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Additive Manufacturing 101
43 Plays2 years ago
Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, is leading the way, shaping the next industrial revolution. Recent technological advances in metal additive are disrupting manufacturing.
What is so different about additive manufacturing?
Traditional (subtractive) manufacturing such as milling, turning, etc., remove material to achieve the final shape of the product. Metal additive manufacturing differs, by starting with a metallic powder that is spread into a thin layer, bonding these layers and stacking layer by layer to create a part.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome back, listener, to our Alberta Additive Manufacturing Network podcast series. Today we're going to be talking about 3D printing. Probably not a surprise to you since you tuned in. Today we're going to learn about what it takes to be successful with additive manufacturing, and we're going to call this podcast AM101.
Meet Tanya: Innovator in AM
00:00:37
Speaker
I've got some really talented people here, and when I say people, I've got
00:00:42
Speaker
Tanya from Red Deer College and her entire team that supports her. So yeah, even though we're just interviewing Tanya, I think we've got a lot of people behind her that give us a lot of good scientific information so that we can help be successful. So without further ado, I'm gonna let Tanya introduce herself again, because she knows herself better than I do. So Tanya, what do you do? Who are you?
00:01:08
Speaker
Thanks, Shorty. I'm really excited to be here and I guess kicking off officially this series of podcasts for our industry and listeners to really start taking advantage of the technology that is added of manufacturing. So I'm the manager for the Center for Innovation and Manufacturing at Red Deer Polytechnic, and we support Alberta companies with adoption of technology
00:01:35
Speaker
in specific to manufacturing. So if they have a product or a process that they need some technology improvements to, then we have a team of engineers and technicians here to support them. So where did I come from? I worked at Intertech Alberta for the last decade or so supporting the growth of additive manufacturing in that space as well with my partnership with the University of Alberta.
00:02:03
Speaker
and developing a lot of highly talented individuals that have come out of that program and are now working across the country supporting additive in a variety of industries. So some really exciting pieces that have come out over the last 10 to 15 years that we need people to really know about the great work that's being done here in Alberta in the additive manufacturing space.
00:02:27
Speaker
That's awesome. Thank you.
Evolution & Support in AM
00:02:29
Speaker
Thanks for the introduction. So AM is so exciting. I mean, it's been around for quite a while now, but it seems that new technology and new processes are developing almost daily. We see them being talked about in the media. And just to sort of go back a little bit to your experience, you're a doctor, right? I'm a doctor of metallurgy. Am I getting that right?
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds good. Yep. Materials engineering. Perfect. Yeah. So really cool. And I think the AM side of things, having that background, you can really start looking at the different types of materials in different ways we manufacture things. So maybe that's a good place to start. We can look at
00:03:12
Speaker
the manufacturing world. My background, as everyone knows, is subtractive manufacturing. So we're a machine shop and we love making chips. The more we make, the merrier. And then we send those chips in for recycling and they get turned into other things. But I think there's a couple more that I've missed that we don't really get the chance to do. So can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so definitely when we
00:03:37
Speaker
start thinking about manufacturing. So a client has an idea of something that they would like to make. So they spend a lot of time understanding what it's going to be used for and all the functions that that product can have. They come up with some sort of design and then they need to get it made. And there's three ways that you can, you know, classifications of getting something manufactured. The one is you have there, which is the machining or we call subtractive machining. So it starts out with a,
00:04:05
Speaker
a block of material and you chip away, take away until you get the shape that you want. The other is formative manufacturing. So that would be more of the casting or injection molding where you have the negative of the shape and you'll fill the cavity with the material that you want and it freezes into the shape that you want that to be.
00:04:27
Speaker
And then the newest, I guess, piece that you'd say is additive manufacturing. So that means you're starting
Manufacturing Types Explained
00:04:33
Speaker
it with nothing and you're adding material exactly where you need it to be to build up layer by layer to your final design. So those are those three categories. And often designers think about the machining or casting space and often neglect the additive piece because every design requires a specific way of designing it for that particular
00:04:58
Speaker
Uh, process. So with all new things, then you need to retrain your brain to think in a new way, because we don't have to think about castings or chippings anymore. You need to, to think about, you know, a free form and you have more capability to be able to designed to be able to have your final product. And I'm assuming that you have that quite a bit shorty in your shop is that designers come to you with this product and you're like, yeah, this, this can't be machine this way or.
00:05:27
Speaker
Or what kind of problems do you have on your side when it comes to machining? Oh, absolutely. We call those opportunities. And they're like gold. So we turn it back on the cusp. We put the monkey on their back. And we ask them, well, how many do you want us to make? And how much can you sell these things for? So going back to the three different types of manufacturing, what's really cool and what I'm starting to learn with this network is that
00:05:54
Speaker
Additive could actually have all three different types of manufacturing in that process, which is really cool. We could add a layer and then subtract a layer by machining it with certain machines with metals. We can 3D print moles and we can build the 3D print larger and then machine away material for certain features.
00:06:18
Speaker
Through the design process, that's what we're trying to rumble around in our heads to figure out what's the best way to manufacture this component or widget for the customer. Obviously, it comes down to the design, but really speaking, for us to pick a process, it's always how many per interval, so how many do they need per year and how much
00:06:41
Speaker
in this L form, which basically relates back to how much do we need to manufacture it for. So lots of design for manufacturing and assembly, and I'm really excited to release that podcast as we talk more about that in depth. And listener, if there's any topics that you want to discuss in depth, please give us a heads up and make some comments so that we can get those to you. And like I said, we're just scratching the surface with AM101 right now.
00:07:09
Speaker
So the big thing Tonya is to, you know, once we figured that out, then we come to you and say, Hey, do you guys have any cool machines that can do this type of stuff? And most of the time I'm, I get a yes. So that's, that's really cool. Yeah. Let's, let's dive into that. But you brought up an awesome piece there is about that, that cost part.
Cost Analysis of AM vs Traditional Methods
00:07:30
Speaker
And I know that we're going to talk a lot about cost in the, in the, um,
00:07:35
Speaker
podcast going forward, but it is such an important piece and to wrap your mind around as a designer and an owner about how much is this going to cost in terms of making this new product. And there's generally kind of general rules of thumb of costing, but additive manufacturing parts are pretty much the same cost per part. And there are variations to every rule on that, but you're printing your part one by one and you could nest more into your
00:08:03
Speaker
your bed and we'll talk about that later so that you can have more at a certain time. But when you, and then you talk about something like injection molding, injection molding, you have a high, high cost upfront and your unit part might be 50 cents per part, but you're spending $5,000 for a mold at the very beginning. And then, so your first part is like $5,000 and 50 cents, right? But where for that 3d printed part, it might be $20 to print it. So,
00:08:31
Speaker
you would say, Oh, well, I know it only costs me 50 cents to injection molding. And why is it costing me $20? And it's all about that mold price. So at some point you're going to have a breakeven part where if it is suitable for injection molding and 3d printing, and those two things might not be the same, right? You might that often the design for added will be different than injection molding, but there'll be a point where injection molding per part is, is, is less
00:08:56
Speaker
costly than 3D printing. And same thing with machining and all in those different technologies, there's a cost point and it could be 20 parts, it could be up to 200 parts, but it's somewhere in that 100 part piece where if you have less than that, it's better, more cost efficient to 3D print them. And then if it's kind of more than that, then it makes sense to do other processes.
00:09:20
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. We've seen that firsthand. Looking at the cost of injection molds, sometimes $150,000 for an injection mold. Like you said, parts could be in the pennies or a couple of dollars.
00:09:34
Speaker
With our particular one product that we manufacture, the injection molding costs I think were around $50 and the 3D printing was close to $1,500. So a huge difference here. We always tell customers, your first one's a million dollars and the second one's free. And then we'll figure out the discount later, right?
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, but what a bummer if you spend $150,000 on a mold and it isn't what you wanted. Absolutely. Yeah, we definitely learned that. So we did five different types of prototypes over the years to come up with a commercialized product and design changes, 3D print, design changes, 3D print. And what's really cool is we get to put it in people's hands and they get to, well, hopefully they get to break it because that means we have something to thread another opportunity to improve.
00:10:25
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. From the prototyping and product design stage, I couldn't imagine doing it any other way other than an additive right now. So this is a point, too, to highlight that it's not just a prototyping piece, that you can actually have commercial end-use parts that make sense to be 3D printed because they have a particular function or form that you can't machine it or
00:10:51
Speaker
cast it to be able to do what you need to do. Like the machining for something might be so high or so much expensive tooling to be able to do that. So I'd like to highlight that additive manufacturing is not just for prototyping, that there are commercial applications and we just need to be sophisticated with our designs to be able to highlight those that make sense for that process.
00:11:15
Speaker
Absolutely. I got real world examples of that too. If you're testing out a market, for instance, you need to get a couple hundred pieces made, totally want to go out and get those additive manufactured versus spending multiple tens of thousands of dollars on tooling. And then you can actually test the market, figure out if that's a product that's going to fit and go from there. So yeah, you're a hundred percent right on that.
3D Printing Process Overview
00:11:42
Speaker
So thank you.
00:11:43
Speaker
Yeah. So let's, let's delve into what do you need to be able to 3d print something. And a lot of our listeners are going to be very familiar with this particular process. And we all get the same piece on, Hey, can't you just, you know, push a button and then the part shows up and it couldn't be any further from the truth, just the same as it is for machining. You don't just push a button and your part comes out. There's a lot of planning that needs to go into the part and not of tooling or, or designing that needs to go into manufacturing that part.
00:12:13
Speaker
So to start off, to get anything 3D printed, you need to have a digital file, right? So it's not a napkin sketch. You need to have something in a CAD program. And that CAD could be a variety of different software packages that are able to do that from like freeware all the way up to really expensive CAD programs. But you need to have that 3D model to be able to do that.
00:12:39
Speaker
Then it needs to be saved as an STL, so a stereo lithography file. And what that is, is it changes into kind of like a layer by layer space. And then the designer will look at that file and look to see if there's any errors to make sure surfaces are actually touching each other, that the holes are in the right space, that it's been saved to the resolution that we can read it as. And then that program needs to be turned into something called G-code, which is a
00:13:08
Speaker
programming language similar to CNC and other CAM type software that basically says to the printer, you need to put this material at this spot. Right, so XYZ coordinates depending on the multi-axis type of the equipment. And there's lots of slicing software. Some of them are open, but most commercial printers will have their own specific software to be able to develop that tool path planning
00:13:36
Speaker
because they have the right parameters for the right material to do what they need to do. So if you're looking for those more sophisticated ones that have more tighter controls, then yeah, that's where some of the pricing for those costs come from is the price of the equipment to be able to do that work. But you also need a human to look at that and see if there's any errors. They'll look at some of the models to see if it's not going to print correctly in one spot or if it's not going to fill correctly in another spot.
00:14:06
Speaker
So there's that bit of digital work that needs to get done. Oh, for sure. And do some of the manufacturers of the equipment provide software as well? Like did they have specific software for a specific piece of equipment? Yeah, I'd say most, if not all of my commercial 3D printing pieces of equipment have their own proprietary kind of G code type development program, because every piece of equipment is specific and that's how they ensure the quality control on their prints.
00:14:35
Speaker
So Ultimaker has its own, right? Ultimaker has its Cura software, so if people are familiar with that, right? So you have your drawing, then you turn it to STL and you put it into Cura, you get your G-code, that can go right into the Ultimaker if that Cura knows that it's for the Ultimaker, and then off you go and print it. But that Ultimaker Cura software won't translate into some of the more commercial printers.
00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense. I'm familiar with Cura. Um, I know like different brands of equipment like Stratasys and EOS and all those guys will have their own. And yeah, like you said, it's great to be able to, you know, model something to 1.005 inches and hopefully, you know, you can get a printout that's as close to that one inch and five thou as possible. So that's cool. And one thing we do note that when we receive those drawings is
00:15:30
Speaker
that we actually spend the time to look at them and make sure that they make sense because we could just print them and then there might be errors in that. But sometimes we see that, you know, lines aren't mating other lines. So there's like little errors through that. And those errors will just be compounded into the, into the print, but also look at it and ensure that the client actually meant to do what they needed to do. So we might say, Hey, this hole here is going to get filled in. It's way too small, or there's this weird angle here.
00:16:00
Speaker
And that's one of the pieces that's really important to have human interaction still. It's not a fully digital process. And if you're looking for that customized piece to make sure that what you want is actually going to get printed out. Yeah, I think that's pretty much the nail on the head for me when I learned a little while ago is
00:16:20
Speaker
You can't just expect any old digital file to work and design it for what you think is going to happen. Alberta's got some really good resources. Going out to the expert and saying, I'm thinking of making this and I'm thinking of using this process, what are some of the pitfalls?
00:16:42
Speaker
look at those things and not run into them, right? Learn from other people's mistakes. No experiences. Yes. Opportunities. Opportunities, exactly. Yeah. So that's, for me, a part of this network is so important because we have all those members out there that have the same opportunities that we run into from time to time.
00:17:08
Speaker
Printing one piece of something is great, but now you're talking about the assembly of things. Like you said, if it's not printed right or if it's not coming out right or designed right, it ain't going to go together. It's going to be sad, yes. Yeah, exactly. Sad is right.
00:17:28
Speaker
So then you have your design and you're like, how are we going to print it? And we'll talk about that in a couple of minutes. But there are seven different families of printers. And how do you know which one is the best one that you need for your particular design? What material goes in which? So it just opens up this world of opportunity that can be really overwhelming in terms of what printer and what material do I print to be able to make this particular part? Yeah.
00:17:56
Speaker
The really cool thing for me is I just have to reach out to Delbert additive manufacturing network and say, Hey guys, what do you think? So looking forward to that, that's a great resource. Absolutely.
Resource Sharing & Equipment Costs
00:18:08
Speaker
And when you're looking at some of these commercial pieces of equipment and they're, you know, north of a quarter million dollars to over a million dollars, this isn't something that everybody can just afford in terms of their, their production facility. So it intuitively makes sense that we,
00:18:26
Speaker
have areas of expertise and we share our resources to be able to help each other grow. Absolutely. We're all in it together. We got that digital file and then we have to figure out how we're going to print it. Based on that particular process, how are we going to line it up in the build bed? How does it need support? What are the printing parameters that are going to be most successful?
00:18:50
Speaker
What is it going to look like when it comes out because they're inevitably in some processes there's heat involved and heat means thermal stresses. So is my part going to change while I'm printing it? So those are all things that need to happen in that planning stage, which make it not possible to just push the button and your part comes out perfectly. Darn it. I wish that was a thing. Well, we're getting there. There's a lot of software that's helping make better decisions, but we're not at a fully automated stage yet.
00:19:21
Speaker
We'll get there. We will. So then your part is done and you need to extract it from the printer. So in some of those examples, it's fairly simple. You can pull it out. You might need to dissolve out any supports. If it's in a full powder pack, then some of that powder is something you should be breathing. So you'll need a special glove box to be able to extract your part out of this powder bed.
00:19:46
Speaker
What do you do with all of the powder that's left over? So there's all of that. How do I remove that part? That's a whole process. And then afterwards you've got your part and maybe you need to machine some parts. Maybe you need to cure to let your plastic set in with some UV. Maybe you need to machine something. So there's a little bit of our heat treat afterwards. So there's that whole piece. So when we talk about 3d printing, 3d printing,
00:20:12
Speaker
is just a part of that whole additive manufacturing process where we need to do the digital design, all of the planning, the printing, the removal, and then the post-processing. So it's a whole process together. I love it because, you know, listener, I hope you're paying attention here. You can't just run out and get a 3D printer off Amazon and, you know, expect to be successful here. So that's what I used to think, right? Before meeting everybody in this network is,
00:20:42
Speaker
I heard buy a 3D printer, hit the button and go pick up your print. So this is great. I'm learning a lot here. So let's talk a little bit more in depth now. You've gone over those steps, the typical process, I guess, from start to finish. What sort of timeline can I expect? I guess it depends, of course, on complexity and all that stuff. But let's just say I'm walking in and I've got this idea for something.
00:21:14
Speaker
What sort of steps do I follow other than what you just pointed out to me? Cause I know I can't remember what you said five minutes ago, but in terms of timing, if you have that digital file, there's a couple of steps that
3D Printing Timelines vs Traditional Methods
00:21:29
Speaker
you can go. There are a service providers that you can email the file. They'll give you a quote that quote might be an instantaneous quote.
00:21:37
Speaker
Um, you give them your credit card, it gets printed somewhere on a print farm or at somebody's location and then shipped to you. So that could happen within a couple of days, depending on the print size. Cause it's all about time, right? So the, the bigger your size, the longer it takes to print. So these things, this doesn't print out in, in like a minute, right? Some prints can be 24, 48, 72. And we kind of talk about that in terms of days, right? That that print, and it's all based on the, on the size.
00:22:06
Speaker
and the resolution that you want on that print and how solid you want that print as well. Yeah, so like a two-day process or 48 hours. Yeah, I've seen some prints take that long. So if you're comparing that to, say, an injection mold, you're looking at 8, 10, 12, 16 weeks to get that mold machined before you get that part back and find out if you're successful or unsuccessful. So those are those different timelines that you're looking at.
00:22:37
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I don't know if I could hold my breath that long or keep my fingers crossed that long. So yeah, I can definitely wait a couple of days to see if things are going to be successful or not. So yeah, that's that timing piece. Also, how busy is the current pieces of equipment out there? So when you talk about what type of
00:23:00
Speaker
of printer you want and those seven different types, you have your material extrusion so that something is coming through, that material is coming through a nozzle. So those are your typical, like what you think of 3D printing with the toothpaste coming through the nozzle and going around and doing layer by layer. So we've seen a little bit about concrete printing that happens that way. But a lot of polymer, like we mentioned before, you could get those kinds of printers off of Amazon or
00:23:29
Speaker
all the way up to a million dollar printer that does that type of fused filament fabrication or fused deposition modeling. Those are the three letter acronyms or the TLAs I was looking for, the FDM and FFF. So that'd be the most typical one. And those are mostly like resin, I would imagine, or polymer based. Any metal in that type?
Photopolymerization Process & New Tech
00:23:56
Speaker
In that particular type, there isn't
00:23:59
Speaker
There's a lot of ideas on that space, but the metal would be inside the filament. So there's like metal powder in there. Right, inside the plastic or polymer filament. So then the resin part happens more in the vat polymerization. So you'll have like a bath of kind of some resin that is cured by
00:24:23
Speaker
uh, light basically so that each layer is activated by light and cured or, or, you know, solidified. And then that next piece is pulled out and another layer of light is, is, is cured on there. So that's, that's a different type of process than the filament one, because you're drawing your part out of a resin bath and curing it using light instead. So it's a different type of process. What's that process called?
00:24:50
Speaker
Yeah, so I call that photopolymerization or you'd hear the words SLA or DLP, so stereolithography or direct light processing. I love those three letter acronyms, they're so awesome. I know, right? And the light sources, was that like a laser beam or something fancy? Yeah, so you can either use a laser beam or you can use the whole light. So the SLA has the laser beam going over the surface and the DLP has like a camera, so
00:25:18
Speaker
it's the whole layer is exposed at the same time, like a photo. Like back in the darkroom days, eh? Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's really cool. I was not familiar with that process. That's great. So as my small pitch, we're getting a DLP printer any day here at Red Deer Polytechnic. Awesome. Yes, it'll be very exciting and it'll be a large bed as well. So it'll be really
00:25:43
Speaker
awesome to see the kinds of parts that will come off of that piece. Cool. So what type of materials for that one then? Just so I can start brainstorming and figuring out what to send you. We're going to be using hard elastomers specific for that particular piece so then we can tailor the hardness of the rubber based on the latticing.
00:26:09
Speaker
So based on how full we make each piece, we can make it really hard or you can make it really spongy. So we're going to be sticking just with one type of polymer. And the reason I say that is because it's 160 liters of resin going in there where some of their smaller printers are two to three liters. So the cost to be able to fill that 160 liters is quite high. And so we're going to stick with one material for right now, which makes it
00:26:38
Speaker
a little less flexible than say the FDMs where you can just put your spool of filament on and then be able to interchange those through. We're using this more specifically for that tough elastomer right now.
00:26:51
Speaker
Cause we see that there's a need or a gap for that in the industry. Yeah. I'm looking forward to getting some shoes printed, like some Crocs. No problem. What color Crocs can I get made? You will get black. Nice. Just like Henry Ford model team. You got it. Got it. Cool. Galloping along. Then we have our powder bed fusions. So that's where you've heard the acronyms SLS, selective laser sintering.
00:27:21
Speaker
DMLS, direct metal laser sintering, SLM, selective laser melting, and EBM, electron beam melting. So in all of this, we have a bed of powder and there's a heat source that goes over that powder that solidifies that powder together. And then another layer is put on top. So that can be a polymer or a metal. And you can hear by the words I was saying that there was a laser involved in there or an electron beam that was the heat source.
00:27:50
Speaker
Right. That sounds pretty expensive. It is, but it is widely used in aerospace and medical and energy applications to be able to meet the design requirements of some of these highly engineered components.
00:28:09
Speaker
All right. I think I've seen an article on GE using that for some of the airplane engines. I think they reduced. Oh, it was like something crazy. A couple of hundred different parts and really simplified the process using that process. Definitely. Consolidation of parts is a great application for additive manufacturing. Totally. And I guess the cost would make sense because, you know, you're eliminating all those other costs. So, hmm, very cool.
00:28:37
Speaker
Then we have material jetting, so where you can put drops of material specific to where you want it to go. That's more of a polymer-based solution. Then we have binder jetting, where you've got that powder bed, but you're putting drops of liquid glue on the surface to create a solid with powder all glued together. Then you can take that part and go through different heat treatment cycles to solidify that.
00:29:05
Speaker
component. So there's some other processes there. Then you get into direct energy deposition. So that's where you're putting wire or powder into a heat source. So this could be a laser or welding machine to be able to build that part up. And then there's a process called sheet lamination, where you'll have sheets of materials and you'll
00:29:31
Speaker
cut them and then ultrasonically weld them together to build those parts up. So lots of different types of processes. So when somebody says, hey, can we 3D print this? It's all about what do you want to get at the end because any one of these routes
00:29:46
Speaker
could work or would be a catastrophic failure depending on where you went and why you wanted to go there. Oh, yeah. And I'm sure costly as well. You start with one and, you know, escalates its way up. And like you said, you know, can you imagine changing that 160 litre vat of material to go, you know, to try and choose a different material, you know, in your design? So, oh, that's pretty cool. It makes sense. It makes sense. Yeah, absolutely.
00:30:13
Speaker
Cool. So the design process then, I guess we start, I know you talked about starting with a digital file, but is there any sort of thought process in figuring out, okay, what machine am I going to use or what piece of equipment and then building the design file around
Design Focus in AM
00:30:32
Speaker
that? Is it helpful to know the process before you start even designing? I'd say the most successful, um,
00:30:40
Speaker
examples or applications are all starting at the design stage and being very strategic about the design in terms of removing material, removing joints, removing any additional processes. And then the process comes as a, not as an after part, but that the success comes in the design stage and being very thoughtful about yet reducing the number of components and then any mismatch joints.
00:31:09
Speaker
those are the really successful pieces that are the most cost effective in terms of the 3D printing output at the end. So I'd definitely focus all of your attention on that design piece and what do you want to achieve. And then with all of the number of processes around here, some of them were more in infancy stages than others, but there can be a process that can make that part, right? And that could be as small as a,
00:31:38
Speaker
a small actuation system all the way up to bridges that are being printed using robots and welding. So there's quite a range, but it's all in the design and making sure the design is what is needed for the outcome. That's fantastic because that's kind of what I was thinking, but it's always nice to talk to the experts and again, the importance of this group. If I've got a design and I've been focusing on just design engineering,
00:32:09
Speaker
Typically what people do is they focus on that and they send the drawings out to a manufacturing company and they figure out how to get things made and then they tweak it a little bit. But that makes a lot of sense what you just said, thinking about the design and how it's going to be used in the field or its intended application. So that's great. So listener, if you've got anything out of this podcast series, I think maybe that's the one for all the design engineers out there.
3D Printing Tips & Pitfalls
00:32:39
Speaker
So I've got five tips on things that you should look for that would be great for 3D printing and three things that you should not think about. So what should you look for? Anything that's a complex part and you really need to optimize that design, like it's breaking a lot or there's some complexity to that. You need a low run of parts and the cost of tooling and molds for injection molding is not practical.
00:33:06
Speaker
You have a low volume of a large tool that could be lighter or have some sort of internal cooling. You want to maintain inventory of low volume replacement parts. So you don't need 10,000 of something, you only need 10. And reducing the number of components to potentially a single part. So those are the kinds of things that you should be looking for. What you should not be thinking about is anything with a simple geometry or something that's really easy to machine.
00:33:35
Speaker
So can I water jet this out or can I just simply just use those processes? Don't use something that doesn't need to be used just to say you did. Anything with critical material property requirements that you can't wait years for certification and anything that has a final finished requirement or post-processing that's not possible due to the geometry or the cost. So those are things that you should avoid in thinking about additive. And that might change years from now.
00:34:02
Speaker
10, 15 years from now me, things might be different than what they are today, but that's where we are in terms of today's manufacturing design criteria. Awesome. Going back to the very beginning of the three different types of manufacturing, the subtractive and forming and the additive,
00:34:22
Speaker
I think those five and three examples that you had, a lot of it, we can use a hybrid approach too. Once you know those five things and what to look for and what not to look for, then you can use a hybrid approach. Again, I keep saying this because it just makes a lot of sense. The Alberta Additive Manufacturing Network is a great resource.
00:34:49
Speaker
I'm really happy to be a part of it to get help. It's fantastic. Thanks for having me.
AM as a Tool for Innovation
00:34:57
Speaker
One of my biggest objective here in all of this additive manufacturing space and introducing it to the Alberta landscape is to really change how we solve problems, is that we're such great problem solvers, but to have an extra tool so that we can make products that weren't made before, this is what this pushes. I'm not saying that everything needs to be 3D printed,
00:35:20
Speaker
But open up your mind to designing in a new way. And casting and machining might be the best way to do that, but you've gone through that exercise of being able to think about how to solve a problem in a novel way. And that outcome can yield some designs and some products that we had never even imagined. So I'd really like to challenge us to start solving problems in a different way and using all these new digital tools that are available to us and see what
00:35:49
Speaker
what new output we can really come up with. That's fantastic. Thank you so much. Um, yeah, I, I love that approach, you know, challenge ourselves, use some technology that not many people have access to. I think in Alberta, we have, um, you know, such a wide, um, arrangement of different types of processes that we can solve our problems with. Right. So,
00:36:14
Speaker
This is probably one of many different types of networks that can help people. It's great to have you. Thank you so much for... Did I twist your arm to do this? I think I did, didn't I? I guess I owe you some favors down the road, but our listener is really grateful, I must say. We're looking forward to having you again, hopefully soon, to talk about some of these in a little bit more detail. Our listener out there, make sure you get your
00:36:43
Speaker
ideas and questions and so that we can help you succeed too. All right. Well, thanks again. Looking forward to talking more. Thanks. Have a great day. You too. Bye. Bye. I'll edit that out.