Shutter singapore 1400 wide image

Onwards Singapore: Diving into the prosperous Southeast-Asia city-state's additive manufacturing expedition

Conference presentations, factory tours and a jumbo prawn laksa.

by

When the idea of a trip to Singapore for the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Cluster (NAMIC) Summit 2019 was floated, it seemed like a no-brainer. Singapore is a city-state that I hadn’t visited, that has pumped millions into additive manufacturing (AM) and, of equal importance, is famed for its street food.

Then I saw my schedule.

It was very much the definition of a flying visit with more time spent travelling than time on the ground. Nevertheless, what AM I did manage to cram in is enough to fill a whole magazine as well as a page worth of food-based editorial for Conde Nast Traveler.

Singapore is advancing at a rate of knots when it comes to AM; just a week before my trip, one of Germany’s largest engineering firms announced it was to open a 3D printing facility in Singapore. In the press release for the announcement, Mr Lim Kok Kiang, Assistant Managing Director, Singapore Economic Development Board, said:

“We are delighted that ThyssenKrupp has chosen to anchor the centre in Singapore. ThyssenKrupp will be well-positioned to leverage our diverse manufacturing base and strengths in Industry 4.0 to serve the needs of customers in Asia Pacific. The investment is further testament to Singapore’s growing reputation as a hub for additive manufacturing research and deployment in the region and beyond.”

That ‘growing reputation’ is thanks mainly to NAMIC. Since its launch in October 2015, NAMIC has raised more than 30 million USD to initiate 179 projects covering industry technology development, translation, commercialisation, standards development, training and certification, across various industry verticals.

NAMIC’s annual summit is one of the ways the organisation promotes AM within Singapore, and the conference at the heart of that takes a different focus each year. This year’s is the industry’s latest buzz-phrase, DfAM or Design for Additive Manufacturing.

Redefining Design

The conference kicked off 12 hours after I’d landed. I barely had time to check out my incredible view from the balcony of room 1218, Marina Bay Sands before Singapore’s Senior Minister of State Ministry of Trade and Industry, Dr Koh Poh Koon. He kicked off proceedings by telling us about the new Netflix version of Star Trek. “The people in the room,” he said, “are like the early crew trying to advance technologies.”

Dr Koon determined that news like that of ThyssenKrupp’s investment was evidence Singapore was in a position to take a significant share of the projected $5.5bn AM market in the APAC region.

As part of National Research Foundation’s Research Innovation Enterprise 2020 plan, Dr Koon’s government has identified advanced manufacturing as a significant growth area for Singapore and has committed $3.2 billion to develop technological capabilities in advanced manufacturing, and additive plays a substantial role.

Get your FREE print subscription to TCT Magazine.

Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.

After a ceremonial signing of an MOU between NAMIC and Deutsche Bahn’s Mobility Goes Additive, whose Head of AM, Stefanie Brickwede tells the delegates she sees significant opportunity for growth in the region, Dr Koon signs off with another nod to Star Trek:

“I hope like good staffing officers; you continue to push the boundaries of what is capable with additive manufacturing.”

With that, the programming began with a fascinating talk from John Barnes, Founder & Managing Director, The Barnes Group Advisors. John’s in-depth knowledge serves as a great keynote, and his research highlighted one particularly shocking statistic; that on the globe, there are only about 1,000 engineers who genuinely understand Design for Additive Manufacturing principles.

“In the scope of global engineers that is not very many,” he says.

But there’s hope; John demonstrates a project that shows how kids, ‘Get it before they get it,’ and says, “It’s very likely that somebody coming out of High School now has come into contact with 3D Printing - you can’t say that about other manufacturing technologies.”

Following John on the main stage was Lin Kayser, a German serial entrepreneur whose face I have seen plastered around the speaking circuit but whose company I wasn’t overly aware of. Hyperganic is aiming not to be just another design platform in a crowded marketplace but to fundamentally change how we think about design on a granular level.

“When we currently design, it is a linear process. What we [Hyperganic] do is encode the knowledge, and then the design becomes a process. A tree growing on top of a hill grows differently from one in the forest; the DNA is virtually the same, but the look is entirely different,” says Lin Kayser somewhat cryptically.

A host of presentations followed: the likes of Andre Wegner, CEO of Authentise, predicted that by 2026, thanks to simulation advancements, we’d no longer require wind tunnels; Brent Stucker, Director of AM at Ansys, estimated that it cost GE 30 million USD to finalise the series production design of the LEAP fuel nozzle; and Simon Ng, Head of Design & Manufacturing Industry at Autodesk showcased a number of DfAM case studies including former TCT Cover star, the Lightning Motorcycles Swing Arm.

The day continued with panel sessions and more presentations, and it was left to Dr Guglielmo Vastola, Scientist at A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing to better articulate my feelings about the proceedings:

“DfAM is not just about the shape; it is about the geometry, the machinery processes and the material. We are not finished with DfAM; we’re only just on the first rung of the ladder.”

What goes on tour...

After an evening spent trying to cram in as many sites as humanly possible, it was onto the industry visits. NAMIC had organised a tour of companies changing the face of additive in Singapore, starting with a breakfast meeting at HP’s impressive Smart Manufacturing Application and Research Center (SMARC), where a robotic arm made my first coffee of the day.

HP Singapore is a founding member of NAMIC, and its dedication to innovation in Singapore stretches back to the 1970s. In October, HP announced an 84-million-dollar lab created in collaboration with the organisation behind Namic, Nanyang Technological University.

The brainchild of Ms Jamie Neo, HP’s Director of Operations for Supplies, SMARC is a 550 sq.m facility, where HP’s technical staff are encouraged to solve Industry 4.0 problems and prototype ideas using collaborative robots, AI, big data and importantly 3D printing.

The Singaporean HP team is tasked with converting traditionally manufactured parts into 3D printable parts. On the wall of the BUILD lab are examples of the 140 parts designed and 3D printed by Multi Jet Fusion for Multi Jet Fusion.

It is not just MJF machines that benefit from this process. HP is implementing 3D printed parts across all of its machinery. One such is a drill extraction shoe used in the manufacturing of HP printhead nozzles to make the laser drilling process more efficient. The team pass both the traditional part and new part around; the former is a heavy metal component machined from aluminium and the latter a light, plastic 3D print.

The weight saving is impressive (a 90% reduction in total), but the price 4 of the two parts is where HP must see the real value; the traditional part costs $450, the 3D printed part costs $18.

“We like to eat what we kill,” says Richard SK Ng, SMARC manager.

From one clean room housing MJF 3D printers to another, the group was bussed to Jabil’s Singaporean contract manufacturing centre. The Jabil facility is where those parts for HP machines are printed en masse in one of the most incredibly efficient 3D printing facilities you’re ever likely to see.

As part of Jabil’s Additive Manufacturing Network six HP Jet Fusion machines work alongside the ancillary equipment producing hundreds of components for HP machines, which are then assembled on another floor. The Senior Director of Digital Manufacturing at Jabil, Rush LaSelle had just landed for a visit to the facility, and even he seemed taken aback by the Singaporean team’s refinement of the processes he’d helped to shape in San Jose in the first place:

“Just rough numbers, we were probably in a 70 to 80% type yield when we handed the process over to the team here in Singapore. They did the heavy lifting to get it to where it is today at 90-95% yield,” says Rush. “We have team members who will tell you, ‘we’re 90% of the way there with 90% to go.' Squeezing that last few per cent is challenging. It all comes back to the design of the parts, the design of the process design and a quality control system.” Jabil has a long and rich history with HP, and the decision to invest in an AM facility in Singapore was closely tied to that relationship but Alvin Ng, General Manager at Jabil Singapore, reveals there are two other factors:

“HP has a strong presence in Singapore, but at the same time, the central government has committed quite a significant amount of funds; over $200 million for the next few years in development, of AM ecosystems in Singapore. Intellectual Property laws are also strong here. By piggybacking on the relationship with HP and with those government initiatives, Singapore is a sweet spot for us.”

Departing Jabil’s HQ, I left with the feeling of amazement at the process but also the sense that while Singapore is ideal for these large corporations to take advantage of government investment and the technical abilities of the workforce, what is in it for the little guy? Fortunately, our next stop had the answer to that.

Creatz3D is a leading provider of 3D printing solutions to Singapore reselling the likes of Stratasys, 3DCeram, XJet and Desktop Metal technologies. The company’s home is the kind of old-school industrial building you’d expect to see in the Eastern Bloc, inside Creatz3D showcased several outstanding case studies.

All pretty standard until they took the group a couple of stories down via a cargo elevator with holes in the floor to a packaging company called Modern-Pak Singapore. Established in 1979, Modern-Pak manufacturers millions of those transparent plastic packages you get your lunchtime snacks and salads in.

At first glance, Modern-Pak’s factory and equipment doesn’t look much like it has changed since 1979. On closer inspection the patterns in the big, old, noisy vacuum forming machine churning out sheets of 12 package moulds every five seconds don’t appear to look like the metal, wooden or gypsum patterns that you see in the corner of the room.

The patterns are printed in ABS using a Fortus Machine upstairs at Creatz3D. Thanks to the layered nature of 3D printing, moulds are naturally porous, meaning that, unlike the traditional metal counterparts, a mould master isn’t required to make holes for gases to escape through. Modern-Pak estimates that one 3D printed mould can be put through its paces over a million times before showing any signs of deformity.

Modern-Pak believes that with the use of 3D printing, it will be able to do away with the colossal filing system of patterns it currently houses in minimal space. It’s one of, if not the, most exhilarating uses of 3D printing I’ve seen in action.

Stunned by what I’d seen at Creatz3D, I had to part from the group as it was time to jump back on another 24-hour commute home. In my 40 hours on the ground, I got to see how Singapore is systematically, through an organisation like NAMIC, changing the face of its manufacturing infrastructure by investing in additive manufacturing to the benefit of companies big and small.

And if you do find yourself over there, I’d recommend the jumbo prawn laksa...