What are some of the barriers to faster adoption of additive manufacturing? Which types of companies are playing a role in this dynamic, with a specific emphasis on Michigan-based enterprises?
From Hype to Reality
Additive Manufacturing (AM), often touted as a revolutionary force in modern manufacturing, has experienced a reality check over the past 10 years. The initial hype during 2009 to 2023 was triggered by patent expirations and media attention. This led to a flood of printers onto the market with rapid growth in the number of companies offering printers, with specific impact in the FDM desktop space. This hype peaked from 2013 to 2015 driven, in part, by a comment made by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union speech, “3D printing has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.” Investor interest increased and stock prices of the major additive manufacturing players skyrocketed.
But then reality began to set in around 2015 as companies encountered challenges associated with high costs, low speeds and inconsistent quality. For example, vibrations caused when operating an FDM printer at high speeds led to the high expense of failed parts due to quality issues such as ringing, ghosting and layer shifting. A similar quality situation plagued metal laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) printers whereby heat-induced deformation and stress in metal parts led to the time-consuming process of trial-and-error selecting the least problematic scan path heuristic (e.g., island, spiral, in and out) and the need to address subquality parts with extensive post-processing such as annealing, stress relief heat treatment, laser/shot peening as well as CNC milling or grinding.
During the post-COVID industrial rebound, Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) emerged as an attractive alternative to traditional Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) to enable several key AM companies to obtain rapid capital infusion. Unfortunately, some of the residual hype for the industry led to high valuations that could not be supported by company operations. This caused investor disappointment, company closures, depressed prices in M&A, the shuttering of some companies and delisting from public stock exchanges. One can watch this business drama play out on the tradeshow floor where key additive players are channeling their limited marketing investments away from generalized additive manufacturing events to those more narrowly focused on end user industries and specific applications. Additionally, some additive manufacturing OEMs and resellers have turned to contract manufacturing to provide a new revenue stream and assist their end customers in addressing peaks in demand without adding additional printers.
Although there has been movement toward building solutions around specific industrial applications to achieve higher quality and efficiency, manufacturers still remain cautious about capital expenditures in this area due to continued poor part economics, scalability challenges, limited materials, lack of materials standards and stringent qualification/certification requirements. We have recently entered a period of market shakeup and consolidation that, in this author’s opinion, will continue for the majority of this decade.
Contract Additive Manufacturers and Resellers Blazing a Trail
However, there are positive developments that are inching us closer to realizing the expectations of decentralized supply chains, plummeting inventory costs and parts being produced locally on demand. One such development is the growth of contract additive manufacturers such as Azoth3D in Michigan. The AM services offered by companies like Azoth3D, provides small to medium-sized manufacturers (SMBs) the ability to integrate parts made with 3D printers into their process without the upfront investment. In fact, some of these SMBs utilize the services of contract additive manufacturers to explore the applicability and suitability of additive, thereby derisking and building an internal case for investing in the technology at a later time. Whereas a specific small manufacture might eventually utilize only four to five printers in their facility, a contract additive manufacturer can leverage economies of scale by using hundreds or even thousands of printers in “farms” to provide additively manufactured parts for many different companies. The economies of scale affect not only the investment in printers, but also the expertise and skills necessary to reliably produce high quality additively manufactured parts. These contract additive manufacturers can also temporarily offload the lengthy and complex certification and qualification process. For an SMB that requires multiple 3D printer types/technologies, a contract additive manufacturer can more cost effectively operate a much larger variety of printers. Similarly, a contract additive manufacturer can provide a full suite of post-processing services, the cost of which can be spread over multiple clients.
The experience of producing high quantities of parts begets increased knowledge about the effective way to deploy and use additive manufacturing machines; e.g., specialized and scarce knowledge required for design-for-AM (DfAM) principles, material science and process optimization can be then transferred to SMBs when they are ready to embark on their own additive journey. Contract additive manufacturers are on the “front lines” solving some of the difficult technical challenges and developing best practices that raise the “additive manufacturing IQ” of others.
In addition to 3D printer OEMs, 3D printer resellers are also providing contract manufacturing services to their clients. Similar to the OEMs, these resellers are helping their clients manage through periods when demand outstrips their capacity. Instead of purchasing new machines (which may be out of the question from a cost perspective) or just turning away business they cannot handle in a timely manner, they call on their reseller partner to provide capacity. Additionally, for some of the more complex printers like laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), knowledgeable team members at some resellers are providing the purchasers of LPBF printers with build files to more quickly get them started on extracting value out of their LPBF investment. Resellers are also providing software upgrades to significantly expand the capacity of machines they have already sold to clients. One Michigan-based example is Rev1 Technologies, the exclusive after-sales support provider for CreatBot across the U.S., is offering a software upgrade that can QUINTUPLE the speed of the F430 model without sacrificing quality.
Technology Innovations Addressing the Barriers
And then there are companies that are focusing on solving specific issues standing in the way of increased adoption of additive manufacturing. Let’s take the problem of vibration in FDM printers, both desktop and industrial models. In the case of desktop printers being used for non-industrial purposes, a vibration compensation method called “input shaping” is increasingly being used to reduce the effects of vibration so that a printer can be operated at high speeds without sacrificing quality. However, the method used in “input shaping” to compensate for vibration brings with it quality issues such as corner rounding. For industrial application, this suboptimal print quality would not be sufficient. That is where early stage and nimble companies like Ulendo Technologies, Inc. provide software 34 solutions to address vibration problems at the level required for industrial applications. The company’s Ulendo VC (vibration compensation) product predicts when the printer is going to vibrate and makes adjustments to the movement of the print head to avoid the quality problems that would be introduced into the part by that vibration.
Once an FDM printer can start to print at lightning speed, extrusion issues start to pop up. This is where companies such as Slice Engineering in Florida come in. Slice specializes in parts and accessories that can be added to an existing printer to enhance its speed and quality; e.g., their patented high performance hot ends that adapt the extrusion process to handle the increased speed of the printer. In addition to hardware that can be added to an FDM printer as an “aftermarket” product, software upgrades can be applied to the printer’s controller firmware to improve the quality and speed of its operation. For example, Ulendo’s Calibration-as-a-Service® is a hosted software solution that replaces the traditional by time-consuming, manual and error-prone recalibration process of printing and measuring parts and then manually entering numbers into equations.
In metal 3D printing, Ulendo provides a software solution for the heat-induced deformation and stress that plagues laser powder bed fusion printers. Their patent-pending Ulendo HC (heat compensation) innovation optimizes the path of the laser to cut mean deformation by 50% and stress by 88%. Moreover, with the integration of intelligent software and high-performance accessories, new life can be breathed into 3D printers that are already in the field, thereby providing increased quality and throughput for SMBs at low cost.
On the materials side, companies like 3DXTech in Michigan continue to offer an increasingly diverse and innovative range of options. One of their latest materials, Obsidian™ PA6+CF serves as a cost-effective alternative to a more expensive filament, Obsidian™ combines PA6 copolymer with high-modulus carbon fiber. This blend ensures excellent performance and appearance, offering users a significant cost saving without compromising quality.
Initial Access
It is understandable that an SMB manufacturer might hesitate to introduce additive manufacturing into their operations given the learning curve and expense. Fortunately, there are several avenues to ease these concerns. Automation Alley’s own Project Diamond program provides entry-level FDM 3D printers and relevant training to qualified manufacturers. Complementary to Project Diamond is The Digital Transformation Center in Auburn Hills, MI, a facility that provides companies access to industrial 3D printing equipment and training with the support of experienced additive manufacturing professionals at Geofabrica, a Michigan-based business that specializes in the development of custom 3D printing systems and processes for industrial applications. Another example is Detroit-based LIFT (Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow), a nonprofit, public-private partnership between industry, academia and government. LIFT’s in-house experts and partners across industries, serves as a trusted advisor for SMB manufacturers to help them transition to advanced technologies like advanced manufacturing machines.
And Of Course There is AI
Thoughtfully and surgically inserted AI techniques are also another way to bridge the gap between hype and reality. For example, New York-based Senvol leverages its proprietary machine learning software, Senvol ML, to analyze the intricate relationships between AM process parameters and resulting material properties. This data-driven approach enables rapid optimization of AM processes, reducing reliance on costly and time-consuming trial-and-error methods. Predictive maintenance is another obvious example. Imagine the cost and time savings for the end user if they can detect in advance that a printer will fail or fall out of calibration before an issue affects the quality of a part or, worse yet, results in a failed part. Ulendo is building such an infrastructure as part of its Calibration-as-a-Service® (CaaS) platform described above. By performing AI-driven analytics on the vibration behavior of printers connected to CaaS, Ulendo can predict printers that are out of spec and need maintenance. Also leveraging its CaaS platform, the company is developing an AI-driven recommender system that can supply an end user with the best speed and acceleration to print a part to achieve optimal print quality. This removes the time-consuming trial and error process often involved in selecting optimal process parameters for AM.
Conclusion
Acknowledging the challenges of the adoption of any new technology is the first step in being able to address those challenges and develop hardware and software to overcome them. Organizations like Automation Alley have charted a mission to bring together members of an ecosystem to tackle these problems as a team.
Read this article and more in our Integr8 Playbook, "Additive Manufacturing at The Tipping Point," here.
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