I don’t know about you, but I’ve had my fair share of experiences proudly setting up a 3D printer on my desk, staring at it for a few minutes, only to realise: “What on earth should I print?”
As we’ve come to learn over the last three decades, additive manufacturing is not a replacement for every traditional manufacturing tool in your workshop. Its real value is in those killer applications where reductions in lead time, manufacturing costs, weight, tooling, and so on can lead to huge benefits across a part’s lifecycle.
Setup to help manufacturers find such key apps is Israeli start-up CASTOR, which today, during Formnext Connect, is launching a new advanced version of its industrial 3D printing decision support software tool.
Speaking to TCT last month, CASTOR CEO Omer Blaier described how the Tel Aviv-based company’s recommendation algorithm inside its debut CASTOR Light solution, provides automated technical and economic analysis of CAD files, “allowing manufacturers to make an informed decision whether to use 3D printing or not.” In a more recent conversation with TCT about its next-generation offering, Blaier commented on the driving force behind CASTOR’s founding:
“From the experience we have of being in a position to actually see the market needs and really get to know the hardware capabilities of 3D printing, we've understood that it's really the lack of information and in-house expertise that prevents enterprises from utilising 3D printing to generate profits.”
Elaborating further on the attitudes CASTOR had witnessed in the manufacturing market, Blair continued: “To be more specific, when a company designs a machine or car or something, and sends its blueprints to a third party to manufacture it, none of the sides consider 3D printing as an option to reduce costs. And that's exactly the point where we are coming in.
“The hardware is already there, 3D printing can do amazing stuff; we need to bring the files into the printer, we need to bring the applications to the printer and that is being done only with software, only with automatic tools. We've generated an automatic tool to identify such opportunities.
During an 18-month beta of its first cloud-based solution, CASTOR received around 30,000 parts uploads to the software and generated a number of white label solutions for some large-scale customers along the way. It was here where CASTOR saw the need for a more sophisticated solution that would not only help AM novices to identify parts but help those with AM knowledge to understand how to optimise them.
“Until today, CASTOR was mainly focusing on finding the low hanging fruits out of an existing design,” Blaier explained. “CASTOR Enterprise is mainly focusing on identifying design for additive manufacturing […] as a tool in the hands of those additive manufacturing experts in large organisations who already decided to go to additive manufacturing.”
Put simply: “Light is more for non-experts to understand where to start from and Enterprise is for experts to do their job better.”
New CASTOR Enterprise control panel.
While CASTOR Light was initially launched as a screening tool to help non-AM experts find potential cost reductions in their parts, CASTOR Enterprise takes that a step further by identifying not only cost reduction opportunities in the part’s current form, but also small changes that could give “huge impact on the bottom line.”
To achieve this, CASTOR has deployed several new features on-board its Enterprise solution including the option for customers to have an on-premise version of the software installed onto their internal systems to provide “single click button analysis.” CASTOR has also been mindful about how these tools integrate with large organisations’ current infrastructures and has therefore included the ability to amalgamate with current PLM and ERP software in a bid help the software to “live in the environments that engineers are already used to living in.”
Read more: Nexa3D and CASTOR launch automated 3D printing decision support platform
Finite Element Analysis capabilities have also been introduced to provide further data on part printability. It’s both “very quick and very unique to additive manufacturing,” according to Blaier and takes into account the un-isotropic properties and material characteristics across an entire part.
Blaier adds: “We call it "likelihood to failure" of a part, meaning that you can, very quickly, first identify business opportunities and if it can save you money.”
Perhaps most significant are the product’s part consolidation tools which provide visibility on where adjacent parts can be combined into a single piece to reduce further weight and manufacturing costs.
“We’re identifying bulky parts – as in they have a lot of material within the part that can be removed – and we are actually providing a redesigned part so that you can reduce the weight, and we’re doing that automatically for thousands of parts at once,” Blaier said.
There are said to be “tonnes of customisations” allowing engineers control the parameters for their estimations to determine the breakeven point with traditional manufacturing methods. Furthermore, while customers can start out by inputting their in-house machines to generate results from those on-site capabilities, the software can also reach out to its network of 3D printing service bureaus to weigh up the benefits of outsourcing.
“Because we're now approaching large enterprises, it's not only the bottom line savings that we're looking at, which is really important for SMBs for example, it's also the top line that we generate for the enterprise in the inventory costs and the shipping costs and the labour costs involved in assembling two parts together, and the strategic decision level of whether it makes sense for me to buy a printer or to outsource it always to a service bureau,” Blaier explains. “All those top line savings considerations are in a new panel that we've generated for experts to see how 3D printing fits into all the elements of the cost savings of an enterprise.”
Finite Element Analysis inside CASTOR Enterprise.
The belief is that this Enterprise level tool, which takes into account real-world manufacturing scenarios and considerations, could help to accelerate more end-use part production by giving manufacturers a clear understanding of where additive makes the most sense.
“We're focusing on end-use parts manufacturer,” Blaier confirms. “Some use the tool as a prototyping tool, but it's not the purpose, the purpose is to help manufacturers use it for end-use parts considerations. That's why we start with materials properties. First, identify the best match material in 3D printing that matches the traditional manufacturing materials properties, according to the preference of the user.”
That grounding in materials was demonstrated in CASTOR’s first major project with materials giant Evonik, which invested in the start-up through its venture capital arm last year. Through this partnership, CASTOR created a tool to help Evonik customers select the most appropriate 3D printing process for their design geometry and see if their application is the right fit for Evonik’s materials. Other customers include power tool manufacturer Stanley Black and Decker which is using CASTOR’s tool for cost reduction analysis across their thousands of consumer-facing products. There’s also beer company ABInBev, which is using the software to tackle challenges in maintenance and spare part sourcing across its numerous sites to determine whether additive can be used in place of traditional manufacture.
“Evonik is using us because they've understood that in this digital world today, digital transparency with end users is a must to understand whether 3D printing can help or not,” Blaier said. “So potential customers can now upload parts and see if it makes sense to use advanced materials as a way for communication in these crazy times and in general to make better decisions before going into additive.”
Putting materials at the core of the decision and analysis process correlates with a wider shift in the AM industry which has seen a surge in materials vendors pairing up with service providers to reach out to end-users. It echoes the sentiment from Thomas Große-Puppendahl, Head of Innovation Growth Field Additive Manufacturing at Evonik, which at the time of the CASTOR partnership announcement, said: “With the software, broader adoption of 3D printing at a commercial scale is now possible.”
Reflecting on CASTOR’s ambitions to make that broader adoption possible with the launch of CASTOR Enterprise, Blaier concludes: "CASTOR was founded with the goal of helping manufacturers drive profitability by using industrial 3D printing, creating tools which solve the challenge of identifying where, when, and how to use 3D printing to reduce costs.
“With our product, we now bring manufacturers a sophisticated tool that provides deep insights which can be translated into actionable decisions, and help manufacturers maximise their potential profit from 3D printing."
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