Divergent is to complete several ongoing production programs on its fleet of Nikon SLM Solutions NXG XII 600 metal additive manufacturing (AM) systems before a complete transition to its proprietary Monolith One systems.
The contract manufacturing firm announced the development of its 12-laser metal 3D printing system earlier this summer. Monolith One is a powder-bed metal AM platform that boasts 24kW of laser power, a build volume of 700 x 700 x 835 mm, and a gas flow capability of 1700m3 per hour.
It is with this system that Divergent intends to scale up. Six units have been installed at its Torrance, CA headquarters, with an additional 64 machines to come online at a new Long Beach, CA facility in the next two years.
When it first emerged that Divergent had developed a proprietary metal AM capability, CEO Lukas Czinger noted on LinkedIn that the company is still operating its NXG XII 600 machines, but did not elaborate on how.
TCT can now report that Divergent will continue to manufacture missile airframes and automotive parts on the Nikon SLM systems, before then dedicating the machines to new materials development.
“We’re not in a rush to take down the NXG 600s,” Czinger told TCT. “There’s work that they’re continuing to do; current production work, for example. We’re printing production missile airframes on them, and we’re printing production auto parts on them. We don’t want to change machines right now, mid-programme, so we’ll certainly finish the production runs on a number of those programmes.”
Sam Davies
Once those production programmes have come to an end, Divergent will then utilise the machines to support ongoing new alloy development programs. Divergent has established partnerships with several powder vendors for the supply of metal feedstock, and is also supporting their efforts across cost reduction, yield-enhancement, and particle size distribution (PDS) optimisation.
While most of the company's powder feedstock is sourced from partners in the US and internationally, the company has taken to designing its 'bespoke mainline aluminium' material internally with a patent said to have been granted. The supply of aluminium alloys in the US is an element of the domestic supply chain that could be greatly improved, per Czinger, and so Divergent will continue to allocate some of its R&D resource to new aluminium powders, as well as other alloys.
Divergent’s NXG XII 600 capacity will be deployed to support much of that work in the near-term, but in the medium-term, the company expects to take them offline.
“Over a medium horizon, as we have an opportunity to revector new customer programmes onto Monolith One, and then finish the existing runs on the NXGs, you will likely see us replace those NXGs with Monolith One,” Czinger said. “In the future, we will sell those in the right way. We still see SLM as a close ally to the business, so we’ll do that in a controlled way with them. But for us, we’ll be fully committed to Monolith One, and it’s just a timing factor of not rushing that when there are programmes to complete on NXG.”
In conversation with... Lukas Czinger, Divergent Technologies
TCT Magazine's Autumn edition will feature an in-depth Q&A with Divergent Technologies CEO Lukas Czinger.
Czinger discusses the motivation for the development of the Monolith One, the technical capabilities of the machine, and the big learnings the company has obtained through scaling with metal AM.
