Divergent3D’s entire car chassis is 3D printed.It made its public debut at the SLM Solutions booth at Formnext 2018 in Frankfurt, Germany, from November 13th to 16th.
If you have any working knowledge of additive manufacturing (AM), you are probably familiar with 3D printing nozzles for GE’s Leap jet engine platform.The business press has been covering this story since 2012, as it was indeed the first well-publicized case of AM in action in a real-world production setting.
One-piece fuel nozzles replace what used to be a 20-part assembly.It also had to have a robust design because it was exposed to temperatures as high as 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit inside the jet engine.The part received flight certification in 2016.
Today, GE Aviation reportedly has more than 16,000 commitments for its Leap engines.Due to strong demand, the company reported that it printed its 30,000th 3D printed fuel nozzle in the fall of 2018.GE Aviation manufactures these parts in Auburn, Alabama, where it operates more than 40 metal 3D printers for part production.GE Aviation reports that each Leap engine has 19 3D-printed fuel nozzles.
GE officials may be tired of talking about fuel nozzles, but it paved the way for the company’s AM success.In fact, all new engine design meetings actually start with a discussion on how to incorporate additive manufacturing into product development efforts.For example, the new GE 9X engine currently undergoing certification has 28 fuel nozzles and a 3D printed combustion mixer.In another example, GE Aviation is redesigning a turboprop engine, which has been nearly the same design for about 50 years, and will have 12 3D-printed parts that help reduce engine weight by 5 percent.
“What we’ve been doing for the past few years is learning to make really large additively manufactured parts,” said Eric Gatlin, head of the additive manufacturing team at GE Aviation, speaking to the assembled crowd at the company’s booth at Formnext 2018 in Frankfurt, Germany. , early November.
Gatlin went on to call the embrace of AM a “paradigm shift” for GE Aviation.However, his company is not alone.Exhibitors at Formnext noted that there were more manufacturers (OEMs and Tier 1s) at this year’s show than ever before.(Trade show officials reported 26,919 people attended the event, a 25 percent increase from 2017′s Formnext.) While aerospace manufacturers have led the push to make additive manufacturing a reality on the shop floor, automotive and transportation companies The technology is being looked at in a new way.A much more serious way.
At a Formnext press conference, Ultimaker Senior Vice President Paul Heiden shared details of how Ford used the company’s 3D printers at its Cologne, Germany, plant to create production tools for the Ford Focus.He said the company saved about 1,000 euros per print tool compared to buying the same tool from an outside supplier.
If manufacturing engineers are faced with a need for tools, they can load the design into 3D CAD modeling software, polish the design, send it to a printer, and have it printed within hours.Advances in software, such as incorporating more material types, have helped make design tools easier, so even “untrained ones” can work through the software, Heiden said.
With Ford able to demonstrate the usefulness of 3D-printed tools and fixtures, Heiden said the next step for the company is to address the spare parts inventory problem.Instead of storing hundreds of parts, 3D printers will be used to print them as they are ordered.From there, Ford is expected to see what kind of impact the technology can have in producing parts.
Other automotive companies are already incorporating 3D printing tools in imaginative ways.Ultimaker provides examples of tools that Volkswagen uses at its plant in Palmela, Portugal:
Produced on an Ultimaker 3D printer, the tool is used to guide bolt placement during wheel placement at the Volkswagen assembly plant in Portugal.
When it comes to redefining car manufacturing, others are thinking much bigger.Kevin Czinger of Divergent3D is one of them.
Czinger wants to rethink the way cars are built.He wants to create a new approach using advanced computer modeling and AM to create chassis that are lighter than traditional frames, contain fewer parts, provide higher performance, and be less expensive to produce.Divergent3D showcased its 3D printed chassis at the SLM Solutions Group AG booth at Formnext.
The chassis printed on the SLM 500 machine consists of self-fixing nodes that all fit together after printing.Divergent3D officials say this approach to chassis design and assembly could save $250 million in eliminating tooling costs and reducing parts by 75 percent.
The company hopes to sell this type of manufacturing unit to automakers in the future.Divergent3D and SLM have formed a close strategic partnership to achieve this goal.
Senior Flexonics is not a company well known to the public, but it is a major supplier of components to companies in the automotive, diesel, medical, oil and gas, and power generation industries.Company representatives met with GKN Powder Metallurgy last year to discuss the possibilities of 3D printing, and the two shared their success stories at Formnext 2018.
Components redesigned to take advantage of AM are intake and exhaust valves for exhaust gas recirculation coolers for commercial truck applications, both on- and off-highway.Advanced Flexonics are interested in seeing if there are more efficient ways to create prototypes that can withstand real-world testing and possibly mass production.With years of knowledge of producing parts for automotive and industrial applications, GKN has an in-depth understanding of the functional porosity of metal parts.
The latter is important because many engineers believe that parts for certain industrial vehicle applications require 99% density.In many of these applications, that’s not the case, according to EOS’ CEO Adrian Keppler, which the machine technology provider and partner attests to.
After developing and testing parts made from EOS StainlessSteel 316L VPro material, Senior Flexonics found that additively manufactured parts met their performance goals and could be manufactured faster than cast parts.For example, the portal can be 3D printed in 70% of the time compared to the casting process.At the press conference, all parties involved in the project acknowledged that this has great potential for future series production.
“You have to rethink how parts are made,” Kepler said.”You have to look at manufacturing differently. These are not castings or forgings.”
For many in the AM industry, the holy grail is seeing the technology gain widespread adoption in high-volume manufacturing environments.In the eyes of many, this would represent complete acceptance.
AM Technology is used to produce these inlet and outlet valves for exhaust gas recirculation coolers for commercial truck applications.The maker of these prototype parts, Senior Flexonics, is investigating other uses for 3D printing within its company.
With this in mind, material, software, and machine developers are working hard to deliver products that enable this.Material manufacturers are looking to create powders and plastics that can meet performance expectations in a repeatable manner.Software developers are trying to expand their material databases to make simulations more realistic.Machine builders are designing cells that run faster and have larger production ranges to accommodate more parts at once.Work is still to be done, but there is a lot of excitement about the future of additive manufacturing in real-world manufacturing.
“I’ve been in this industry for 20 years, and during that time, I kept hearing, ‘We’re about to get this technology in a production environment.’ So we waited and waited,” said UL’s Additive Manufacturing Competency Center Director. said Paul Bates, Manager and President of the Additive Manufacturing User Group.”But I think we’re finally getting to the point where everything is converging and it’s happening.”
Dan Davis is editor-in-chief of The FABRICATOR, the industry’s largest circulation metal fabrication and forming magazine, and its sister publications, STAMPING Journal, Tube & Pipe Journal and The Welder.He has been working on these publications since April 2002.
The Additive Report focuses on the use of additive manufacturing technologies in real-world manufacturing.Manufacturers today are using 3D printing to make tools and fixtures, and some are even using AM for high-volume production work.Their stories will be presented here.