Additive manufacturing (or AM) is fast taking off as a way to produce a wide range of components more efficiently, sustainably, and cost-effectively. John Duffy, Sector Marketing Manager for Advanced Materials, shares his views on what the additive manufacturing world looks like today, what it might look like in future, and how Malvern Panalytical helps make that future a reality.
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Additive manufacturing (or AM) is fast taking off as a way to produce a wide range of components more efficiently, sustainably, and cost-effectively. John Duffy, Sector Marketing Manager for Advanced Materials, shares his views on what the additive manufacturing world looks like today, what it might look like in the future, and how Malvern Panalytical helps make that future a reality.
Manufacturers are increasingly realizing that AM can address some of the problems with traditional manufacturing. Supply chain issues are a good example. Shipping instruments, parts, and products – typically across long distances – is a complex logistical process. With AM, you can send digital files to a local site that prints the part on-demand – enabling you to manufacture locally and avoid logistics issues. AM can also help address the energy crisis, as it enables components that are lighter and more efficient in use.
When it comes to challenges, one of the biggest is that AM involves building up your material layer-by-layer, and a lot of things can go wrong in that process. You need to ensure repeatability all the way through, and the material must be optimized for the process. This is especially difficult with powders because they can compact and flow unpredictably, or be contaminated by just one particle. As a result, there’s more emphasis on materials with AM than with subtractive manufacturing.
Of course, our solutions can help monitor the consistency of our customers’ AM materials, but we also play an educational role. AM is a new process for many people – lots of our customers are experts on the parts they’re creating, but they’re unfamiliar with how materials such as powders behave and unsure of the optimal measurement techniques and material properties.
That’s where we can help: our scientists can give insights into the application, measurements, and process, and how our instruments can optimize that process. We don’t just sell instruments; we support our customers to use them and to interpret the results for their specific application. I think that’s critical in this industry. We also produce lots of educational content on our website – including whitepapers, application notes, and educational webinars – with an emphasis on the application. And we collaborate with industry and academia, as a partner within the AM ecosystem.
One of the fastest-growing AM areas is metal AM, particularly powder-bed processes such as selective laser melting (SLM) and electron-beam melting (EBM). These techniques are widely employed in the aerospace, energy, and medical & dental industries, as well as in high-end automotive applications. A similar technique is binder jetting, where, instead of melting powder in situ using a laser, you stick the powder together using an inkjet printer with a binder, and then sinter it in a furnace. Because of its speed and cost-effectiveness, binder jetting is particularly popular in the automotive industry.
In general, lightweighting, strength, and design flexibility are important trends for the transport and energy industries, and there’s a growing recognition that metal AM can enable all of this at quite high speed. Probably the best example is General Electric’s fuel nozzle tip for the LEAP engine – it used to have about 20 different parts and was almost impossible to make. Realizing that it could be produced in one go using AM was a lightbulb moment for General Electric, which has now produced 100,000 of these nozzles. With metal AM, you can design and build structures that you never could with another process.
We see ourselves as a leader in ESG – we’re very aware of our carbon footprint and emissions, and we have targets within the wider Spectris group to reduce them, as well as our own environmental policy. We’re also very customer-centric, so we naturally ensure that our operations comply with our customers’ ESG requirements.
At the same time, we also help our customers to meet their environmental targets and to address the environmental issues that confront us. Within Advanced Materials, for example, we’ve got an environmental segment working on issues such as air pollution and water treatment. We’re also active in renewable energy – including solar power, but also batteries and fuel cells. And, of course, we’re helping our customers realize AM’s significant potential to reduce the manufacturing industry’s carbon footprint.
AM has finally become an established manufacturing tool – it’s now considered essential for aerospace and automotive. And the digital manufacturing revolution will accelerate its adoption even further. But AM has its limitations – so I think what we’ll see more of in the future is hybrid processes, where the manufacturing isn’t entirely additive, but AM plays a critical role in parts of the process.
I also see AM being applied across a wider range of industries – think 3D-printed houses, electronics, batteries, and pharmaceuticals. It could have a particularly big impact on medicine. It’s now possible to reconstruct biological tissues, and even entire organs – Israeli scientists have already managed to reconstruct a heart – using 3D printing and human cells. Currently, these applications are mainly used for medical education, but we may be able to replicate human organs using AM further down the line. AM could also help drive personalized medicine, such as tablets with all the medical components a particular person needs. All in all, the potential is huge!
