Breaking the 45 degree rule: VELO3D's Sapphire system demonstrates the ability to print low angles down to 10 degrees without support structures.
Just for a moment, forget everything you think you know about metal additive manufacturing (AM). Leave your preconceptions around additive-only geometries, post-processing afflictions and machines on every factory floor, and enter VELO3D.
The California-based company, which officially launched its debut AM system onto the market last year, is on a mission, supported by more than 90 million USD in funding, to make additive viable for high volume manufacturing and is doing so with a fresh outlook on the industry.
‘Manufacturing’ over ‘printing’ is the crucial distinction here as the company’s Co-Founder and CEO, Benny Buller told TCT:
“VELO3D is really about being able to make any geometry. The difference between [manufacture and print] is that when you're in manufacturing, you have to do it in a reproducible way. And you have to do it with quality.”
Manufacturing impossible parts is a familiar claim of the additive industry but as those close to the technology know all too well, is not so straightforward, as Buller discovered when first investigating the technology as an investor back in 2014.
“You think about the idea of ‘complexity is free’ and you can do anything. When I saw the actual status of the technology, I was shocked at how limited it is. I found that the reason is the limitations that supports impose on the geometry," Buller explained. "I started to talk with a few people that I knew were engaging with the technology and trying to use it for making products. I asked them, 'what's the issue? How big is this limitation? How valuable would it be to remove that?' And the answer was, ‘Oh, that would be super valuable but don't worry about that because there's nothing you can do about this,’ this was how it was.”
Heat exchangers frequently have large surfaces that are very thing to allow for effective heat transfer across the interface. VELO3D's Sapphire can build as high as a 500:1 ratio in any given direction on the build plate.
That frustration lit the spark for the development of VELO3D's Intelligent Fusion, a laser powder-bed fusion metal AM technology capable of building complex parts with overhangs and angles of less than 10 degrees, as well as large diameters and inner tubes up to 40 mm, with less dependence on supports. Some applications can even be printed free-floating in the powder bed, built layer by layer in IN718 or Ti6Al4V using two powerful 1KW lasers and a patented non-contact recoater. The technology has been packaged inside the VELO3D Sapphire System, an industrial scale machine featuring a 315 mm diameter by 400 mm height build envelope and integrated in-situ process metrology for closed loop melt pool control. Backing up the hardware is VELO3D’s Flow print preparation software, which enables support generation, process selection, slicing and simulation.
The industry has long preached that additive advantage can be found in redesign – make parts more lightweight, consolidate and increase complexity. Without the need for supports, which often carry additional design considerations and arduous post-processing, VELO3D aims to make that claim a certainty. But Buller takes a somewhat unconventional view:
“Our belief is that the number one priority for additive manufacturing is to have wins where you can take existing products that have been built in a non-additive manufacturing way and build them using additive, without redesigning.”
In theory, to get to production, manufacturers need to be able to make real like-for-like comparisons between conventionally and additively manufactured parts. Once proven, engineers can then start looking at new designs and capitalising on those benefits. It’s a more “go slow to go fast” approach to adoption, which the company believes alleviates the risk of designing solely for AM by focusing on “additive manufacturing enabled design”.
“It is really hard to develop a new product that is based on a new manufacturing technology that is not yet dependable, and to make the technology dependable at the same time,” Buller commented. “Once you prove the technology, you can then introduce new products that are taking advantage of additive manufacturing. When you do that, you can do things that are bolder.”
Velo3D
VELO3D's Sapphire System
Buller, who has spent over 25 years in the product development world, knows a thing or two about getting a product to market and that includes having a reliable supply chain. He compares the structure of the machining industry where much of the work is outsourced, unlike additive where it’s not uncommon to find a 3D printer, dormant or otherwise, inside an OEM facility. While machine installations at Fortune 500 companies are a sure- re way to colour a company’s CV, VELO3D is going after a fundamentally different sales model, targeting primarily service providers and building out a network of manufacturing partners, with the belief that specialisation from a smaller pool of reliable providers will be critical to the maturation of AM for production. Through its Manufacturing Alliance, the company will work with OEMs to identify business opportunities and high impact parts for customers in the aerospace, medical, power generation, oil & gas, chemical & material processing, and motorsports, and match them up with a partner in the supply chain.
“We're talking about real high impact parts where people save money immediately and reduce lead times or resolve supply chain constraints,” Buller explained. “You will not see us selling machines to universities, to research institutes even to OEM’s research centres. We are focusing on manufacturing and on driving these machines and the ecosystem to the manufacturing supply chain.”
One of VELO3D’s first manufacturing partners is Stratasys Direct Manufacturing, one of the biggest AM service providers in North America, and there are already several others, not yet disclosed, signed up. Some already have multiple VELO3D systems in-house and one particular company is expected to have a total of five machines installed by the end of this summer. VELO3D also recently partnered with Boom Supersonic to manufacture metal parts for its XB-1 supersonic demonstrator aircraft.
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In addition to expanding its manufacturing network of supply chain partners, VELO3D has built its systems with a semiconductor focus on quality assurance and process control. Multiple sensors monitor the build quality and system status in every layer, providing in-depth visibility to the quality of parts being built – in real-time. Every system is equipped with pre-build machine calibration to ensure that the system is in optimal health and capable of building good quality parts.
A major pain point for the industry, Buller elaborated that if users are expected to “pray before, during and after every production run” without any real control over the print outcome, put simply, this is not production. That’s exactly what VELO3D intends to challenge as it continues to build out its portfolio of solutions and manufacturing partners.
“We strive to get to a case where we will be able to print any geometry, we made it our mission,” Buller added. “This is the business objective of VELO3D to guarantee a successful build. If you think about this concept of providing a guarantee that the build is successful - these are unheard of words in this industry.”
