Recently, Chicago-based 3D printer service bureau BuildParts (by CIDEAS Inc.) had an atypical follow up from a client, who had leveraged the company’s Stereolithography (SLA) technology to prototype a device they were running fluid through.

BuildParts had used 3D Systems' Accura ClearVue material to print the part in a single piece, before sending it to the client so they could assess the design and proceed to manufacturing the welded component. A month later, the customer came back to BuildParts after finding their production units were causing bubbles to occur within the material, but there was no such occurrence in the printed prototypes. ‘Why is our production wrong and your 3D printed parts right?’ they wanted to know.

“What we found was that the assembly of their product was causing the issue,” BuildParts founder and President Mike Littrell told TCT. “An ultrasonic weld during assembly created a small bead of excess material which encroached on the interior chamber of the part, something that didn’t occur on the 3D printed and polished SLA. As a result, the excess material created an unexpected turbulence and unwanted air bubbles as the fluid was travelling through. In most cases, you create the 3D printed part to find the problems, so that you’re correcting them before production. In this particular case, we were able to identify that the production part was wrong because it wasn’t made like the 3D printed part.”

It was an interesting anecdote, relayed at the 2022 AMUG Conference, and one that put us onto the main theme of the discussion, because what didn’t follow was a story of how they then went on to additively manufacture the part instead of injection moulding. So, why wasn’t there scope to produce the part with 3D printing, when the problem the client ran into was because the component wasn’t made additively?

“Well, based on the volume of the parts and the size of it, it wasn’t conducive to 3D printing,” Littrell continued. “They’re going to have to go back to the drawing board and use the 3D printing part as the reference point to how they’re going to redesign it for injection moulding. It becomes very tricky when you start saying, ‘how do I use additive manufacturing instead of traditional manufacturing?’ Because, to be perfectly frank, additive manufacturing isn’t always the best solution.”

EOS polymer 3D printing equipment at BuildParts. 

Littrell has been working with additive manufacturing technologies since 1998, the year he founded CIDEAS Inc (BuildParts). Today, BuildParts runs over 30 additive machines and 100 materials across six processes, which include SLA, Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Digital Light Processing (DLP), Digital Light Synthesis (DLS) and PolyJet technology. The week of our conversation, BuildParts was expecting to welcome a Massivit 5000, as well as an Origin One from Stratasys. Post-processing equipment from AMT is also on its way.

He, and the project managers who work with clients to generate 3D printed components, are well-versed in the capabilities of these technologies, which helps when identifying the right process for the application, when design iterations need to be carried out, and when journalists are asking for grounded insights on where the additive manufacturing industry is at. From Littrell’s perspective, the core technologies that make up the AM space haven’t varied as much as some might think, but advancements in software and materials have helped 3D printing processes to enable some sustained success in, for example, the hearing aid and dental aligner markets.

“When I look at additive manufacturing today and people say, ‘hey, we’re there.’ I say, ‘no, we’re not.’ We’re scratching the surface. In order for us to reach the point where we’re replacing traditional manufacturing, it is imperative for material prices to come down, as well as address the higher spoilage rate of additive manufacturing compared to injection moulding,” he said. “If you injection mould a part that has a cycle time of 30 seconds and it’s bad, you can re-grind that material and put it back in the machine. On a 3D printed part, it might take an hour or more to produce the same part. With 3D printing, you can’t get that time back and you can’t recycle the material on a failed print, so your production rate is much lower and your spoilage rate is going to be significantly higher than traditional manufacturing. Couple this with material prices, which can easily be 3,000% higher with additive, it’s very hard to justify it.

“There are a large number of successful instances that make a wonderful case for additive manufacturing such as reducing the part count in complex assemblies, generative design to lighten a component, patient specific surgical tools, or mass customisation [like hearing aids of dental aligners]. With that said, there has to be an ROI justification for them to utilise additive manufacturing for production and as a result, we’re still in the infancy of additive manufacturing.”

There are challenges in other aspects of the additive manufacturing workflow too, and those aren’t lost on Littrell, who estimates 25% to 30% of his business today is in additive manufacturing production applications, and the rest is in design verification, functional prototypes and visual marketing models. When looking at hardware, the biggest limitation he sees is how the machines are designed.

“The footprint of the machine isn’t matching the buildable area of the parts within that machine; the post-processing equipment that is required to post-process those parts out of that large machine take up as much space, if not more,” he said. “When you look at it from a manufacturing floor environment, the equipment isn’t efficient in its own footprint. As a result, again, we’re looking at [traditional] manufacturing machines still having an edge over that. We need to see more companies, rather than label their printer as a production machine, design their machines as a production machine and how it would integrate to a shop floor. We’re starting to see that finally occur. We’re starting to see companies tackle post-processing and finishing of parts – not 100% in a manufacturing world sense, but they’re making the initial steps that are required in order for them to travel down that path.”

Despite his pragmatism, work is still ongoing in the ‘slow but sure’ development of Paxis, the other company founded by Littrell to introduce the proprietary Wave Applied Voxel (WAV) 3D printing technology designed with manufacturing in mind. IP and patents have been granted worldwide, several materials are under the development, as is an Alpha machine, and each day they get closer to determining a launch date to target.

Paxis and WAV have been born out of the belief that 3D printing technology can permeate manufacturing and do so with faster speeds and lower costs. As development work continues there, through his BuildParts service endeavours, Littrell has noticed changing behaviours in the design of components that land on his desk. For years, each model would have a draft built into it to pop the part out of the mould during injection moulding, but increasingly that’s no longer happening. In fact, Littrell is seeing designs that are so complex, the only way to manufacture them without making substantial design changes is with AM.

There is clearly an appetite for additively manufactured parts, and the design freedom that comes with it. Yet, although the inclination to harness 3D printing grows, there are still compromises to be made. One consideration involves the selection of a material (which might only be available with certain AM processes) against the existing part specifications – ‘what replacement materials or resolution or what tolerances are they willing to forego to make AM part of their chain?’ Another might be the cost of the production, particularly if there’s a performance benefit, time benefit, or if the sole reason 3D printing is being used is to market it as such. 

Whatever the reason someone picks up the phone to Littrell and his team, they pride themselves on first educating the client, before proceeding to push the button on whichever 3D printer is designated.

“It’s important for us that our customers know that we’re trying to find the least expensive but most successful path,” Littrell finished. “When you go to an additive manufacturing part versus traditional production, you are going to be paying multipliers higher, and as much as people would like to say that isn’t the case anymore, that is the case. And it’s going to be the case until the material prices become equal and the machine prices become equal, and the throughput time becomes equal. Currently, they’re not equal.

“It’s not that I’m against additive manufacturing, on the contrary, I see the success stories and the eventual disruptive future. However, it can be hard to separate the hype from fiction. Customers should truly ask themselves, ‘why am I using it in this application, should I use it in this application and is the ROI there to justify it?’

“Peanut butter on a burger sounds good, but is it good?”

BuildParts by CIDEAS Inc. will be exhibiting at the upcoming RAPID + TCT in Detroit at Booth 3120. 

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