that I hadn't heard of before. They're called Metafold 3D. And they are based in Ontario. And they offer this product called Lightcycle, which is a cloud-based 3D printing software that allows you to do like really strange, interesting lattices. There's this phenomenon that I encounter in 3D printing sometimes where you look at something and it just looks wrong in some way. Like there's something weird about it and it takes a minute to kind of like place what is strange about this thing, and these parts had this lattice that's sort of like changed and transformed across the the geometry. Something looks weird and it catches your attention and it draws you in. And I thought, those parts that I saw on LinkedIn, and then some other photos that I found over the course of the show did a good job at explaining the capabilities of the software while not just being like a screen playing demos of the software

Peter Zelinski  40:15

I talked to Metafold. And their programming technology is really cool. So DLP, you're basically printing by layers. And so what happens when you have super, super intricate geometric forms layer by layer, you use math to define this in the way that that machines are programmed. And maybe you use STL, like triangular forms. The math can choke the machine. Certain DLP printers, I've come to understand, can be programmed using PNG files, basically photos of each layer. And so that's what their software is they generate a photo of each layer and use that to program really crazy forms.

Stephanie Hendrixson  41:02

And so like these crazy gyroids and lattices that I was seeing are made possible by PNG files.

Peter Zelinski  41:09

Yes, yes. As a replacement to math that would otherwise slow down what the printer is able to do.

Stephanie Hendrixson  41:17

Super cool. All right, I think we will leave this conversation here. But again, you can find lots more of what Pete saw at the show in this article that we're going to link to, as well as all of the various videos and things and I will drop links to some of the social media things that I saw as well in the show notes.

Peter Zelinski  41:34

The next Formnext experience that's coming up, actually will not be in Germany in 2023. A new event is coming: the Formnext Forum. It is a conference. We are working with the organizers of Formnext and with AMT-The Association For Manufacturing Technology, all of us together are developing this new event. It replaces and builds upon what used to be our Additive Manufacturing Conference, but the Formnext Forum will be August 28 through 30 in Austin, Texas. We will link to that event, but please save the date on your calendar. Join us in Texas for the next coming Formnext event.

Stephanie Hendrixson  42:19

Yeah, we hope to see you in Austin. If you liked the podcast, we hope you'll subscribe to AM Radio on your favorite podcast platform. Leave us a five-star review and tell a friend, tell a coworker, tell anybody who's interested in additive manufacturing. And thank you for listening.  AM Radio is recorded with help from Austin Grogan. The show is edited by Jodee McElfresh and me, Stephanie Hendrixson. Our artwork is by Kate Bilberry. AM Radio and Additive Manufacturing Media are products of Gardner Business Media, located in the Queen City, Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm Stephanie Hendrixson. Thanks for listening.