EAB Rountable Discussion: What has been the biggest gain, improvement or advancement over the past year for RP/RM?

Q: What has been the biggest gain, improvement or advancement over the past year for RP/RM?

Two things have caught my attention. One is the ability to get FDM parts a little faster and cheaper. Several of my customers now have their own ability to create models even though they only build a couple of parts a week. Because of their low usage, I can buy parts from them (and they can now supply their own patterns) a little cheaper than I can from a service provider. They typically only bill me for actual material usage.

The other is direct metal laser sintering (DMLS). The quality of parts that can now be built in some exotic metals have made custom manifolds (most relatively small) built quite quickly and accurately. Typically, we had to make them in multiple pieces because of their complexity. Having these built in one piece makes the rest of the project go faster and smoother. Often, these manifolds are placed into molds and over-molded. While the manifold is being built in DMLS, we can focus on mold making. The metal parts always arrive well before we are done with the mold. This allows us to fit check the metal while the mold is in the CNC, and if it needs to be tweaked, it can easily be done with another set-up.
Gary Allen, Omni Technologies Inc. (Greendale, IN)

In the past year, I’ve seen a large gain in momentum for direct production of surgical implants using additive technologies. This trend continues to be pushed by manufacturers selling machines capable of producing solid materials that meet industry specifications for materials such as titanium and cobaltchromium alloy. A “pulling” is also coming from implant manufacturers eager to prove out the benefits of techniques such as electron beam melting and direct metal laser sintering for complex or short-run parts. In Europe things have progressed a bit further and just this week a full product launch is taking place for series production of orthopedic implants using the Arcam EBM system in titanium alloy. This is big news and will propel the medical device industry to take a further look at designs or products that could benefit from additive fabrication in metal.
Andy Christensen, Medical Modeling Inc. (Golden, CO)

Not counting concept modelers, which has helped expose the technology and could be considered very influential, I believe that applications development and exposure in conjunction with defined material properties has been the biggest improvement over the past year for RP/RM. Knowing what the materials can be used for and the applications is opening many eyes to how to apply DDM/RM. It has also helped processors of other materials (metals/ceramics/composites/living tissue) understand that a whole new market opportunity exists. These new markets however, may take five to 10 years to really get moving.
Carl Dekker, Met-L-Flo, Inc., (Sugar Grove, IL)

In the last year, I have noticed two separate advancements that warrant discussion. First, is the continued growth and market penetration of direct metal technologies that melt metals directly via laser or electron beam in a powder bed to create metal parts without the need for a secondary furnace cycle required for sintering or infiltration. The material selection has increased as well with the processes to include cobalt chromium and titanium alloys, which excites both the biomedical and aerospace industries. As more work is being done to characterize the mechanical properties, the end use applications will increase.

The second advancement has been the proliferation of direct digital manufacturing applications that are being announced from multiple technologies. These should continue to grow as it becomes more acceptable. However, work remains to be done on developing new design rules (or lack of constraint rules) for both the metals and plastics applications.
Tim Gornet, University of Louisville (Louisville, KY)

Looking back on the past year, I think that it will be remembered as another period of steady progress and incremental gains. There were quite a number of improvements in machines, materials, applications and processes, but none that stand out as having a huge impact across the RP/RM industry. Maybe this is a sign that the industry has reached a level of maturity where breakthroughs and disruptive technologies aren’t likely. Or, maybe it is a lull in activity that will be followed by big news coming out of R&D efforts that aren’t in the public eye. I happen to believe that the later is true. But if I am wrong, I would still be pleased because the industry is moving forward, and it is growing.
Todd Grimm, T.A. Grimm & Associates (Edgewood, KY)

A general ‘awareness’ is developing regarding how these technologies can be used. Over the past year I have seen a dramatic shift from people talking about applications of RP/RM technologies to be used in production parts, to actually hearing and seeing applications developing for this. Materials have certainly played a key role for various technologies to get to this point, but the reality is that to truly move from ‘prototype’ to ‘production,’ the right set of circumstances had to come together, and this has happened over the past year. Now the ‘buzz’ is growing. We are on the verge of seeing true production using these technologies and that awareness is growing among the general population, not just a small circle of industry insiders.
Greg Morris, Morris Technologies (Cincinnati, OH)

I think the most significant gain this last year has been the introduction of low-cost 3D printers, such as the systems introduced by Desktop Factory and 3D Systems. While neither system is yet widely available, both systems are priced less than $10,000. The introduction of low cost systems make additive fabrication technology available to small companies, schools and even individuals and will help to make the use of AF technology much more widely used than it is today. At this price, an AF system is roughly the same cost as a seat of CAD and it would be feasible for a company to provide a system to each designer on their staff. With the introduction of such machines, the time and cost required for a designer to get physical verification of his design for a component has dropped from weeks and thousands of dollars in the days before AF systems were available, to days and hundreds of dollars with early RP systems, and now to hours and tens of dollars for this new series of low cost 3D printers. The physical verification process is a key step in the development of any product and reducing the time and cost will allow designers to do many more design iterations in much less time, resulting in better designs faster and at lower costs than ever before. An analogy might be the tremendous increase in communication as phone systems advanced from the days when all calls required the intervention of an operator, to party lines, to everyone having a private line while at the same time, the cost per call went from dollars to pennies. It will be interesting to watch as 3D printing systems become widely available.
Tom Mueller, Express Pattern (Vernon Hills, IL)

One of the most significant announcements this past year is the V-flash from 3D Systems. The Vflash is a portable 3D printer under $10,000 dollars, and although not yet available, its cost and portability will provide new opportunity in a large untapped market segment.

Another significant important trend is the expanded use of additive technologies for traditional manufacturing. While rapid manufacturing or direct digital manufacturing will benefit from next generation RP or additive manufacturing technologies specifically designed for manufacturing, the fact that there is an increased awareness and use of current RP technologies for direct manufacturing is encouraging. Manufacturers are beginning to understand that they can design new products or redesign existing products if required to take advantage of additive technologies.

New materials recently introduced will also play a significant role not only in traditional prototyping, but also in direct manufacturing. While the materials themselves are of interest, the trend is really what is most exciting. The current trend in materials is in increased temperature rating and/or in increased strength and toughness with increased awareness of long-term property retention. All of the above attributes will have long-term implications in expanding additive technologies for direct manufacturing.
Scott Schermer, SC Johnson (Racine, WI)

The RP industry tends to have many small steps forward versus single leaps of significant progress, however one interesting movement is that of the Fab@Home project (www. popularmechanics. com/ technology/industry/4224759.html) to develop an additive fabrication machine that is open source. This trend, which many software companies have employed to quickly spread usage, is now being used for physical systems with Fab@Home. The designs are freely shared online and if someone or any company so chooses, they can download the specifications and build it themselves. This does, however, raise the very interesting issue of IP (intellectual property) protection. This particular system appears to be very similar to FDM (fused deposition modeling) technology from Stratasys, so what patent infringement issues arise when something like this happens? At some point when the dollars are large enough, a Napster-like case may come around. More likely it will be when copyrighted data is physically produced for sale (i.e. building a hybrid Mickey Mouse with your 3D printer at home and then selling it on eBay).
Mike Siemer, Mydea Technologies (Orlando, FL)

The biggest gain for 2007 in regards to stereolithography and RP/RM, is the release of a new resin from DSM Somos. This new resin is not only lightyears ahead of the original SLA resin circa 1987, but also leaps and bounds above most of today’s current resins. During the 3DSUG’s annual conference, DSM announced the release of the DMX-SL 100 resin. This material has the stiffness similar to the various ABS like resins currently available; however, the impact resistance has increased almost four fold. This is a very important achievement because now you can use the SLA part directly instead of having to create secondary tooling and vacuum cast parts that will require higher impact strength. With the continued development of new resins, which are getting very close to the material properties of the various engineered plastics, this technology will add a new dimension in the direct digital manufacturing arena.
Thomas A. Sorovetz, Chrysler, LLC. (Detroit, MI)

Many interesting advances have occurred over the past year. The one that stands out the most for me is the increased popularity of additive fabrication (AF) technology at schools. Almost weekly, I come across an article, news piece or blog on how a school is putting the technology to work. And, it’s not only colleges and universities. High schools are finding ways to purchase systems and this is exciting to see. Just recently, I visited a high school here in Fort Collins, CO and the CAD instructor is considering the purchase of an AF system.