Savage Automation Delivers 3D Printed Commercial Manufacturing Aids

Before founding Savage Automation LLC (Farmington, Utah) in 2017, Richard Savage had more than 15 years’ injection molding experience. While working for a molding shop, he attended a trade show in Germany in 2016 and saw a 3D printed end-of-arm tool (EOAT), which proved a “lightbulb moment,” as previous experience had demonstrated that the long lead times and design constraints of traditional EOAT was a serious pain point for molders. When he returned to Utah, Savage designed a simple polymer additive gripper to grab four parts from a mold, had it printed by a local service bureau, then used it at his job.

Although it only cost a few hundred dollars to produce, the EOAT ran for 2 months before crashing. However, unlike metallic EOAT, it didn’t damage the mold. Over the next year, Savage designed several more polymer AM EOAT for the company to use. In 2017, he approached management about adding AM capabilities, but leadership wasn’t interested. He used the opportunity to start a side business designing EOAT and fixtures for other molders to be printed locally.

“It was a great situation for a startup, as costs were low since I was designing parts myself in my spare time and using outside vendors to print them,” Savage recalls. “By 2019, things really took off and we were so busy I decided to leave my old company and pursue this full time.”

As the company grew, it brought printing in-house as well as assembly, inspection and packaging. Since then, Savage Automation has specialized in developing and producing robust EOAT and fixtures that solve problems and simplify installation and operations for injection molders — which represent 90% of the company’s current customer base, with 70% of them molding for the medical industry. More recently, Savage has produced fixtures for composite parts used in the aerospace and performance sporting goods segments.

“We produce a lot of one-off products of high complexity and high value with lots of design time involved, so additive is perfect for that kind of low-volume/high-mix work,” Savage continues. “Basically, we consider additive to produce anything that’s high cost or takes a long time to machine in metals, although we ask customers to bring us a problem and then rely on us for the automation solution, as you don’t want to tie your supplier’s hands when they might have a better product or process to use for your particular situation. We’re not a 3D printing company that makes some automation parts; rather, we’re an automation company that happens to use a lot of 3D printing.”

Molders typically send Savage Automation a mold layout and a part drawing that the team uses to design an end effector, fixture or other manufacturing aid. Next, the team produces prototype aids on its Onyx One FDM/FFF printer from Markforged Inc., which can print in neat or discontinuous carbon fiber-reinforced PA6. The team also prints prototype parts in epoxy on its Form 3 SLA printer from Formlabs, as the latter produces high-quality surfaces and permits the team to accurately match gripper finger designs to a replica of the part surface to ensure EOAT fit and function. When the design is ready, commercial manufacturing aids are printed in PA12 via a powder bed fusion (PBF)-type printer — either MJF from HP Inc. or Fuse 1 SLS from Formlabs — for highly complex components, or on a Markforged if the design involves an inspection fixture for a flat part or where dimensionality is critical. For soft-touch surfaces, the team manually attaches either its own printed gripper pads or purchased ones. Overflow work is sent to outside service bureaus.

Over time, the team has changed its approach to designing manufacturing aids. “First, we tend to design hybrid systems with an aluminum backbone on which we bolt a printed tool, as print envelopes are still relatively small on most machines and larger polymer AM parts aren’t as strong,” Savage explains. “Second, we switched from single-bodied designs to multi-bodied ones because occasionally a robot will crash and damage an EOAT. If it was produced as a single piece, then most likely the whole unit would need replacing, whereas if the design is modular, then maybe only one or two smaller pieces need to be changed, which is less costly to replace and gets the molder up and running faster.”

He also notes that with conventional EOAT, there’s no easy location to position air/vacuum lines, so tools end up with a nest of lines that are zip-tied together. “With additive, we can just print integral channels so air lines run through the body of the part and there’s only one connection line for each hookup and it’s clearly labeled,” Savage continues. “It’s the same thing with mounting grippers or suction cups. With additive, you can just print them into the body so you don’t have to worry about screws coming loose and pads or gripper fingers falling off. Another way we’ve changed our design approach as we’ve learned more about 3D printing is that we now manipulate the ductility and Shore hardness of a part, not by changing the polymer, but by changing how we print the lattice, our printer orientation and so on. As you modify the lattice and its thickness, you modify the flexibility of the geometry, which is very helpful when you need to control grip forces to handle delicate parts.”

More: 3D Printed End of Arm Tooling Aids Automation