Artificial intelligence. What was the subject of science fiction novels and films not too long ago is now seemingly everywhere in the real world. Everybody is talking about it, many are excited about what it can do, and some are scared that it may replace them in the future. Nexa3D is integrating AI into the additive manufacturing industry in a big way with its new software.
In late 2023, Nexa3D launched a new AI platform, developed to automate the endto-end workflow for its XiP Pro 3D printer. Nexa AI is said to simplify the entire workflow, from file preparation through to post processing. Exhibiting the software for the first time at Formnext, Nexa3D said the platform aims to provide users with the print intelligence needed to ensure repeatability and reliability.
The aim of the software is to help streamline and automate print workflows, remote monitoring, and print management, while also enabling realtime error detection, intervention, and remediation.
Izhar Medalsy, Chief Technology Officer at Nexa3D, told TCT: “We really took it upon ourselves to solve this issue of understanding part print process, part reliability, print reliability, and first time yield, and incorporate the latest and greatest AI and sensor capability to address it. When you look at file preparation softwares today, all of them are looking at geometry. When you’re trying to give your customer feedback, whether the part is printable or not, you usually look at things like thin walls and infills and overhangs and all of those things. But nobody is looking at the physics of the part, how the part is actually being printed. And if you think about it, regardless of your geometry, the reason that your part is going to fail while you are printing is mainly due to the forces that are acting on it while printing, right? And specifically for resin, we're talking about peel forces.
“When you have this interface layer, whether its a membrane or other interface layers, and you have the build plate on the other side, and you’re pulling this part out of the resin, how do you make sure that the whole physics of the print process is such that you’re not stressing the part too much and not breaking the part. That’s what causes delamination. So, when we look at, first and foremost, the physics of the print, and see that as the root cause for many failures, you ask yourself, how do you address that? So, what we’ve done is we added to our XiP Pro a host of sensors, that now we can take the information from and do two things.
“The first one is, are you confident in the fact that your printer is ready to print? Let's say the user is working remotely, or you have a technician, but actually the person who owns the printer is on another facility or in a different place. How do you know that your build plate is locked? How do you know that your build plate is clean? How do you know that you have the right build plate in place? That ties to automation and workflows. So, we have means to identify all of those things. We can tell you if you have the right build plate, if it's locked, if it's clean."
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Nexa3D XiP Pro
Medalsy added that the ”real jewel” of the software is that as the relationship between the print process, the geometry, and the physics are understood, Nexa AI can go back to the file preparation stage and tell the user how to optimise their part. He added: “We are for the first time in the industry, closing the loop between print process and file preparation from a physical point of view, meaning from the guts of what’s affecting the print.”
The program was in development for around two and a half years before the launch with the team drawing from shared backgrounds in mechanics and physics, as well as lessons learned from previous experiences with AI.
Medalsy added: “AI is something that has been close to us for quite a few years now, both myself and Itay [Barel], leader of the software team, are very passionate about it. Obviously, ChatGPT brought it to the attention of everyone, but there was AI before and all of us were aware of it. It was clear that with printing in general, it just gives you an amazing platform to play with AI.”
Through using Nexa AI, users of the XiP Pro will have access to a platform that increases its learning with each print, so the efficiency and effectiveness will be continually enhanced. Users will be able to have their Nexa AI platform learn from their own print activity, or if accessing the platform via the cloud, by the wider Nexa XiP Pro user base.
Nexa3D launched the XiP Pro at RAPID + TCT 2023 in Chicago. The system, equipped with a more powerful print engine and a 19.5 litre build volume, delivers the daily output of ‘at least four’ competitive resin printers according to the company. The machine also facilitates the stacking of smaller parts on top of one another to take advantage of its build volume, while a print speed of up to 24 vertical centimetres per hour means the machine can produce its entire build volume within two hours.
Speaking about the future of the Nexa AI platform, Medalsy told TCT: “The biggest goal for Nexa AI is to make sure that we are getting smarter, week to week, month to month, year to year, which means that the data you are getting today, will be better a month from now and a year from now and so on. It will keep addressing all those pain points that we are seeing, we spoke about the print process, but there are many things that are part of an ecosystem of a print. Nexa AI will take part in all of those steps and definitely move on to other platforms. We have both powder and extrusion systems as well as the resin, and there I’m very excited because we can use Vision [AI], which is extremely advanced, and AI will definitely be deployed there as well.”
Medalsy also spoke to TCT about the future use of AI in the additive manufacturing industry as a whole: “If you’re not adopting AI, you’re probably going to be left behind. The reality of the industry and the reality of humanity now is that AI is going to be our counterpart. I don’t think it will take jobs as quickly as people are concerned about, but it will definitely increase productivity and will give us new tools to see things in ways that we haven’t seen them before. When you upload hundreds of millions of data points, whether its your manufacturing process of building the machines, to how users are using your machines, to formulating new materials, AI can do it much better than us. You can see trends, you can see outliers, you can do optimisation processes that humans are just not capable of because of the vast amount of data.”
