Semiconductors, Tungsten, AM Affordability and More from Formnext 2024: AM Radio #56

Formnext 2024 lived up to its reputation as additive manufacturing’s largest trade show, attracting more than 34,000 attendees to 54,000 m² of exhibit space. It was also large in the sense of showcasing just how big 3D printing can go, with plenty of showpieces and demos running to illustrate the current scale of large-format additive manufacturing (LFAM) technology. 

But beneath the robotic arms and towering prints, there were also plenty of new machine introductions, software advances and application examples. Over the course of our time at the show, AM Radio cohost Peter Zelinski and I noted more semiconductor applications than ever before, an increased use of tungsten, software developments aimed at solving AM’s design bottleneck, various approaches to cutting cost per part, and indications that additive manufacturing has crossed various tipping points expanding where the production method makes sense, and is on trajectory to continue that advance. In this episode of the AM Radio podcast, we share our observations from the show floor and discuss takeaways for additive manufacturers. 

Transcript

Stephanie Hendrixson  00:05

Is the tipping point for additive manufacturing applications moving? Which industries and materials are seeing growth? Will we overcome additives design bottleneck, and are costs for AM finally coming down? All this and much more from Formnext 2024 coming up on this episode of AM Radio.

Fiona Lawler  00:27

AM Radio is a product of Additive Manufacturing Media. So areThe Cool Parts Show, the BuildUp and Additive Manufacturing magazine. Ready to be part of the AM universe? Subscribe at AdditiveManufacturing.Media today.

Stephanie Hendrixson  00:42

Welcome to AM R, the show where we tune into what's happening in additive manufacturing. I'm Stephanie Hendrixson. I'm joined again in the studio by my cohost, Pete Zelinski.

Peter Zelinski  00:50

Hey, Stephanie.

Stephanie Hendrixson  00:51

So we just came back from Formnext 2024 the show in Frankfurt, Germany, the biggest additive show in the world. Just to put some numbers out there, 864 exhibitors this year, over 35,000 visitors, 54,000 square meters of exhibit space. So, yeah, it's totally possible to go to the show with a colleague or a coworker and never see that person throughout the course of the show.

Peter Zelinski  01:14

Totally, it's a huge event for next is the busiest week of our year. Yeah, we barely saw one another through that show, and we've had a little bit of a conversation comparing notes, not all that in depth. I'm actually really looking forward to this taping, just to kind of process some of these observations with you in this episode.

The way we've done kind of event review episodes before we'll talk about a lot of different topics, but really the first one I want to get into, it's kind of nuanced, and yet at the same time, it feels really significant to me, and it has to do with the numbers defining what is possible with additive processes advancing, coupled with the meaning of that advance, we talk about this a lot. Much of what defines or holds back the applications additive is able to succeed in are numbers, cost per part, production rate, precision that can be held, and what that says for downstream operations, all of that.

And the thing about it is, and the reason Formnext is such a significant experience every year is this technology is advancing. It is still advancing rapidly, all these different additive processes, the numbers keep on changing, and that opens the application envelope wider. What it also does, though, is, in many cases, the process, numbers, speed, cost, et cetera, cross tipping points that open up entirely different ways of using or thinking about the technology?

Stephanie Hendrixson  03:02

Yeah, I think we are in this moment where the technology is not necessarily advancing by leaps and bounds, but there are changes in those numbers, changes in those tipping points. I'm curious, what are some of the examples that you saw at the show?

Peter Zelinski  03:16

Right? Right? I like how you said that it's not leaps and bounds, except the whole tipping point phenomenon is it advances by just the right increment where a leap happens as a result. So there are many examples of this. Maybe like the most basic example is.

So I spent some time talking to Formlabs. I was talking to Derek Vilm of Formlabs, we were looking at their Form 4L machine, which is a larger size version of the Form 4. And what's really significant about the Form 4 platform is much faster build speeds. And there are various reasons for that. It has to do with the optics, replacing a laser based system with a system that is higher light density and basically can can form a layer all at once, combined with there's some surface texturing engineering that helps with that, peel force layer by layer by layer, and allows it to proceed faster. There's a lot going on, but put all that together, suffice to say, much faster print speeds, and that changes the role that these machines are used in, and Formlabs is already observing this.

So when I say faster, these Formlabs mostly desktop size machines, and they're used, for example, in product development, a lot product development, to the extent of getting what is a prototype, but a very functional prototype. Well for engineers using a form labs machine in this role, the print they might have. Previously assumed needs to run overnight, maybe now it can run just over a very long lunch break. Yeah, yeah. Like that kind of change. The result of that is not just getting the same parts that I was gonna make, but getting them faster, but now iterating more elaborately, pursuing more sophisticated or more subtle design changes, because it's possible to print much faster, print easier, get that next idea faster.

So we saw we can post pictures of this, like Radio Flyer, is one of their customers a seat for this child's vehicle. They had to work out the shape of it, in the form of it, just so and and a part like that. It's it's possible to develop it much faster because of this iteration, a way that Formlabs is observing it to an extent they can track usage rates of their machines. They're seeing machine usage going up, suggesting 3D printing is being done that previously wouldn't have been done because it's too much trouble. Oh, to just tweak this feature, it's not worth printing for 810 hours, but it is worth printing for a couple hours just to get this and so a lot more exploration of design potential.

Stephanie Hendrixson  06:22

Yeah, the math changes when the printer gets faster. The example that came to mind as you were talking about this, I spent some time speaking with nLight, and so they are not a printer manufacturer. They focus on laser systems, and what they're known for is being able to do like beam shaping, so change the shape of the spot that actually appears on the powder bed. And at this show, they're showing their two-kilowatt laser, which is like a crazy amount of power. Nobody else, as far as I know, is doing this.

And part of the reason is because if you just pour all of that power into one round beam spot, you can kind of like, boil the material, like you get spatter, you get, like, all kinds of potential issues. But the shape of their laser spot is actually a ring. It's like a donut. And so the heat from the ring is heating the is enough to heat the powder on the interior. And so you can actually have a larger spot size, increase your hatch distance, make fewer passes. And so there's, there's a little bit of sacrifice there, like the spot size gets larger, like, you lose out on a little bit of detail, maybe, but you're able to print faster, you're able to print with fewer layers. You're able to, again, like, bring down the cost of the part.

And so they have a customer that was, was not mentioned by name, but that is a company that serves the automotive industry, and they're super interested in laser powder bed fusion, using this two kilowatt laser, because they think it's going to be the key to kind of getting them over the hurdle into automotive because a lot of the metal parts that are possible opportunities for additive are replacing castings, and so you don't need super fine detail, if you can print the part fast enough and at a low enough cost that it makes sense as an alternative.

Peter Zelinski  08:06

And you gave a very production focused example of this phenomenon of performance numbers changing leading to a fundamental change in the application. I spent a little time on Formlabs there talking about product development. Let me tick through some I saw repeated production examples of this phenomenon.

I was talking to Virginia Palacios of EOS. One of the things that EOS introduced is their their P3 Next machine, selective laser sintering. It is, again, among other things, much faster, significantly faster than previous selective laser sintering machines. And she described to me how speed directly translates to better and more economical material usage, and that's because the time under which the material is exposed to temperature drives the rate at which the material degrades, and so if it's heated quicker exposed to heat for a shorter period of time, the amount of material you can recapture at the end of the build increases. This affects the kind of parts you can thrive with in selective laser sintering. So what is a consumer part that you see repeated examples of being made through selective laser sintering?

Stephanie Hendrixson  09:30

You're gesturing at your face, and makes me think eye glasses.

Peter Zelinski  09:35

A reason why eye glasses have been a great choice for SLS is because they have a very high pack density. So the amount of unused powder around the build is relatively slight by comparison a drone body, for example, like a star shaped little drone, harder to pack densely, a lot more unused material, therefore, potential. A lot more material that can't be reclaimed. Whereas an earlier SLS machine in a typical build might have been capable of 50% material reuse, the faster machine can get you to 80% material reuse all of a sudden, this weird drone body, for example, that maybe would not have been cost effective. To 3D print becomes way more cost effective because you can keep more material after the build, owing again, to nothing about the nothing about the material change, nothing about the design change of the part, but just the speed of the process gets you to that tipping point.

Stephanie Hendrixson  10:39

That's very cool, like making better use of the material in the machine that you already have. There do seem to be some advances in materials happening here, too. And I'm gonna say that this was a real quick part of the conversation, and I don't understand how this works, but I wanna mention it just in case it's useful for listeners. But when I was in the HP booth talking about their developments on the Polymer side, they've introduced this new pa 12 powder from Arkema that is supposed to be more stable and doesn't degrade so much in the process, and so that you can keep using it for longer without refreshing the material. Don't understand how that works. I don't have any more information than that, but there are some developments happening on the material side with that aim, like, how do we keep the powder from degrading? How do we keep the material in use so that you get the most out of it.

Peter Zelinski  11:22

So, yeah. So what you're saying is there are material chemistry advances happening independent that actually resonate with these tipping point transformations that we're seeing. Yeah.

Another example, Colibrium Additive, the number improvement here is speed of the machine in binder jetting, plus strength of the binder and those two together are changing the nature of the parts that are good candidates for binder jet we this is actually one of the videos we filmed from the show is just kind of showing some of these binder jet parts, bigger parts, more sprawling parts that you wouldn't previously maybe have thought of as natural candidates for binder jetting, but, but the process gets there now because of some of the way the numbers are changing.

Here's maybe one more example of and it's it is one tipping point leading to another tipping point. So Q.Big 3D, as their name sort of implies, they make big 3D printers, extrusion polymer 3D printers. And one hardware element they have is a variable nozzle. Like so you could do different nozzle diameters in the same build, switching, switching between them, and therefore do different layer heights in the same build, fine detail, plus rough bulk, do it in the same build. And what that allows is finer surface finishes on a big part, so you don't have to do a big part where you've got a very that very coarse corduroy form to the layers and have to machine that you can because of a new number that's present the chance to do, for example, a layer height that is less than half a millimeter within the same build where you've mostly done layers that are maybe multiple millimeters like so the introduction of that number change gets you to fine surface finish on a big, big part. So the tipping point there is now, maybe you don't have to machine at all. Maybe the 3D printed part is completely done. And eliminating that postprocessing step suddenly makes that big 3D printed component like way more cost effective.

And so the options for big tools, for example, made through 3D printing, instead of being made from machined and or assembled metal parts like the range of that expands, and then that enablement becomes very attractive to the auto industry, particularly in Europe, where they are very intent about reducing the CO2 footprint of everything that they do. And so auto companies use a lot of tooling, make a lot of tooling, and so the chance to introduce a cost effective, say, reinforced polymer solution for tooling, Q.Big 3D, was was explaining that, yeah, the the CO2 content for these tools is something like 90% less than the same really big tool made out of for example, like machining and welding together pieces of aluminum or steel.

Stephanie Hendrixson  14:51

Wow, it's almost like they've made a hybrid printer, but instead of machining to finish, you're just putting really small lines of material to make the finish.

Peter Zelinski  15:01

I think that's a great yeah, it's a different way to do hybrid instead of machining to get to finish, different 3D printing to get to finish.

Stephanie Hendrixson  15:08

Yeah. So something interesting that came out during the show is like, yes, the tipping points are moving and they're getting higher and higher, and machines are getting better and better. But I also had a couple of conversations just about like the limits that are that are approaching, like the goalpost has moved, but it's still there, and like, there is still a wall that we that we might reach, or that we are already reaching. So nLight, for example, talked to them a lot about the gains in speed from having this larger, more stable spot size and melt pool, and they sort of foresee a time when the limit is not going to be the laser, and what's possible with the laser, but actually just the recoding technology. How long does it take you to spread or spray or roll powder out in the powder bed? Like, that's gonna end up being what determines the speed of the print, not the laser.

Peter Zelinski  15:56

That's interesting. That's really interesting. And that just suggests that, yeah, like either we will live with that limit or what is more likely will find increasingly clever ways to work through that limit instead.

Stephanie Hendrixson  16:10

Yeah, I suspect that might be the case. And then the other one that stood out, I spoke with Lithoz' Norbert Gall about their Cerafab 320 which is their new, larger ceramic 3D printer. And basically they made the build platform as large as they could with the projector technology that was available on the market. So it has a 4K projector, has the, basically the best projector that they could get. And even with that, it is a lower resolution than the smaller S65 so a 60 micron pixel size versus 40 micron in that previous version. So they went as large as they could, but just the limitation in projection systems meant that they couldn't make the printer any any larger and maintain the kind of resolution that they wanted.

Peter Zelinski  16:51

Oh, wow. Okay, speaking of going as large as they could, can we just talk about size, scale and bigness as a theme at this show?

Stephanie Hendrixson  17:00

Oh, for sure. And I feel like we see this a lot, because if you're going to a show like Formnext, one way to stand out is just if you can print the biggest thing that you possibly can. But I definitely saw maybe an uptick in that this year, various types of examples. Like, there's always the sort of like artsy thing that's just there to get attention. Like there was the discus thrower statue in the one hall, kind of near the front. I saw lots of really big robot grippers, to the point that I just started, like, taking photos so I could collect them and, like, post it on social media later. But then a lot of end use parts as well. What stands out to you?

Peter Zelinski  17:36

It was everything you're saying that's that's totally right. There are many fun aspects of this show, and one of them is the things that companies 3D print to try to be visible, but at this show, also there was definite advance and engineering into doing bigger, more sophisticated, more repeatable things within larger scale machines. We've seen this in our reporting this year, and we even kind of did an issue of the magazine that focused on this theme about large scale 3D printing is a definite, decisive, different sphere of additive manufacturing, in which real innovation and opportunity is being explored, and realized.

One of the points that helped bring this home for me, I had a chance to speak with Hamid Zarringhalam, and he's with Nikon. He plays various roles. He's corporate vice president Nikon Corporation, and he's thechief executive officer of Nikon Advanced Manufacturing, which is where their various additive manufacturing offerings are concentrated. So one of the things that Nikon was talking about and celebrating justifiably is they have shipped their 50th NXG machine. And and 50 is a pretty big number for these machines, for where we are with additive manufacturing, because these are big machines and a big commitment, and they are for organizations, seriously and long term invested in in additive manufacturing for production.

But he pointed out, yeah, 50 have been shipped, but 80% of them are working as a fleet, meaning those 50 machines shipped cover about 20 different customers. We saw this. We were very soon, we're going to post our reporting from Collins Aerospace and their facility in Iowa that's using this NXG platform, and they've got two of them. And to Hamid's point, most of the users of the machine look like that. In other words, they are. It's not just they're doing big laser powder bed fusion as an adjunct to all their other metal additive. It is they specifically have seen the value and are staking out their capacity. Capacity in this kind of very large scale platform.

Stephanie Hendrixson  20:03

So 80% in a fleet, meaning 80% of those are not single printers going into facilities. There's at least, there's more than one.

Peter Zelinski  20:11

80% of them are going into contexts where they have a sibling. NXG machine also working.

Stephanie Hendrixson  20:17

I see. It's like adopting kittens. They always tell you, get two.

Peter Zelinski  20:22

Right? Because the NXGs get lonely.

Stephanie Hendrixson  20:24

Yeah, they need someone to play with.

Peter Zelinski  20:28

Another striking big machine. This was sort of the debut from EOS of their M8K machine, which is made by AMCM, which is their organization that sort of builds machines around particular applications, but then those machines once built become standard offerings.

I was talking to EOS’s Martin Bullemer about this machine. It was it was built for the Ariane Group space industry manufacturer in Europe. They didn't have the machine there, and they will build one when Ariane is ready to begin receiving it. But the machine is essentially available now. They showed this gigantic part, spacecraft shaped engine part, and we'll put a photo in the post for this episode. But they listed the capacity of the machine, the size capacity as 820 by 820 by 1,200 millimeters or bigger, meaning like they could go bigger than that, if there's an application that brings them to that.

And just some of the interesting considerations of bringing out a laser powder bed, fusion machine that big. One of them is, cooling gets way, way more important on smaller machines, for example, heating the chamber might be important or heating the build plate, for example, to manage stresses. Here there are eight lasers in this machine. Within this large volume, heat buildup is a much more pressing concern, and so much more of the engineering was directed toward cooling to maintain the right temperature.

Another issue is you got to think about the downstream steps for the parts that it will be making. So the introduction of this machine by EOS was at the same time as Solukon in their exhibit showing their really big, deep powdering machine for parts this size. And it's a result of direct conversations with EOS about this machine coming and similarly, all kinds of engineering considerations that went into getting a de powdering system for a machine this big. It's like they'll shake out so much powder that they need a conveyor moving through the machine to get the powder. It's not like they can't let it accumulate. And also, just holding the part can't a levering the part, essentially such a heavy part, there were considerations they had to put into the type of drive that is pivoting this part as it's being held at one end.

Stephanie Hendrixson  23:08

So this is another one of those things, like the tipping point moving. The machines can get bigger. They can do 1,200 millimeters or more in height. But you've got to think about the downstream process, like, is there going to be a way to hold this part? Is there going to be a way to tip it and get all the powder out? We have to consider all of those issues simultaneously at this point.

Peter Zelinski  23:29

Yeah, that's right. And here's another tipping point. I see how far you can go with assembly consolidation. In Farsoon's booth, they were showing this e-motorcycle frame that was made in all one piece on one of their larger scale laser powder bed fusion machines, taking a frame that would have been 21 pieces and replacing it with just one. And so anyone who's ridden a bicycle seen a motorcycle like the frame is obviously an assembled form, you can see where the welds are, but these larger scale machines now are the chance to rethink that, and how far can our rethinking go, as far as reconceiving what objects can be just single parts.

Stephanie Hendrixson  24:16

So the large format assembly consolidation example that I saw was not quite so dramatic, seven parts down to one, but in the Hans Weber booth, they had this center console. It's for a BMW Group vehicle. They're gonna make, like, 18,000 of these consoles. And they consolidated the assembly. Again, it's just seven parts, but part of it is the airflow, like there's like air ducts that have been printed into this thing. And so by 3D printing this component, instead of doing all the assembly, it only needs, like, really minimal machining before it's ready to go into assembly. BMW Group is saving time, saving money, and they are also reducing the weight of the vehicle. And so this is another case where I. They talked about how just swapping this center console out for the 3D printed version is gonna reduce like 70 kilograms of carbon for each of these vehicles.

Peter Zelinski  25:10

And that's a polymer component?

Stephanie Hendrixson  25:11

And it's a polymer component.

Peter Zelinski  25:12

And it's made on like a deposition style 3D printing?

Stephanie Hendrixson  25:15

Yeah, yeah, robot-driven, pellet-fed deposition.

Peter Zelinski  25:18

So here's the observation that connects to that I saw at the show, and again, on this topic of large scale as a distinct area of additive manufacturing companies serving exactly what you're describing, deposition-style, large-format, additive manufacturing, elaborating to provide a fuller suite of options within that space. So CEAD, company that that does large-scale robot deposition 3D printing, they are like a classic example of a company that always comes to formnex with a really big part and hard to miss as you're walking down by their booth, they have introduced a gantry style machine, not a robot, but a in an enclosed machine, tool for doing large format parts.

I've talked to Lucas Jansen of CEAD. He says, you know, robots are, they are modular, they're scalable, they're flexible. It's just they're slow. And so if they're facing an application where it is a committed, large format application, they want to do the same part again and again. They need the build time reduction. Yeah, this is a machine that takes up more footprint, but it allows for that just the higher kilogram per minute deposition rate and the machine speed. It's a stiff machine welded steel frame. It sits close to the ground, and they've designed it, though, so that it has some of the redeployability advantages, like they've made a machine where, if you look at it, it is possible to see how, like fork truck forks, could go underneath it and move it around pretty easily.

Peter Zelinski  27:08

So then opposite, opposite, opposite, KraussMaffei, maker of big enclosed machines. I mean enclosed for a reason, because they're they have a temperature control system within their machines. But the big deposition-style polymer 3D printing machines, KraussMaffei was showing its extruders availability for integration into robot cells, particularly for and they showed this really big, long, kind of awkward shaped tool that used the system, but it's for parts where maybe getting it in and out of the machine might present some awkwardness, but the reach and articulation of the robot provides the way to produce that part. So ultimately, same combination machine and robot, but moving in different direction as far as which new offering they introduced.

Peter Zelinski  28:03

And then Caracol is another that makes robot systems for large format, polymer deposition, their elaboration into a different offering is now robot 3D printing in metal they were, they were showing a directed energy deposition system with, in their case, multiple head options. The standard one is a Fronius CMT welding system, but they also offer plasma as the mode of melting and depositing metal. The different heads have different applications.

I talked a little bit about this with Caracol's Gianrocco Marinelli so the CMT welding, he sort of characterizes that as the easiest way to do wire arc deposition plasma introduces a much greater range of material possibility. It's just that you have to do that in an inert environment, and it becomes direction dependent because of the way the head deploys. So there's some, some thought that has to be done into the deposition path. But all that to say, large-scale additive manufacturing is its own thing, and the leading companies in that space are doing even more in that space in different ways.

Stephanie Hendrixson  29:20

I was about to ask if the if the different welding heads were like, swappable on the Caracol robot.

Peter Zelinski  29:25

No, you choose one, yeah, yeah.

Stephanie Hendrixson  29:27

That'd be kind of crazy, though. If you could have a polymer 3D printing robot and swap it to welding.

Peter Zelinski  29:34

That would be weird. I don't think we're there yet, but that would be weird.

Stephanie Hendrixson  29:37

I'm not sure what the use case is, just imagining. So, moving on to some other aspects of the show. One thing that I noticed, and I feel like this is the case every time we go to Formnext, there's like, a different set of industries or materials that are kind of having their moment, yeah? And this year for me, I feel like it was semiconductors.

Peter Zelinski  29:54

Oh, yes, yeah, yeah.

Stephanie Hendrixson  29:55

So one example in the Lithoz booth, again, by by virtue of having this larger machine that can build larger parts. They had this gas ring part, and it's for something to do with semiconductors. Its purpose is to distribute some kind of gas across the wafer as it's being processed. And the complete ring would be like 380 millimeters in diameter, which is not something that you can print fully assembled on a ceramic 3D printer right now. And so what they had in one of their display cases was all of these ring segments, like 20 of them on on one build plate. And they were kind of calling it jokingly, like the banana build because that's, that's what they look like. A

nd so because that ring had to be broken into all these different pieces, that means the customer does later have to braise them all together. But the performance benefits that they're able to get from the internal geometry that they could print with this platform made it all worth it. The extra process step to put this ring together is balanced out by the performance gains of how much better this ring distributes the gas, and then how much faster the wafer processing can go because of that.

And I talked to Norbert Gall at Lithoz for a little bit about, like, why this is happening, like, why we're seeing these applications start to come out in the semiconductor industry. And what he said was, there's a lot of there's a lot of interest, but there's not necessarily a lot of immediate changes that are happening. Because if you're producing semiconductors, and you have one of these machines and it's running and it's working, it's very expensive to stop and, like, swap a part out. But what they're seeing, and what they're anticipating is that there are concerns about, like, geopolitical situations. There's a chance that a lot of this production might be moving to different places, and if that happens, they're going to need either new machines, or there's going to be some forced downtime that might offer the opportunity to make some of these swaps. And so it's sort of this emerging application, but they think it's going to be pretty significant for ceramic 3D printing, at least.

Peter Zelinski  31:47

You talked about how it seems like at each show there are different applications or industries or component types we discover that seem to be having their moment. And there's nothing accidental about that. It's just that there are so many potential applications of additive that we're going to get there one by one, by one by one, and it connects to some of these other things we've been talking about, the tipping point phenomenon.

So Nikon, just before the show opened, had this press event just outside the convention center where a few of their customers spoke, and one of them was a semiconductor equipment maker Veeco. And person from Veeco who talked about their use of additive, Ahmed El Desouhy is his name, and they're a user of the NXG machine, these large-scale machines. And he talked about sort of the realities of using additive as it applies to semiconductor equipment manufacturing.

But actually what he was saying applies much more broadly. So additive gets used a lot in cases where there's fairly low volume and also high geometric complexity, and those two things together create a sweet spot where additive can do great things. And an example of that for Veeco was this CVD gas injector part. It is this 420 millimeter diameter disc shaped part, and as he described it, his phrase was supply chain nightmare. There are certain components where it took the months they were accustomed to five or six month lead times for making each one of these parts so they're printing them instead consolidating what used to be an elaborate assembly into one really big part. But he says, but, but, but they only need about 30 of them per year. So that means they can't just go with assembly consolidation. They need fantastic assembly consolidation for additive to deliver enough payoff that it's clearly the better choice.

So they got to a point where they were consolidating 73 components into one, but it still wasn't clear that would get them there the larger size NX machine, when they adopted that platform that allowed them to think farther and take like, let's take some components that connect to this injector and sort of 3D print, not just this system, but an entire larger subsystem around it all as one piece. So then, instead of 73 parts replaced with one, they got to the point where, because of this 600 millimeter build envelope, they were replacing 318 parts with just one. And he says they went from a 25% overall cost reduction to for this part, to a 62% cost reduction overall for the larger sub assembly, and then that, that is what made additive the clear and decisive winner.

So I say all that to say like it's another example of not just the strengths of additive, but the strengths of additive being set free to go far enough to completely take over the application. These are the developments that allow component after component after component after component and product after product after product to get to a point where now they're made additively and they won't be made any other way again.

Stephanie Hendrixson  35:29

Yeah. And so part of the advantage of the really big machine, it's not necessarily I make parts today that are that large and I need that build volume. Maybe the parts are smaller, but by virtue of having all of that available space. How much more can you consolidate on top of the part, the the single part that you're making today?

Peter Zelinski  35:47

Yeah, yeah. What other part types were having their moment? Or product types?

Stephanie Hendrixson  35:52

So I feel like sporting goods are having their moment, and like they've been having their moment for a long time. I walked past the the Carbon booth, and like the whole back wall of the booth was like, what I'm gonna call the wall of sports. It was just helmets and bike saddles and footwear, just like all these different things that can be 3D printed, that can maybe be customized, with Carbon's printing technology. I feel like ski boots in particular were having a real moment. There were three different booths where I encountered either custom or just ski boots that were being made additively somehow.

Peter Zelinski  36:24

That's a great pickup. The sporting goods thing, it didn't quite occur to me, but yeah, like that was the focus of my time with Lubrizol, for example, they support this shoe maker for competitive biking named Lore makes what is an utterly fully custom-made shoe, like, not just the insole, but the entire shoe customized around the rider's foot, and Lubrizol TPU is used in that, yeah, and,

Stephanie Hendrixson  36:50

Like, that's similar to the ski boots too. Like, that's a much larger enclosure for your foot than just like, the the midsoles. And things that we've seen, that we've seen previously, I also saw some sporting goods that I haven't necessarily seen 3D printed before.

One of the companies that I met with is a newer startup called Endless Industries, and they're all about continuous carbon fiber reinforcement in an fff style printer. And they have to develop the material themselves because they're using a thicker carbon fiber filament than than what other printers use, and that creates some complexity, like it's harder to do corners and stuff like that, but it also opens up some some more demanding applications. One of the things that they had in their booth was a protective mask for an athlete. So in the last season of Ted Lasso, there's kind of a plot point where one of where the goalie has to wear one of these masks, and the teammates kind of make fun of him for it, and they're able to print these masks now, like previously, without any sort of reinforcement. If you got hit in the face, there's a chance that the mask is going to de laminate, it's going to separate, and it's not going to function as a protective piece of gear anymore. But by putting this carbon fiber throughout the mask and reinforcing it this way, they're still able to to surface finish it such that it can be against somebody's skin, but now it's strong enough that it can be used in this application without without breaking.

Peter Zelinski  38:10

Right. For you, it was sporting goods. For me, I guess the pickup I saw was tungsten. There have been shows in past years where it felt like everybody was showing copper their ability to print copper. Figured that out. Now this year, Tungsten is the new copper. Yeah, I guess maybe like a notable example of the challenges and possibilities of tungsten. Had a conversation about this with the team at JEOL. So they do electron beam powder bed fusion equipment. I spoke with Hiranobu Munabi, Jonathan Buckley, Zane Merrick, all of JEOL , and we had some tungsten parts in front of us. And the kind of applications that are important for this, things we're all sort of hearing about on the periphery, hypersonics, also nuclear power was introduced to diverter tiles that are used in nuclear power, and typically a powder metal process is used to get a complex shape for these tiles. Additive can obviously do that potentially in a much more efficient way. And there are thousands of tiles in one diverter and multiple diverters per reactor.

So sort of the investments we're starting to see in nuclear power speak directly to the use of tungsten JEOL, because they are 3D printing with an electron beam, they are able to look a different way at the challenge of, how do you validate that you've controlled porosity sufficiently in the part they're engineering their systems, in some ways where the backscatter from the electron beam itself provides data that they can marshal for making this quality assessment of the part, and it potentially saves them from having to do a downstream measurement, like a CT scan or something like that. So

38:17

So maybe one more application industry space that's that's starting to have its moments, and we've touched on it a little bit automotive. So there was that, that BMW console that I saw and nLight again, kind of thinking about how their technology might be used to bring the cost down, to make this accessible for the automotive industry. And then on the material side, I had a meeting with HP and ArcelorMittal, which is a steel company that is now collaborating with HP to basically develop more grades of steel for their metal jet platform. There are about five that are available right now, versus 50 plus that are that are used in all different types of manufacturing. And the promise they see there is very much on the automotive end, if they can just get the right materials that the automotive industry wants to use. That opens up way more applications for binder jetting and maybe other types of additive as well.

Peter Zelinski  40:14

And that is a material provider with a ton of credibility outside of additive manufacturing.

Stephanie Hendrixson  41:08

Yeah, exactly. So let's take a break here and then come back and share some more observations from the show.

Peter Zelinski  41:13

Sounds great.

Fiona Lawler  41:19

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Stephanie Hendrixson  42:01

And we're back. We've been talking about new technology, machine launches, applications, trends, observations from Formnext 2024. Pete, what's next on your list?

Peter Zelinski  42:12

I think at this show I saw an increased recognition of the impact of design the CAD work as a potential bottleneck for realizing the promise of additive in the first half of the show, I mentioned Q.Big 3D and the technology they offer for making large tools with 3D printing. Well, as it happens, the main thing that they wanted to talk about at the show was not their big machine, and not the variable nozzle, but the software, the tool they've developed that is complementary to that, that allows for automated fixture generation. Like just instead of spending a long time building the tool in CAD, import the part you want to hold, and in like 10 minutes, it can auto generate the fixture that will ultimately be 3D printed that goes with that part, and that is as significant an enablement to big 3D printed tools as the hardware we were talking about that variable nozzle.

So like other examples of this, I saw EPlus3D showing this big one-piece rocket engine, again, made on its big machine. But just as significant is how it was designed. Again, not so much by making granular choices in CAD but by making top-level choices about the performance this engine needs to deliver the parameters it faces. And the tool here was created by Leap 71 which creates these automatic design tools for particular applications.

I encountered a new company I hadn't heard of before, Synera.io, I think is the right pronunciation of it, but it offers a design tool that one of its functions is to work with and integrate the different design tools downstream that get used in additive manufacturing. So simplest example is like the design of the part versus the design of the build that will be used to make that part. You could make one choice to optimize the part for light weighting. That actually makes it way more expensive to build because you have somehow messed with the ability to nest that part effectively, and so Synera offers this integrated tool where you can experiment with different design parameters and watch how it affects all of the different digital design aspects of 3D printing that affect the ultimate economy and efficiency of the build.

Stephanie Hendrixson  44:59

So. That's huge. Like, otherwise, you're making a choice at every step as you move from design to build preparation to slicing and like, you're getting locked into something that you may not even realize is is restricting or or having some negative impact down the line.

Peter Zelinski  45:13

That's right, and that's where we are. We talked about assembly consolidation within the additive additive build, we need decision and brain bandwidth consolidation prior to the additive build in order to take advantage of that capability. Another platform that is helping bring this and they're pretty well known at this point, but dendrite, and it's maybe an oversimplification, Dyndrite is basically CAM software for additive manufacturing. And I think they would be, if that is a simplification, I think they would be fine with it, because that's the role they want to play.

But what they were able to show is the different kinds of process discovery that is easily possible because of a tool that allows for some sophisticated programming and variation within laser powder bed fusion build, for example, and so a particular overhang that you're trying to achieve in a particular material, or a particular strange, like helical feature that I saw in the example of one build allow the software to program it to be made many different ways, all in one build. Fail with some of them consolidate on the ones that succeeded, elaborate those a little more, and then the span of like two different builds figure out utterly and for all time what set of build parameters best produces that feature.

How about you? Because I think we're now to the point in our conversation where we're talking about our divergent journeys through the show and different things we're seeing. What's a thing that you saw that maybe I missed completely?

Stephanie Hendrixson  46:55

Well, I don't think you missed it completely, but I had a lot of conversations about the costs of additive manufacturing. A lot of companies acknowledging that additive is expensive, buying a machine is expensive, owning and operating the machine is expensive. The materials are expensive. And I had some kind of encouraging conversations with OEMs recognizing this and then ways that they're thinking about reducing the cost for users. So I mean, maybe the elephant in the trade show hall this year was the number of Chinese companies that have kind of come out of the woodwork. I didn't end up interacting or talking with many of them, but the ones that I did always kind of pointed to cost as a differentiating factor.

Not to ignore that at all, but many of the companies that we think of as more established players in the 3D printing space are also thinking in this way and like, how can they help increase additive adoption by reducing these costs? And so that comes in a couple of different forms. One is just introducing cheaper machines.

Arburg is a great example. At this show, they were premiering their Freeformer 550 3x and this is just a smaller version of the Freeformer 750. It's got two nozzles. There's one for printing, one for a support material. On their larger machines, I think you get three nozzles. But they just were encountering this issue where interested manufacturers kind of wanted to use this technology, they wanted to have this capacity, but they weren't interested in the full footprint of the larger,  Freeformer  system, and they weren't interested in the cost of that system. They want this technology, but they want it in a smaller package, and so Arburg has figured out how to deliver that and make it more cost effective.

Also new companies coming out with cheaper machines. I spent some time talking to Verne, which is a startup that has this smaller SLS selective laser sintering platform. It's their STROM printer, and it's it's actually got some great capabilities, like it can do temperatures up to 400°C, which opens up more challenging polymers to work with. But the cost of the system is only about 180,000 euro, so it's a more affordable platform, and again, opens up some potentially exciting material spaces at a lower cost. So some smaller, cheaper machines on the market, on the flip side of that, some of these larger machines, the reason to go larger is to put more more parts on the build plate and to reduce the cost.

Nano Dimension has a new version of its Fabrica platform for microscale 3D printing, and that's exactly what they're thinking about. They have customers that have used smaller versions of this machine for prototyping and for smaller quantity production that are just after a bigger build platform that's going to let them put more parts on the build plate and reduce the cost of those parts.

But beyond the size of the printer, there were some other developments, kind of with an eye towards helping users of the technology either get better productivity, better throughput, reduce scrap, or just reducing the cost of the parts. So for instance, I spoke with Francois Minec at HP, who's on the polymer side, and at this show, they were introducing kind of like a new algorithm for the Multi Jet Fusion platform, and it's basically just for nesting and trying to optimize the part cost. So if you can pack things a little bit more densely, if you can make the total height of the build a little bit less run the printer for less time, you're potentially reducing the cost of your parts.

Peter Zelinski  50:13

Now listening to you say all that you're right, like the attention to cost, and particularly the influence of the capital equipment on on cost is, yeah, that was, that was notable, as you were talking about that part of what you alluded to were the companies who were present at the show this year. And I think that connects to another observation I had about what was notable or different this year. You know, we talk about technology and application. We don't talk so much about the business of additive manufacturing, but in terms of the companies themselves this show, definitely, I felt like was notable for the prominence of companies that have come more slowly to additive manufacturing as a business or a sector that they serve, maybe because they were taking their time with it, or maybe because they were building their offerings in the background over some time, some of those names we've already mentioned in this conversation.

Nikon is obviously a company well known for a long time in very different areas, that is now a major provider in additive manufacturing. KraussMaffei is another makes different types of industrial equipment before they came to 3D printing. JEOL, an optics company now in electron beam additive manufacturing. Another one that I saw Makino was, I believe, at Formnext for the first time, and that's a name that might be unfamiliar to many. I come from the machining industry. That's sort of my heritage and the and the realm that I covered for a long time, Makino is a well known metal cutting machine tool maker, and they were at Formnext with a DED machine. And I'm not sure exactly what I'm seeing there, except maybe the prominence of companies which, for one reason or another, were more patient with their entry into this market.

Stephanie Hendrixson  52:26

Patient with their entry but the thing that strikes me about what you just said is that all of those companies, I think, have some other business besides additive manufacturing, like they haven't put all of their eggs into this one basket. Makino has machine tools. JEOL has their optics business. There's diversification there that maybe accounts for or enables that patience.

Peter Zelinski  52:46

Yes, that's right, and I'd argue that that is an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time. And I bet if you opened up these companies and looked at them case by case, for by case. Like deeply on the inside, you'd see different stories there in different companies, established businesses like yeah, JEOL, they're an optics company, and as they described to me, this is one more way to deliver optics. Now it's optics over a powder bed, but it's delivering optics is, is what this application is. So, yeah, there's a lot of established infrastructure and expertise and just support personnel that are there because of the existing businesses that help them wait out whatever the weight needs to be for this product line to become successful, but that existing business, I think, also can be a disadvantage if the rollout doesn't go as smoothly as expected, adoption doesn't go at the same pace that was hoped for. So these companies, on the one hand, have deep pockets, but if they're publicly traded, they also face quarterly accountability, and that that drives decisions too. So the existing business can be a tremendous foundation to stand on, and it can also be this high inertia realm of safety to retreat to, maybe too easily, if the advance of additive isn't the straight line that maybe some stakeholders within the company hope it will be. So we'll see how it goes with each of these companies. But I guess I will say their presence at Formnext speaks to the real and significant long term promise that they all see in additive manufacturing like they they don't have to be here because. They are succeeding in other markets.

I mentioned Hamid Zerringhalam with Nikon SLM, and part of his background is the semiconductor industry, another case of a brand new technology space that opened up advanced became huge, not immediately, but over a fairly compacted span of time, and their belief is like they're looking for. He says additive to be a billion dollar business, just like semiconductor is. But he also talked about the weight to get there, like, like manufacturers can adopt additive only at the pace that they have the opportunity and and will and right circumstances to do so, and that's going to happen at the pace that it happens. His line, I think, is, you know, who's going to bear the cost of that weight. So, yeah, these, these more established companies, these larger companies, maybe we need something like that through this particular season of time to get to more tipping points that are going to allow the spread of additive into more of the applications. It's going to take over.

Stephanie Hendrixson  56:20

Okay, so reaching those tipping points, opening up more applications. I think this might be the last observation that I'll share from the show, but something that I picked up on was there were many exhibitors who were not equipment OEMs, not making materials, but actual users, service providers that are using additive manufacturing, and a lot of them are specializing now in one specific type of application. So one example a company that I think you met last year, Conflux Technology.

Peter Zelinski  56:46

 So that's right, yeah, met them for the first time at the last form next, and they use additive manufacturing just to make heat exchangers. That's their entire thing.

Stephanie Hendrixson  56:56

Yeah. And so I was talking to Michael Fuller, the founder, and what he said was, we are a heat transfer company. He didn't say, we're a 3D printed heat exchanger company. We're a heat transfer company, and additive manufacturing just happens to be the enabling technology. Like, if something better comes on the market, at some point, they could totally abandon 3D printing. But he said, like, Formnext is the only 3D printing or additive focused show that they go to, they spend all their time. Going to other industry shows places where people need those very complicated, very efficient heat exchangers, cold plates, any type of heat transfer solution, like that. And so this is an example of a company that identified a need, and it's not even a need within one specific industry. It's just a type of component that's solving a particular type of problem, and they're just finding all the different ways that they can serve that need with 3D printing.

Peter Zelinski  57:45

I actually love that. Additive succeeds by being accepted, and we get hints that it's accepted to the extent it becomes invisible and just baked in.

Stephanie Hendrixson  57:56

So two other quick examples of this that I encountered. In my meeting at HP focused on polymers. I was introduced to Romain Adamowicz, who is with this company called Something Added. And so actually, like a year or two ago, I had a chance to go visit HP in Spain. And in the kind of Barcelona area, they have this facility called the DFactory, and it's sort of like their demonstration factory where they were testing out all these different ideas for mass production with 3D printing. So Something Added is actually taking over that space now, and they are all about 3D printed footwear. They are working in close partnership with HP and like, part of the agreement is we've got to figure out, like, what does it take to do mass customization, what does it take to do serial production of footwear. What are the software needs, the hardware needs, the workflow needs, and like, how can we work together to develop these things and like, really make this into a major application for 3D printing?

Peter Zelinski  58:52

The company name is Something Added?

Stephanie Hendrixson  58:54

It is, yeah, it's a little on the nose.

Peter Zelinski  58:56

It's cute. It's cute.

Stephanie Hendrixson  58:58

And then here's one final example of this trend, there was a company in the startup zone called AM Craft. The person that I spoke with there is Scott Sevcik, who was with Stratasys for a long time, and like Stratasys is, I think, maybe an investor, or they're somehow involved in this company. But AM Craft is all about producing replacement parts for aircraft interiors, basically anything that you can recreate in Ultem, things like overhead panels, anything on like the seat back display, arm rests. In the Stratasys booth, there was a display that was like just an airplane lavatory, and it was all 3D printed, showing like the different finishes, all the ways that you can make altem look like these, these more legacy parts. They work with a network of different 3D printing suppliers all around the world, and their specialty is, if you need 100 arm rests in two weeks, or something like that, we can help you make that happen. It's not necessarily gonna be like the cheapest but there are plenty of cases where an airline has broken parts or they're changing their systems over. You know, swapping out the old TV screens that used to fold down from overhead, and you just need, like, a panel to close that up so you can take the weight out and remove those screens. That is what they do. This is an entire company that has been built around very responsive production of replacement parts for this very specific application.

Peter Zelinski  1:00:19

Oh, but everybody who flies sees the value of that. Like, like, how many planes have you been in where it's just, yeah, this, this plane needs refurbishment. Like, how many, like, little pieces are worn or, like, not quite right anymore?

Stephanie Hendrixson  1:00:33

Yeah. And actually, like, the overhead panels is one of their their biggest applications, because there are all kinds of ways that airlines change. Like the seating configuration seats get closer together, or something like that, and now suddenly the air vent is in the wrong place and the light isn't in the right place. And they've actually done a lot of work just making flat panels of different sizes, different lengths, to replace whatever gap there might be overhead as a result of other hardware changes.

Peter Zelinski  1:00:59

All right, I think we should end it here in our post on our website, with this episode. We will put photos, we will put links to our other coverage of Formnext 2024 our video coverage, for example, and links to lots of related material we have connecting to topics we've talked about.

Stephanie Hendrixson  1:01:19

And if you're listening to this when it comes out on December 3, we also have a video. We're gonna do eight cool parts that we saw at Formnext That's gonna be coming out on Thursday. So subscribe to our channel, Additive Manufacturing Media on YouTube to make sure that you see that when it comes out as well.

Peter Zelinski  1:01:33

If you like the show, join us. Subscribe to AM Radio on your favorite podcast platform. Give us a five-star rating. We love stuff like that. It really helps us. Tell a friend about us and thanks for listening.

Stephanie Hendrixson  1:01:49

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 Schrand. 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.