It was a bolt from the blue. Nothing had been heard of Elem Additive since Xerox decided to cease sales of the brand’s ElemX metal additive manufacturing systems in October last year.
Save for a small base of users operating ElemX systems, Liquid Metal 3D printing technology – which was developed by the founders of Vader Systems before its acquisition by Xerox – was to go no further.
This week, ADDiTEC, a provider of Directed Energy Deposition technology, announced it had completed the acquisition of the company, with its team and technology to be transferred from Xerox. Behind the scenes, there has been more activity ongoing at Elem Additive than was suggested by initial reports, and for up to five months, Xerox has been in due diligence with ADDiTEC as the Liquid Metal 3D printing brand was carved out.
Per the company’s announcement, ADDiTEC is very excited to integrate the Elem Additive team. Here’s why ADDiTEC has made the move, what has been happening since Xerox scaled back operations, and what to expect moving forward.
What happened to Elem Additive at Xerox exactly?
As TCT explained in October 2022, Xerox decided to scale back its Liquid Metal 3D printing activities as a result of its change in strategy. Months prior, at the company’s 2022 Investor Day, Xerox had described Elem Additive as an ‘exciting business’ and had hinted at several product developments, which included the introduction of an aluminium 6061 capability. But it had also suggested the potential that some business units, including Elem Additive, could be either ‘moved along the pipeline’ or ‘rapidly shut down.’
For Elem Additive, it proved to be the latter. Many employees, including Elem Additive’s senior leadership and those in product management roles, were laid off. The company insisted it would still support existing users of the ElemX additive machinery and assist former employees with their next career steps when possible, but there was little other information given. The idea that Xerox might spin the company out, strike a joint venture or license out its technology was floated, but it seemed just to be an idea. Until now.
Why does ADDiTEC's acquisition of Elem Additive make sense?
It makes perfect sense once you understand that it has been ADDiTEC’s intention for a while to expand beyond solely being a provider of DED technologies, and instead offer 'two to three technology pillars.'
So far, the company has seen around 50 installations of its Additive Manufacturing Robot Cell (AMRC) DED 3D printing systems, with the AMRC-P portable robot cell being launched at RAPID + TCT earlier this year. But, as CEO Brian Matthews told TCT this week, “You can never rest on your laurels.”
The company “wants to flourish” and “not be hunkered down in one particular area of the market”, and so attempts to change that were always going to come. In DED technology, it is satisfied that it can tackle the additive manufacture of large components in such markets as nuclear, aerospace, automotive, mining and energy. But, in Liquid Metal, it saw an opportunity to also cater for customer requests that require higher resolution.
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“[We want to] create two or three technology pillars where we’re, say, 95% confident that whoever the customer is, whatever the industry is, whatever the material is, we’ve got the product for you,” Matthews said. “Liquid Metal printing is very high resolution, and those are things that the DED can’t do, but the DED technology can make very large components very efficiently, at the sacrifice of a little resolution, and it has, as of today, a broader material range. They work together.”
The motivation behind this decision, as with any decision ADDiTEC makes according to Matthews, is to become the ‘most admired’ company in the industry. That is to say it wants the most revenue, the best customer experience, and the most 'interesting and sophisticated technology.' What he knows about Elem Additive has him confident.
So, what has been going on at Elem Additive in the last 12 months?
Per Matthews, more than we thought. Sales of the ElemX machine might have ceased, but there has been more than enough work in the servicing of existing customers to benefit new ones now the business has been revived.
In Elem Additive, ADDiTEC has acquired a 25-strong team, despite last year’s layoffs, and a full R&D lab in North Carolina. This facility is equipped with around ten ElemX machines that have been and will be used for application development. The facility also boasts a ‘very sophisticated’ material science lab, where all of its material testing research is done.
“It was almost like a Skunkworks-type operation,” Matthews said of Elem Additive over the past year. “I’d like to think I’m well connected with the developments in this industry because it’s been my thing for the last seven years. When I visited earlier this year, I was just stunned by the state of the technology. It was far beyond what I imagined based on publicly available material. I looked at it and thought, ‘If I have that reaction, then almost everyone else is going to have that reaction,’ because I’ve been to practically every single trade show, I’ve been constantly travelling, visiting research institutions, I’ve seen most of what’s considered to be the state of the art. So, I was blown away by what the technology could do.”
The capacity that ADDiTEC has acquired is not only set to be retained but also set to be built upon in the coming months and years.
What’s the vision for Elem Additive now it’s an ADDiTEC company?
ADDiTEC has plenty of ideas. In Liquid Metal 3D printing technology, it has a process that uses molten solid metal fed by wire into the machine to build up parts. The method is said to have inherent speed and cost benefits, which ADDiTEC now wants to accentuate through enhancements to material input, material availability and the formatting of the technology.
Liquid Metal has been on Matthews' radar since 2015 when the process was still in its beta phase. He met the Vader Systems team a year later and has tracked its progress ever since. Or at least he’s tried to. For much of that time, the proprietors of the technology have been fairly ‘stealthy’ with the technology, but now Matthews and his team have unlimited access, they can get to fulfilling its potential.
During the due diligence over the last few months, ADDiTEC has outlined several areas of improvement it wants to target. One key aspect is material input. Though a wire feedstock has its cost benefits over powder, ADDiTEC recognises that using ingots or billets of metal could be even more fruitful. It is thus aiming to make the material inputs to the machine more flexible, suggesting this could have a ‘gigantic cost implication for the customer.’
Efforts will also be made to open up the material range of the technology. Throughout its time at Xerox, Elem Additive had focused primarily on aluminium alloys. But ADDiTEC has seen the results of studies into other materials, and so will pursue those additional metals in a bid to further expand the application potential of the technology.
ADDiTEC also has the intention to adapt the technology to ‘work in other platforms.’ Matthews says the company has a lot of systems-building know-how and experience that could be leveraged to install the technology in platforms beyond compact gantry machines, such as tooling machines and robotic systems.
“The technology is very compact,” Matthews said, “and we plan to make it even more compact. Compactness is the key design philosophy we’ve had as a company from day one because when you make something very compact and you boil it down to its essence – the smallest number of parts, the smallest form possible – then you dramatically open up a lot of possibilities. Suddenly, it can fit inside existing machines, it’s easier to make, it’s easier to maintain, and the cost comes down.
“We’re looking at compactness, broad material range, and platform independence.”
What impact will this acquisition have?
Only time will tell. But there was a lot of excitement and anticipation around Liquid Metal 3D printing when Vader Systems first unveiled the process, and again when Xerox acquired the company back in 2019. Indeed, the adoption of the ElemX machine that was brought to market under Xerox looked to be going well – Vertex Manufacturing, Siemens, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the US Navy had all installed machines.
Upon announcing its acquisition of Elem Additive, ADDiTEC is doing nothing to quell those emotions. Speaking to TCT, Matthews used phrases like ‘pushing the envelope’ and ‘moving the needle’, complementing words like ‘dominant’, to describe the company’s intentions with this technology offering.
“People are surprised with the news [of the acquisition], I think they’ll be even more surprised over the coming months and years as we make this technology a dominant player in the industry,” Matthews said. “That’s my main motivation, to follow the physics and the first principles thinking because that tells me this technology, on paper, should be the most dominant metal AM technology in terms of a metric number of installed machines. On paper, it should be there.”
It is early days, but ADDiTEC has set its sights on one day being in a position where it is selling thousands of machines powered by Liquid Metal technology per year.
“Our plan is to get it there,” Matthews said. “And it’s not going to be easy, it’s going to be really hard. But I also know that we never quit, we never give up, and we’re very creative, with a lot of determination. And yeah, I believe we’ll do it.”
Amongst its longer-term aims and aspirations, ADDiTEC also told TCT it is hoping to be able to showcase the ‘first incarnation’ of the technology at Formnext later this year.
