Phase One: The Partnership
In early October, GFMS announced a partnership deal with global metal additive leader, EOS, to design a new approach to industrial 3D printing that could offer a road to true industrialization. “With this partnership, we are combining our two companies’ expertise and technologies,” explained Andrew Snow, senior vice president of EOS North America.Fitting the Mold
The AM S 290, Ledvon and Snow agree, is just the start of this project—an introduction of GFMS customers to the largely unexplored field of additive manufacturing.
In this case, it means the first step to industrialization begins with GFMS’s largest customer base: mold and die makers.
“The idea behind the project is to provide a new solution for the mold maker,” Ledvon says. “The mold maker knows us; the mold maker knows our service department; and the mold maker knows our application teams. So what we’re trying to bring is this new additive manufacturing technology to these mold makers to provide them a new tool to make better components.”
In terms of industrialization of the technology, 3D printing molds is a perfect start.
As Ledvon explains, mold makers are already pushing the limits of traditional machining. As the demand for smaller, more intricate and complicated parts rises, the injection molds used to create them must be equally intricate and complicated.
These molds require impossible heating and cooling channels and confounding engineering feats to provide the particular, consistent characteristics the OEM customers need.
That’s where additive comes in.
The Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) process works one layer at a time, depositing particle-thin layers of metal powder down on the build plate and then melting exactly the shapes and contours needed for a component with a precision laser. The process is repeated, layer by micro-thin layer, until the part is fully grown from the bottom up.
Because of this unique process, engineers can design any construction or architecture they can dream up inside a solid structure, creating cavities, circuits, and textures where no machine tool could ever reach.
For mold makers, this is a game-changer.
| See: Additive Mold Making: The Real World Test |
“With this technology, engineers can design conformant cooling circuits into their molds to shorten the cooling time and shorten the cycle time,” Ledvon said. “It will help them with productivity; it will help them with quality of the part. They will get faster parts in better quality.”
According to Snow, this can add up to a mind-blowing 60% reduction in cycle times, while also reducing scrap rates, freeing up machine tools, and generally saving time and money across the enterprise.
All of this sounds fantastic. It’s a sales pitch that can’t miss: Better parts, faster and cheaper. It seems too good to be true.
The Voice of Reason
In principle, Terry Wohlers—president of 3D printing research firm, Wohlers Associates—is excited about the EOS/GFMS project. “I think this is precisely what needs to happen,” he says. “The machine tooling industry has a wealth of knowledge and experience producing high-quality precision machines and additive people like EOS have a lot of experience fusing materials in powder beds, which is something the machine tool industry lacks.”“Putting them together really is smart,” he says. However, he also points out some important facts about laser sintering to tame the blind excitement the promise of 60% improvements in cycle time may inspire. Specifically, he notes that DMLS isn’t quite as easy as it seems. While it does bring all of the new potential and capabilities Snow and Ledvon highlight, the process still requires a bit of post-processing work before it’s ready for the floor. Quite a lot, actually. “Once you’ve finished the last layer of your part, it is fully embedded in powders—it’s in every channel, everywhere, all the way through,” he explains. “Somehow you have to remove that powder, and you’re not going to get that powder out of conformal cooling channels easily.”Usually, he says, this requires manual intervention—blowing or removing powder with picks and brushes. Dirty, time-consuming work. From there, he explains, the piece has to be cut from the build plate, usually with a wire EDM machine. Then the support structures or anchors have to be removed either manually or with CNC milling. Then heat treatment. Then more machining to get the surface finish to spec. Then blasting, coating, etc. “You can have as many as 10 or maybe 12 distinct steps in post processing,” he says. “There’s a tremendous amount of work required.”Phase Two: The Future
The AgieCharmilles AM S 290 Tooling is just the first step for the GFMS/EOS project. The “seamless integration” that led to the simple co-branding of the machine in 2015 is leading the way to something much bigger and much more disruptive in 2016.“We’re planning to integrate our systems into a full process chain solution,” EOS’s Snow says. “We’re building a seamless, automated interface between additive manufacturing and subtractive manufacturing in a production environment.”