For some, it represents the pinnacle of revelry: it’s where you go for birthdays, bachelor/bachelorette parties, or big celebratory weekends. The food and drink are plentiful and varied. You can’t walk more than a hundred feet without passing a slot machine. Opportunities for indulgence abound. The whole sentiment behind that well worn phrase which begins, “What happens in Vegas…” is an invective to cut loose and succumb to your most debaucherous impulses. It’s basically Bacchanalia 24/7.

Or it’s where you go for industry events.

At this point, I’ve been to Sin City more times than I care to count and I’ve yet to visit for the first reason. Whenever I’m asked if I’m travelling “For business or pleasure?” my answer has always been the former. This year, I came for Hexagon LIVE: one among the hundreds (thousands?) of attendees hosted at the Fontainebleau, the newest hotel on the strip. There were plenty of familiar faces and the usual trade show trappings, but there were also some big surprises and, of course, the food was amazing.

Here’s what I saw.

The world’s most sophisticated measuring tape

The Fontainebleau is a modern casino seeking to evoke the spirit of Old Las Vegas. Black and white photos of icons like Elvis and Sinatra line the walls. The opening night reception took place against a backdrop of live jazz, power bowls, and white-gloved hands holding glasses of champagne through a fake plastic hedge at the back of the room.

Packs of attendees with matching lanyards and matching looks of confusion streamed along labyrinthine marble corridors, trying to find their way to the reception. More than once over the course of the week, I heard someone in the elevator ask if we really had to traverse the casino to get between the hotel and the conference center.

I assume it was their first time in Vegas.

There’s a certain irony in the juxtaposition of a company that prides itself on precision hosting an event in a city so devoted to excess, but the spectacle of the venue ultimately accorded well with the vision presented in the opening keynote.

Ola Rollén, Hexagon’s former president and CEO and current chairman of its board of directors, took to the stage with his usual brand of laidback charisma, weaving a narrative that mixed the history of measurement – from the cubit and the furlong to the mile and the meter – with the history of his company, starting with its acquisition of Brown & Sharpe in 2000.

He presented the now customary metaphor of building a bridge between digital and physical worlds, buttressed by the idea that Hexagon (or more specifically, what it makes) is “the world’s most sophisticated measuring tape” with examples of coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) that boast sub-micron accuracy and satellite-based systems that can map geographic features from orbit to within a few centimeters.

All of this, while certainly technically impressive, was basically table stakes. But then Rollén made two announcements that I think most of us weren’t expecting.

Octave & AEON

The first was the introduction of a new spin-off built from some of the biggest pieces of Hexagon’s software business. Dubbed Octave, the new company will combine Hexagon’s Asset Lifecycle Intelligence and Safety Infrastructure and Geospatial divisions with ETQ and Bricsys.

The result will be a billion-dollar “start-up” (a sort of pre-fabricated unicorn) with approximately 7,200 employees.

At a time when consolidation is running rampant in virtually every sector, this divestment might seem unusual. Nevertheless, according to Octave’s new CEO, Mattias Stenberg, it’s the right move to make.

“Hexagon is an amazing company,” he said in a press conference. “But it’s also turned into quite a wide monster. So, I think what I and the board and several others have felt over the last couple of years is that it would be a benefit to focus like this. My message to customers is that we’ll have a bigger budget and more autonomy in deciding where to invest.”

The formation of Octave will have an impact in the near term but the second (and arguably more dramatic) announcement was made with an eye to the future. With a theatrical flare, Rollén introduced the world to AEON, Hexagon’s own entry into the rapidly expanding population of humanoid robots.

While it may seem an odd choice for Hexagon to get into the robotics game, the move fits with the general enthusiasm for AI that seems to be gripping the industrial tech world. Moreover, Hexagon’s particular expertise in advanced sensor technology – one of the prerequisites for humanoid robotics in particular – makes the company well-positioned to develop a robot of its own, at least according to Rollén.

“Hexagon’s legacy in precision measurement and sensor technologies has always been about enabling next-generation autonomy,” he said. “Hexagon is one of the best-placed companies in the world to lead and shape the field of humanoid robotics.”

It’s hard to say this early on whether AEON will end up going beyond the few pilot projects announced with Schaeffler and Pilatus, but I will note that Rollén’s attempt to shake AEON’s hand as he left the stage was entirely unacknowledged by the machine, suggesting that it’s still a far cry from being able to operate independently.

Unless it was a deliberate slight, in which case we should all be worried.

State of manufacturing

Along with new product announcements and customer use cases, Hexagon LIVE included data from not one but two major surveys from the manufacturing sector. A global survey focused on executive perspectives while a second targeted the US and included insights from entry-level employees as well as management.

The global survey, entitled Advanced Manufacturing Report and conducted by Forrester, includes responses from 1,000 manufacturing executives. The US survey, conducted by Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division, is not yet available to the general public, but engineering.com got a sneak preview of the results as part of our attendance at Hexagon LIVE. Given that exclusivity, let’s focus on the results of the latter report.

Recent discussions about the prospects for U.S. manufacturing tend to concentrate on two main challenges the sector is facing: tariffs and talent shortages. While the former is a (relatively) novel issue, the latter has been under discussion for decades, going at least as far back as 1998. That’s when the National Skill Standards Board (NSSB) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) began expressing concerns about a skills gap, with NAM stating that nine of its ten member associations were unable to find enough skilled workers to meet their needs.

But here’s one challenge for manufacturing that you might not expect to top the list: outdated technology. Nevertheless, that was one of the major findings of the US report, with 72% of respondents stating that outdated technology is preventing them from attracting and retaining workers. If that’s right, it implies that the underlying cause of the skills gap in manufacturing might not be misperception of the sector – as is often speculated – but a lack of new technology.

Indeed, other results from the survey appear to support this conclusion, with 60% of respondents reporting that they’re doing enough to make the sector more appealing to new talent. However, there’s also a notable disconnect between executives and entry-level employees regarding the question of whether or not the perception of manufacturing is improving: 86% of executives say it is, while only 59% of entry-level employees agree.

What explains this apparent disagreement?

According to Stephen Graham, executive vice president and general manager of Nexus, Hexagon’s digital reality platform, the cause may be due to a discontinuity between generations.

“I’m not aware of us doing a survey back in 1998,” he said. “But I’ll bet that the perception [of manufacturing] has gotten a lot worse since then because now we have Gen Z coming in, and they’re used to using social media to collaborate on everything. Most manufacturing organizations don’t have technologies that are anything like that.”

Paul Rogers, Hexagon’s president and CEO for the Americas and Asia Pacific, echoed that sentiment in a press event discussing the survey.

“My kids are Gen Z,” he said, “and when you think of what they would identify with manufacturing, it’s dark places with sparks flying, dirty coveralls, things of that nature. But what they’re really expecting is a fully digital environment where everything is high-tech and automated. So, we have to change the perception for Gen Z but, more importantly, we have to change the perspective of the existing workforce and retrain them to think more digital.”

Rogers went on to contrast the user experience with industrial technology with that of consumer tech, where the latter tends to be much more sophisticated and, more importantly, intuitive. “I’ve talked to some major customers and they’re indicating that what they need is for someone to walk in off the street and be ready to go in a few hours,” he said.

Ultimately, this suggests that manufacturing’s perception problem and its technology deficits are interrelated. If that’s right, then both challenges will need to be addressed to deal with the skills gap. The adoption of new, more intuitive tech could help improve the perception of manufacturing – particularly for Gen Z – while more Gen Z members entering the manufacturing workforce could help accelerate that adoption in turn.

Hexagon LIVE 2025

There’s much more to cover from this year’s event, including some incredible stories involving additive manufacturing (stay tuned for those). But, as I headed home, I found myself looking ahead to wonder what next year’s Hexagon LIVE will look like.

Will those white-gloved hands holding champagne be replaced by AEON robots?

Will Octave and its components still be part of The Zone show floor or will the new company have its own event?

Perhaps, most of all, I wondered this: How do you top the announcements of a billion-dollar spin off and a humanoid robot in the same keynote?

I guess I’ll have to wait until next year to find out.

The post Las Vegas Fontainebleaus: A recap of Hexagon LIVE 2025 appeared first on Engineering.com.

Unfortunately, quality control issues such as material or process consistency have hampered a wider adoption of DED but a comprehensive review by engineers and materials scientists at Ningxia University in China could help ameliorate the situation. Focusing on wire-arc DED, the researchers considered several new strategies for improving metal AM parts, including path planning, process monitoring and post-processing.

“This technology is ready to grow, but it needs intelligent quality control to do so,” said lead researcher professor Bintao Wu in a press release. “Our review shows how we can build smarter, more predictable systems that fix problems in real time instead of after the fact.”

More specifically, the review highlights advances in machine learning algorithms that predict weld bead geometry and interlayer heat accumulation, enabling real-time optimization of deposition paths and which, according to the researchers, can reduce thermal stresses by up to 40%.

The researchers also found that other advances in real-time monitoring of wire-arc DED processes, including multispectral imaging and melt pool diagnostics, resulted in a 70% reduction in defect rates in laboratory conditions by enabling rapid adjustments in deposition parameters to minimize the formation of cracks and voids.

Auxiliary processes, such as magnetic arc oscillation, interpass cooling and ultrasonic peening, can improve material integrity by refining grain structures and mitigating porosity, while direct aging without homogenization and other novel post-processing methods achieved yield strengths exceeding 700 MPa in Inconel 718 and related alloys.

Despite these advancements, the researchers also reported that anisotropy and unpredictable phase transformations are still ongoing issues, particularly for high-strength alloys that undergo rapid solidification. However, they also believe that the use of multi-energy fields and simulations of deposition outcomes based on process data could help address this issues.

“This is a critical moment for additive manufacturing,” said Wu. “With the right strategies, we can move from potential to industrial reliability.”

The research is published in the International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing.

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Beyond that, the ability to deploy AM systems on the front lines – not only in warfare but also disaster relief – enables users to see the logistical and supply chain benefits of AM (which tend to be rendered in the abstract) realized firsthand. To that end, Firestorm Labs, a provider of AM UAS that specializes in field-deployable additive systems, has just announced that it’s secured exclusive distribution rights from HP for mobile Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) technologies.

At the core of this agreement is Firestorm’s xCell manufacturing system, which is housed inside two expandable 20-foot containers. The system is designed to run on power generators, battery backup systems, or traditional power sources, making it functional in remote locations, such as forward operating bases and disaster zones.

According to the company, Firestorm’s goal is to create a distributed, resilient global production network where customers can leverage regional and localized supply chains to adapt to shortages, deliver products more quickly, and flexibly develop needs-based modifications to products with long lead and shipping times.

“This agreement is a game-changer,” said Ian Muceus, co-Founder and CTO of Firestorm in a press release. “For nearly a decade, we’ve trusted HP’s technology to meet high-volume, high-quality demands of polymer additive manufacturing. Now, we’re able to take that capability directly to the edge – military bases, disaster zones, and remote medical outposts – where time and logistics matter most. We’re excited to keep pushing boundaries, fine-tuning print settings, developing new materials, and maximizing throughput, material properties, and lightweighting.”

“[This is] about empowering first responders, aid organizations, and military units with the ability to manufacture solutions wherever they are,” said François Minec, VP and global head of sales and business development at HP Additive Manufacturing Solutions, in the same release. “We’re excited to help build a future where distributed, on-demand production becomes the norm and makes a difference in people’s lives. Our vision is to empower businesses and communities with scalable, localized production that enhances efficiency, reduces waste, and provides critical solutions when and where they’re needed most.”

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Like electric cars, electric aircraft were there from the beginning.

A brief history of electric propulsion in aircraft

First developed during the early age of flight in the late nineteenth century, the earliest electric aircraft were airships: blimps or dirigibles that used electric motors to generate thrust.

However, it wasn’t until 1973 that the first crewed free flight of an electric airplane took place with the MB-E1, a modified Brditschka HB-3 that incorporated an 8-10 kW Bosch KM77 electric motor. It was only capable of flying for 12 minutes, up to an altitude of 380m (1,247ft).

Thirty years later, the first serial production manned electric aircraft – the Lange Antares, a glider with an electrically driven propeller – completed its maiden flight in 2003. Its 42 kW brushless motor gives the Antares a climb rate of 4m/s (790ft/m) and a range of up to 380km (236 mi).

In 2016, a long-range experimental aircraft powered by solar cells called Solar Impulse 2 was the first electric aircraft to circumnavigate the Earth, travelling more than 40,000km (25,000 mi) in just over a year, despite battery issues along the way.

Today, most of the focus on developing electrically powered aircraft involves unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or proposals for urban air taxis, which tend to have similar design elements (e.g., quad rotors for vertical takeoff and landing capabilities).

Even so, there was another major milestone for manned electric aircraft just this month when BETA Technologies announced that the first passenger flight for an electric aircraft had landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Subtypes of electric propulsion for aircraft

The types of electric propulsion available for electric aircraft fall into one of three categories, though arguably only two are commercially viable.

Electric motors are by far the most common, driving propellers to generate thrust or rotors to generate lift. The key benefit here, as is often the case in aerospace aviation, is weight savings. Electric motors typically weigh less than their internal combustion engine counterparts, but the trade-off is that batteries for energy storage weigh more than the equivalent amount of jet fuel.  

Another benefit of electric motors is that can maintain the same power output regardless of altitude, obviating the need for turbochargers or other means of increasing the power output of internal combustion engines.

Hybrid aircraft use cleaner, quieter electric power for take off and landing and conventional piston or jet engines for cruising. In this case, the idea is to use electric propulsion to reduce the aircraft’s carbon footprint while maintaining a conventional propulsion system to enable longer flights.

Examples of hybrid electric aircraft include VoltAero’s Cassio, the Ampaire Electric EEL, and the (now cancelled) Airbus E-Fan X.

While technically another subtype of electric propulsion, aircraft that use magnetohydrodynamics to achieve flight are currently little more than engineering curiosities.

In 2018, a team of MIT engineers managed to achieve the first free flight with a solid-state aircraft called the EAD Airframe Version 2. The aircraft is propelled by creating an ion wind, using similar principles to those of ion-powered spacecraft. Unfortunately, its range is incredibly short, and it’s not capable of generating vertical lift without being cabled to an external power supply.

Power supplies for electric aircraft

As previously indicated, one of the biggest limitations of electric propulsion is the relative energy density of batteries compared with jet fuel. This issue is exacerbated by the FAA requirement for aircraft flying under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) to carry a specific amount of fuel in excess of what’s required to reach their destination which, in the case of electric aircraft, means carrying more batteries or severely limiting the aircraft’s effective range.

In response to this limitation, engineers have developed various alternative sources of power, including solar cells and even power beaming using microwaves from a ground-based source, but these concepts are still largely theoretical.

Ultimately, the future of electric aircraft will be determined by advancements in battery technology. While there has certainly been growth in small, short range applications (particularly training), it will take a significant improvement in the weight and energy density of batteries before long-range, commercial electric aircraft become a viable proposition.

The post The state of electric propulsion in aircraft appeared first on Engineering.com.

To my mind, it’s one of the Top 3 Perks of Trade Journalism.

(The other two in no particular order are: trying out new tech and talking to smart people.)

Most of my days are spent sitting behind a desk, so any chance I have to venture out into the wider world and actually see the stuff I write about in person is well worth the time and effort – even when it means having to drive on the I-96 in Michigan.

That’s what I kept telling myself as I (unsuccessfully) dodged potholes on the way from Detroit to Plymouth in my rental car. I’d been invited to visit the North American headquarters of Materialise along with a number of other journalists, customers and users, as part of the company’s 35^th anniversary celebration.

Here’s what I saw inside.

A tour of Materialise HQ

With nearly four decades of 3D printing under its belt, Materialise has seen the shift toward additive manufacturing (AM) first hand. As Brigitte de Vet-Veithen, the company’s CEO explained, Materialise has gone from “making it work” from the mid ‘80s to late ‘90s, “making it meaningful” up to the mid oughts, “making it valuable” up to the mid teens and, today, “making it scalable” i.e., working on true AM.

In fact, these milestones are arguably the ones that any business in the AM industry should aim to follow. Imagine setting up a AM service bureau:

• You start with 3D printing as a solution, looking for general applications (making it work);
• Then you expand into the ones that prove to be the best fit for the technology, e.g., medical devices (making it meaningful);
• Then you refine your methods and processes to enhance the business case for those applications (making it valuable);
• Then, finally, you focus on growing your business using what you’ve learned up to this point (making it scalable).

This ethos was felt in virtually every segment of our tour, from example applications to the workflows for checking and distributing products to ensure quality and on-time delivery.

Our tour began with some examples of medical applications: demonstrations of how Materialise takes scans from human patients and turns them into 3D models, resulting in literally life-changing outcomes from patients, such as tracheobronchial splints and even hand and face transplants.

Next was production planning, where Materialise employees use the company’s software tools to set up the builds for 3D printing both polymers and metals on in-house machines. For polymers, the parts are oriented and nested automatically but the metal parts need to be oriented manually by an expert, due to the added complexity of the metal 3D printing process.

From there, we went to polymer production, where we saw both EOS and 3D Systems powder bed fusion (PBF) machines that are used strictly for medical components, producing hundreds of parts each day. The powders are recycled twice before being re-sold, though recycled powders are not used in medical applications.

Verification shipping is where parts undergo a post-quality check and where traceability is assured, again processing hundreds of parts (both polymer and metal) each day. What was surprising but understandable is that this department has “peak seasons” in summer and again at the end of the year. The explanation for this is that, for medical implants, the former is due to school being out (making it a better time for physiotherapy) and the latter is due to insurance claims coming more at the end of the year.

The metal 3D printing section of the facility included GE/Concept Laser/Colibrium laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) machines which – at least on the day I visited – were producing craniomaxillofacial (CMF) implants. This section also included post-processing, which included a band saw for removal along with hand tools for grinding and snipping and a blasting cabinet for surface finish.

Of all the stops on the tour, this was the one where I most wished I could take pictures. There’s a common sentiment that the younger generations aren’t interested in manufacturing because they falsely believe it’s dirty and dangerous. What I saw here demonstrated why that belief is mistaken: young people working in clean, comfortable rooms, doing precise tasks to prepare medical implants that will help improve people’s lives. It’s difficult to imagine a more enticing presentation of modern manufacturing.

After metal AM production, we saw the quality inspection area for metal parts where the tools included go and no-go gauges using 3D printed mimics, an optical scanning arm for CAD comparisons, and equipment for anodizing and laser marking the parts before shipping.

The stereolithography (SLA) room included a large variety of brand new and decades-old machines, with an output about halfway between the polymer PBF and metal L-PBF sections. We were also shown the SLA packing area, where CMF parts are married with other metal implants or surgical guides. This was also where test specimens are built with implants for tensile and bending checks.

There are few companies in the AM industry that have been as successful as Materialise, and after touring the company’s US headquarters, it’s easy to see why. The combination of advanced software, focus on production applications, and emphasis on playing to 3D printing’s strengths as a technology is the key to success for any business in the AM industry.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

The post What’s happening inside Materialise HQ – Part 1 appeared first on Engineering.com.

Sandvik counts metal powders amongst its broad portfolio of products and services and Additive Industries provides laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) machines for AM applications, which the PLT is intended to complement.

Under the new partnership and start with gas-atomized Osprey 718 nickel-based superalloy (IN718), Osprey 316L stainless steel and Osprey Ti-6Al-4V-ELI (Grade 23) titanium alloy, Sandvik can fill the PLT under controlled conditions at the company’s production site in Sweden, then transport the PLT to customer sites for direct loading into Additive Industries MetalFab systems.

Additive Industries says this will create a complete solution for users to ensure total control of their powder feedstock materials, maintaining high quality and ensuring the health and safety of system operators, since they’ll have no contact or exposure to metal powder at any point in the process chain. The company also claims that the PLTs have been thoroughly tested and approved for road, rail and sea transport. They can contain up to 175L of metal powder which, depending on the density, can translate into about 600kg of steel powder.

Other stated benefits of PLTs for operators of MetalFab systems include:

• Full compatibility and connection of PLT with MetalFab printer

• Sensors within PLT and MetalFab to check correct powder is loaded

• Inert storage and transportation conditions for metal powders

“As the leading developer and manufacturer of gas-atomized metal powder for a wide range of advanced production technologies, we are happy to partner with Additive Industries to offer the market a state-of-the-art metal powder supply solution,” said Andrew Coleman, vice president of business unit AM, powder solutions, Sandvik, in a press release. “We are committed to using engineering and innovation to make the shift towards more industrial solutions and the PLT is a natural addition to enabling increased efficiency and safety for our customers’ staff. We look forward to continuing pushing the boundaries of metal powder for additive manufacturing technologies.”

“We recognize the critical nature of the powder feedstock in our systems, both from a quality and safety perspective, which is why the MetalFab is designed to minimize exposure of powder particles to oxygen, moisture and human contact,” said Mark Massey, CEO of Additive Industries, in the same release. “We are very pleased to announce Sandvik as our approved powder supply partner filling our PLT’s and allowing MetalFab customers to improve their quality control, health and safety and factory workflow.”

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The latest example of this comes from ETH Zurich, where an interdisciplinary research team has been working on combining conventional building materials with living organisms, such as bacteria, algae, and fungi. Now, led by Mark Tibbitt, professor of macromolecular engineering, the researches have successfully incorporated cyanobacteria into a printable hydrogel to create a material that lives, grows, and actively removes carbon dioxide from the air.

Requiring only sunlight and artificial seawater containing essential nutrients, the material is capable of absorbing more CO2 than it binds through organic growth. “This is because the material can store carbon not only in biomass, but also in the form of minerals – a special property of these cyanobacteria,” Tibbitt explained in a press release. “As a building material, it could help to store CO2 directly in buildings in the future.”

In addition to generating biomass, the cyanobacteria used in the study change the chemical environment around themselves, precipitating solid carbonates, such as lime. These minerals represent an additional carbon sink and – in contrast to biomass – store CO2 in a more stable form. As an added bonus, the carbonates also provide mechanical reinforcement, resulting in the structures slowly hardening over time.

According to the researchers, laboratory testing of the material showed that it continuously bound CO2 over a period of 400 days at a rate of 26 milligrams of CO2 per gram of material, more than three times the rate of chemical mineralization in recycled concrete (which is around 7 milligrams CO2 per gram).

More than a method for prototyping, 3D printing was essential in this application due to the need to produce optimized geometries to increase light penetration, surface aera, and the flow of nutrients. “In this way, we created structures that enable light penetration and passively distribute nutrient fluid throughout the body by capillary forces,” said Dalia Dranseike, a member of Tibbit’s team and co-first author on the published research.

The 3D printed designs have enabled the cyanobacteria to live productively for more than a year, according to the researchers. While it may one day be possible to build entire structures using this material, the next step, according to Tibbitt, is to apply it as a coating on building facades. As a proof-of-concept, two installations have been created with the material at the Architecture Biennale  in Venice and the Triennale di Milano in Milan.

The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.

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The concept of intentionally designing products to work within the constraints of the available manufacturing technology is not new. Often abbreviated as DFMA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly), the goal is for design engineers to reduce or minimize the difficulties of manufacturing and assembling a product, thereby reducing its overall cost.

While this sounds simple in principle, in practice it requires extensive knowledge of manufacturing and assembly processes, material behaviors and supplier capabilities. As a result, DFMA encourages broad collaboration across organizations and even whole supply chains. Consequently, the engineering community has made wide efforts to advance DFMA through industry practices (such as integrated product teams), rules and guidelines (such as the Design for Manufacturability Handbook) and technical conferences (such as the ASME IDETC-CIE).

Despite the many nuances of DFMA, there are two ways to reduce the time and cost of production which apply to virtually any product in discrete manufacturing: minimizing the number of parts and eliminating fasteners. With conventional manufacturing technologies, there’s a hard limit on how far this approach could go, with designers having to weigh the time required for assembly against the complexity (and hence manufacturability) of the components involved. In other words, the geometries and physics involved in forming and machining set constraints on designs, and DMFA is about working within those constraints. 

However, with the introduction of 3D printing technologies many of those constraints have been eliminated, though certainly not all of them. Depending on the particular additive technology, there are also new constraints (such as the need for supports) that design engineers must consider.

What this means is that the objective of design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) is essentially the same as it is for DMFA: maximize product performance within the constraints of (additive) manufacturing technologies. Alternatively, you could say that DfAM is about finding a balance between the new design opportunities (complex geometries, part consolidation, lattice structures for lightweighting, etc.) and the unique constraints of 3D printing (the need for supports, part orientation, material limitations, etc.).

To sum up: the objectives of DMFA and DfAM may be the same, but the approaches necessary to achieve those objectives are considerably different.

The post DfAM vs Design for Manufacturing: What’s the difference? appeared first on Engineering.com.

Copper and copper alloys are useful in combustion chambers due to their electrical and thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance, and ductility. However, the fact that they reflect near-infrared lasers has made them difficult use in metal AM processes, such as laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF).

The latest attempt to bridge this gap comes from Farsoon Technologies, which has just announced a new FS621M-Cu system, which incorporates four 1000W ytterbium fiber lasers to process high reflective metals, including copper alloys, such as CuCrZr. In addition to the ytterbium lasers, the system also has an anti-reflective chamber coating and a smart thermal management system.

According to the company, the new system can 3D print copper alloy thrust chamber liners with optimized cooling channels as a single piece. Farsoon also claims that an aerospace customer used the FS621M-Cu platform to produce a 600 mm diameter × 850 mm height thrust chamber liner with 8.86 g/cm³ density and thermal conductivity exceeding 345 W/(m·K).

For more Farsoon news, read about the company doubling the laser count on its large-format system.

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However, the need to print structural supports from the same material has limited VPP in both sustainability and design freedom. But that could soon change thanks to a group of engineers at MIT who have developed a new VPP process that utilizes two different wavelengths of light.

Their key innovation is a resin that responds differently to ultraviolet and visible light: the former cures the resin into a crosslinked thermoset polymer of the sort typically produced by VPP, while the latter yields a rigid but dissolvable thermoplastic. Combing the two sources together, the engineers have been able to create parts with easily removable supports that simply dissolve when immersed in food-safe solvents such as D-limonene, ethyl acetate, and even mineral oil.

Moreover, the support material is recyclable, able to be blended back into fresh resin and used to print a new set of parts with dissolvable supports. Tests of the new system, dubbed selective solubility vat photopolymerization (SSVP) yielded functional and complex structures, including gear trains and lattices.

“You can now print – in a single print – multipart, functional assemblies with moving or interlocking parts, and you can basically wash away the supports,” said MIT graduate student Nicholas Diaco in a press release. “Instead of throwing out this material, you can recycle it on site and generate a lot less waste. That’s the ultimate hope.”

Diaco and his colleagues report that they were able to synthesize their dual-wavelength resin using a mixture of two commercially available monomers, along with a third “bridging” monomer that linked the other two together under UV light.

“With all these structures, you need a lattice of supports inside and out while printing,” Diaco said. “Removing those supports normally requires careful, manual removal. This shows we can print multipart assemblies with a lot of moving parts, and detailed, personalized products like hearing aids and dental implants, in a way that’s fast and sustainable.”

“We’ll continue studying the limits of this process, and we want to develop additional resins with this wavelength-selective behavior and mechanical properties necessary for durable products,” said professor of mechanical engineering John Hart in the same release. “Along with automated part handling and closed-loop reuse of the dissolved resin, this is an exciting path to resource-efficient and cost-effective polymer 3D printing at scale.”

The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies.

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