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WELCOME EDITORIAL Editor Stephen Holmes stephen@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3384 5297 Managing Editor Greg Corke greg@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)20 3355 7312 Staff Writer Claudia Schergna claudia@x3dmedia.com Consulting Editor Jessica Twentyman jtwentyman@gmail.com +44 (0)20 7913 0919 Consulting Editor Martyn Day martyn@x3dmedia.com +44 (0)7525 701 542

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he summer holiday months are upon us and for some of us this might require a flight to foreign climes for a period of relaxation, adventure or meeting up with family. So, while you might be panicking about dropping off your luggage into Heathrow’s never-to-return abyss, perhaps this issue will reassure you about the incredible advances happening in the world of aerospace. Claudia has spoken to Hill Helicopters about the company’s plans to reenergise the rotorcraft industry with a helicopter design that keeps the experience of the pilot/owner firmly in mind. An efficient new engine design, meanwhile, sees the industry moving in the right direction in terms of emissions. For those of us sitting back in cattle class, where are only options are chicken or pasta, we speak to Pexco about a new product, AirShield, that can be retrofitted to the air vents on existing passenger plans to provide greater protection against airborne viruses. We also look at the future of seriously longhaul travel, with plenty of spacebased content in this issue. For example, we speak to Launcher and Aerojet Rocketdyne about some ongoing projects, with both firms demonstrating how lightweighting, materials and additive manufacturing technologies will support missions beyond Earth’s atmosphere. 3D printing is now embedded in the space industry, so we speak to EOS about how executives at the company view the near future for its metals and polymer technologies, and what vendors are doing to aid the qualification process of parts. We also cover developments in design, using software like Hyperganic. Back on the ground, we have features on innovative drill designs from Guhring, and ask a host of exciting designers for their views on the evolving world of jewellery design and manufacturing. So sit back, relax, stow your tray tables and enjoy the ride – regardless of how far you’re travelling.

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CONTENTS AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2022 ISSUE NO. 135

NEWS Lenovo expands portfolio of AMD-powered workstations, HP Anywhere emerges from beta, 3D Systems acquires rotating build platform and more

12 15 16 20 26 28 33 34 38 42 46 52 54

FEATURES Comment: SJ on the satisfaction of building the unbuildable Comment: Alexander Pluke puts family at the heart of AM Visual Design Guide: Commonwealth Games 2022 medals COVER STORY Hill Helicopters aims for new heights Interview: Vinu Vijayan of EOS talks aerospace Rocket science: Launcher’s bold mission to explore additive Lunar return: Reengineering space kit for new adventures Breathe easy: Introducing the Pexco Airshield Shock waves: Laurence Marks on calculating frequencies Talking heads: CAD experts discuss the technology’s future All that glitters: A new era of jewellery design Q&A: Oqton CEO Ben Schrauwen on life at 3D Systems Cut to fit: Guhring uses 3D printing to build CNC tooling

58 THE LAST WORD Lightweighting may be massively overhyped today, writes Stephen Holmes, but the impact it looks set to have in future is truly exciting

2022

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NEWS

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT NEWS

NEWS

LENOVO SIGNIFICANTLY EXPANDS PORTFOLIO OF AMD-POWERED WORKSTATIONS

» AMD continues to make big strides in workstations as Lenovo launches new mobile and desktop options powered by AMD Ryzen Pro processors

enovo has launched three new workstations powered by AMD Ryzen Pro processors: the mobile ThinkPad P14s Gen 3 and ThinkPad P15v Gen 3, and the desktop ThinkStation P358. This takes to five the total number of AMD-based Lenovo workstations, and makes the global IT firm stand out further from the competition (HP, Dell and Fujitsu), where workstation portfolios continue to be dominated by Intel.

THINKPAD P14S GEN 3 The ThinkPad P14s Gen 3 is billed as Lenovo’s most mobile workstation and is built around a thin and light 14-inch chassis. It is powered by AMD Ryzen Pro 6000 H-series processors (up to 8 cores and up to 4.7GHz), which also come with integrated AMD RDNA 2 graphics and AMD Radeon Pro graphics drivers. This contrasts with most other mobile workstations which have discrete GPUs with their own power and cooling requirements. As the Thermal Design Power (TDP) of the top-end AMD Ryzen Pro 6000 processors only goes up to 45W, we expect the ThinkPad P14s will benefit from reduced energy consumption in some workflows. With integrated graphics, up to 32GB

6,400MHz LPDDR5 memory and up to 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe storage, the ThinkPad P14s looks best suited to mainstream users of CAD and BIM software. It starts at 1.28kg. The ThinkPad P14s follows on from the ThinkPad P14s (Intel edition) and ThinkPad P16s (AMD and Intel editions), which launched earlier this year. The AMD edition of the ThinkPad P16s offers the same feature functionality as the ThinkPad P14s, but in a 16-inch chassis that starts at 1.68kg.

THINKPAD P15V GEN 3 The ThinkPad P15v Gen 3 features the same choice of AMD Ryzen Pro 6000 H-series processors, but comes with higher performance graphics. The discrete Nvidia RTX A2000 GPU should make the 15.6-inch laptop suitable for entry-level viz workflows as well as CAD and BIM. It also has more storage and memory than the ThinkPad P14s (64GB DDR5 4800MHz memory and 4TB M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD) and starts at 2.26kg.

LENOVO THINKSTATION P358 The ThinkStation P358 is Lenovo’s first desktop workstation to feature the AMD Ryzen Pro desktop processor with up to 12 cores and up to 4.7GHz. It complements

Lenovo’s other AMD-based desktop workstation, the ThinkStation P620, which features AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro processors with up to 64 cores and up to 4.5GHz. With the ThinkStation P620 best-suited to more demanding multi-threaded workflows, this leaves the ThinkStation P358 to handle workflows where frequency is the priority, such as CAD and BIM. It will rival 12th Gen Intel Core-based workstations, such as the ThinkStation P360. In terms of pro graphics, Lenovo has seemingly limited options to the lowprofile Nvidia RTX A2000. Perhaps this is to differentiate it from the Intel-based ThinkStation P360, which supports up to the Nvidia RTX A5000 in what appears to be the same tower chassis as the P358. However, those users who require more GPU performance can also choose the consumerfocused Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080. Other features of the ThinkStation P358 include up to 128GB DDR4, 3200MHz memory and up to 10TB of storage. This is on par with the ThinkStation P360, but significantly less than the ThinkStation P620, which can handle up to 1TB of memory and 20TB of storage. www.lenovo.com/thinkworkstations

The ThinkStation P358, the first Lenovo workstation to feature AMD Ryzen Pro processors, looks set to go head-tohead with the 12th Gen Intel Core-based ThinkStation P360

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INTEL LAUNCHES ARC PRO A-SERIES GPUS FOR DESKTOP AND MOBILE WORKSTATIONS » Intel’s new discrete pro GPUs get their first public airing. On paper, they look well-suited to CAD — now and in the future, with hardware ray tracing built in WHAT WE THINK

ntel has made its muchanticipated entry into the world of discrete workstation graphics with the launch of the Intel Arc Pro A-series professional range of GPUs for CAD, AEC and ‘creators’. The first three products are the Intel Arc Pro A30M GPU for mobile workstations and the Intel Arc Pro A40 and Intel Arc Pro A50 GPUs for ultra-compact and small form factor (SFF) desktop workstations. All three GPUs appear to be ‘entry level’ but include advanced features such as hardware ray tracing and machine learning. For pro workstations, driver optimisation and certification is important. Intel has stated it is targeting certifications with leading professional software applications within the AEC and design and manufacturing industries, but has not specified which ones. In the past, when Intel only offered graphics built into to its CPUs, it focused on certification for only the most popular CAD and BIM tools. With Arc Pro, we expect Intel to up its game. At Siggraph on 8 August, the company showed off Intel Arc Pro Graphics Workstation GPUs running Trimble SketchUp with D5 Render to demonstrate the hardware accelerated ray tracing and hardwareassisted AI (XeSS) capabilities of the new cards when rendering architectural scenes.

D5 Render’s real-time rendering software is based on Unreal Engine 4 and Nvidia RTX rendering technology, but the rendering pipeline is based on Microsoft DX12 and DXR, which is supported directly by Intel Arc Pro GPUs. Applications that take advantage of ray tracing using the Vulkan API should also be compatible. In terms of specifications, the Intel Arc Pro A40 and A50 are very similar. They both feature 6 GB of GDDR6 memory, four mini DisplayPort outputs and the same memory bandwidth, plus the same number of Execution Units, Xe-cores, Render Slices, and Ray Tracing Units. The only notable differences are form factor, thermal design power (TDP) and peak performance. The A40 is single-slot with 50W peak power and 3.50 TFLOPs peak performance; while the A50 is dual-slot with 75W peak power and 4.8 TFLOPs peak performance. The A30M is virtually identical to the A40, but the number of outputs will be specific to the mobile workstation. www.intel.com

With a low-profile, dual-slot design, the Intel Arc Pro A50 has a similar form factor to the Nvidia RTX A2000 but, on paper, appears to be less powerful

This is a significant move from Intel as it looks to boost its graphics capabilities and compete more strongly with AMD and Nvidia, which offer a wide range of discrete workstation GPUs via the AMD Radeon Pro and Nvidia RTX brands. Prior to the launch, Intel’s workstation GPU presence was solely through integrated graphics, where the GPU is built into the CPU. Such processors are only suitable for true entry-level workflows. With its first-generation Arc Pro products, Intel is clearly targeting users of CAD and BIM software, where graphics requirements are relatively low. Such tools are generally ‘CPU-limited’ and, in many cases, you’ll see no significant performance difference between a budget pro GPU and one that costs ten or even twenty times more. Intel has not yet released pricing, but we expect the Arc Pro A40 and A50 to be priced competitively with other low-profile professional GPUs. Intel’s trump card, like that of the AMD Radeon Pro W6400, is that it has hardware ray tracing built in. The Nvidia T600 and T1000 do not. Plus, it has an additional 2 GB of memory, which may prove important for viz-centric workflows, especially when next-gen CAD graphics engines come online with ray tracing in the viewport. However, Intel will have to compete with decades of pro driver development from both AMD and Nvidia in an industry where both performance and stability are valued very highly. On mobile, Intel arguably faces a bigger challenge in an increasingly competitive entry-level segment. While the new Intel Arc Pro A30M GPU should slot into existing pro laptops, it will go up against a new generation of mobile workstations with AMD Ryzen Pro 6000 H-series processors, which come with integrated AMD RDNA 2 graphics and AMD Radeon Pro graphics drivers. This includes the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen3 and ThinkPad P16s Gen3 (see left).

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NEWS

HP ANYWHERE EMERGES FROM BETA TESTING STAGE

Castor adds 2D analysis of parts

astor has launched a new capability to automatically analyse 2D drawings, both technically and economically, and to provide recommendations on their suitability for 3D printing. The software automatically extracts product manufacturing information from PDF files, calculating a part’s size, volume and complexity, and then suggests the 3D printability of parts, recommends optimal technology and materials, and performs a financial analysis of additive manufacturing costs compared to those that might be incurred via traditional manufacturing. www.3dcastor.com

P Anyware, a remote graphics software that supports hybrid work environments, has come out of beta. The 22.07 release delivers two headline features: support for Apple M1 silicon; and HP Anyware collaboration, which allows GPU-accelerated screen sharing. HP Anyware, according to company executives, allows users to remote into “virtually any host environment”, including physical or virtual workstations (on-premise or in the cloud) across Windows, Linux, or MacOS. It uses Teradici’s PCoIP protocol, which places a big emphasis on colouraccurate, ‘lossless’ image quality and supports multiple 4K/UHD displays, plus a range of peripherals with ‘low-latency performance’, including Wacom pen

displays and tablets and 3D mice. HP acquired Teradici in 2021, and HP Anyware is the evolution of Teradici CAS, augmented with key features from HP ZCentral Remote Boost. With support for Apple M1 Silicon, users of HP Anyware can now remote into both M1-based Macs and Intel-based Macs. In the 22.07 release, collaboration is limited to the host sharing their screen with one secondary user. However, for true team collaboration, there are plans to support multiple users in subsequent releases of the software. In the next release (22.09), HP Anyware will also get a full-client user interface refresh. Prices start at £99 per use per year for non-GPU acceleration and £198 for GPU acceleration (note: the Mac version always uses the GPU). www.hp.com

HP Anywhere enables remote employees to work from their location of choice

tratasys has announced the acquisition of the Covestro AM business, which should allow it to expand its differentiated materials offering in stereolithography, DLP and powders, supported by a broad IP portfolio. This acquisition of the German materials company, which is due to close during the first quarter of 2023, should enable Stratasys to offer more full solutions to customers and accelerate next-generation materials development for manufacturing with partners, according to the company. www.stratasys.com

3D Systems acquires rotating build platform

P Polar has been acquired by 3D Systems, as the latter looks to accelerate its polymer 3D printing technologies. The company plans to take advantage of DP Polar’s patented continuous printing process, which uses a stationary printhead above a rotating platform. The large-scale and segmented rotating print platform looks to eliminate the start/stop operations of virtually all additive manufacturing processes and gets bonus points for longevity, with the process minimising the wear and vibration associated with traditional printhead movements. The rotating platform can be paired with a variety of printing technologies and can even accommodate pick-and-place robotic systems that embed electronics or other

Stratasys to acquires Covestro

gITF standard gets 2.0 update

T features into the body of a component as it is printed. With this acquisition, 3D Systems says it will leverage its polymer materials portfolio, as well as Oqton’s software, to bring true high-speed, mass-production AM to a range of industries. www.3dsystems.com

DP Polar's rotating build platform aims to eliminate the stop/start operations common in modern AM

he Khronos Group has announced that glTF 2.0 has been released as an international standard for 3D assets — one that it hopes will become as pervasive as jpeg is for images. The glTF standard minimises the runtime processing associated with unpacking and processing 3D assets, while enabling sophisticated pervasive graphics functionality. Essentially, it defines an extensible, common publishing format for 3D content, tools and services, which streamlines authoring workflows and supports interoperable use of content across the industry. www.khronos.org

10 AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2022 DEVELOP3D.COM

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MARKFORGED STRIKES DEAL TO AQCUIRE DIGITAL METAL

he 3D printing landscape continues to consolidate, with the announcement of the acquisition of Digital Metal by Markforged. The latter has in its sights Digital Metal's binder jetting technology Höganäs AB, as it looks to further expand its 3d printing technology range. According to Markforged executives, the acquisition of Digital Metal will further the company’s strategy to solve manufacturing challenges for industrial customers “at the point of need”, with the binder jetting technology capable of producing high volumes of functional metal parts with “minimal setup required”. Markforged sees powder binder jetting as a highly scalable additive manufacturing technology for productiongrade parts using a variety of metal materials. Powder binder jetting complements the existing Digital Forge offering, and will expand Markforged’s addressable market by solving new customer problems. Founded in 2003, Digital Metal is a wholly-owned subsidiary of metal powders specialist Höganäs AB, which has been more or less kept as an in-house service. Its proprietary binder jetting 3D printing technology has already been used to produce hundreds of thousands of parts. And executives from Markforged claim they see significant opportunities to take this further still, accelerating Digital Metal adoption through integrated software capabilities and the power of its global go-to-market engine. “With the Digital Metal acquisition, Markforged is advancing our vision for

distributed manufacturing by enabling the reliable, high-volume production of precise metal parts at the point of need. Infusing Digital Metal’s solution into The Digital Forge platform allows us to address new applications in the medical, automotive, luxury goods and other industries,” said Markforged CEO Shai Terem. “The Digital Metal team has created a robust and scalable solution that complements our existing technologies. I look forward to welcoming their talented people to Markforged.” As part of the transaction, Markforged will pay Höganäs approximately $32 million in cash, approximately 4.1 million shares of Markforged common stock and approximately $1.5 million in cash to settle certain intercompany balances. The deal is expected to close during 3Q2022. www.markforged.com

Digital Metal's binder jetting technology has already been used to produce hundreds of thousands of parts

Kubotek3D and Cadenas have announced a partnership that will see KeyCreator users provided with access to 3D and 2D component geometry for millions of parts from manufacturer catalogues via 3Dfindit, a technical search engine that is powered by Cadenas www.kubotek3d.com

Sandvik has launched Cimatron 16, which includes a new user interface and increased automation for faster mould design, electrode creation, and NC programming, as well as a new emphasis on solutions for toolmakers including die addendum surfaces, mesh manipulation, and drafting www.cimatron.com

Further improvements have taken place in anisotropic meshing of leading edges. Updates to License Manager compatibility mean that, starting from v23 onwards, the Beta LM version 7 is a prerequisite for running any Beta Software Suite product. www.beta-cae.com

Railway rolling stock manufacturer Alstom has announced its adoption of the Replique on-demand 3D printing platform. It hopes to reduce complexity within its supply chain by using the platform to produce small batches of parts on demand and decentrally www.replique.io

CGTech has announced the latest release of Vericut v9.3, with strengthened core, improved collision checking and an increased limit on axes per subsystem. The aim here is smarter, more efficient manufacturing processes that improve simulation and streamline overall workflow www.cgtech.com

Beta CAE v23 launches for faster meshes eta CAE v23 has launched with an extensive list of highlights for simulation and analysis, including some impressive-sounding performance enhancements for its meshing capabilities. The company says that the unification of TOPO and MESH functionality in Beta CAE v23 provides an extraordinary boost to the average user as geometry and mesh are completely manipulated from one toolset. This has been supplemented by the redesign of common functions, with a modern, neat look and feel, common GUI, unified functions, as well as by the addition of new dedicated toolsets for the designer or the analyst. For CFD, Beta CAE claims an acceleration of 50% has been achieved for batch meshing, particularly mixed-type meshes.

ROUND UP

New simulation and analysis capabilities will be a boost for Beta CAE users

KittyCAD, a company building a product design infrastructure for the internet, has announced the launch of its API for hardware designers, enabling them to develop automated workflows that read, write and autogenerate metadata on top of hardware design files www.kittycad.io

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COMMENT

Lightweighting and topology optimisation are great, but if parts can’t be qualified, then who is to blame when things go wrong? Our columnist SJ finds something to ‘clack’ about, while tackling AM gyroids

SMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response, is a term that describes the sedative sensation of sounds that send happy tingles cascading through the body. A few of my much-loved ASMR sounds: the soft crackling of freshly baked bread as you tear it open, the barely audible flutter as you turn the page of your favourite book, and the triumphant ‘clack’ as I place a part on my boss’s desk that he told me was “unprintable” the week prior. The ‘unprintable’ part was a gyroid, one of my greatest loves. The gyroid was invented in the 1970s and is described as an infinitely connected Triply Periodic Minimalist Surface (TPMS). TPMS structures have a higher surface-to-volume ratio than common strut-based cellular structures, which can be tailored to suit specific engineering design requirements to enhance mechanical performance — think energy absorption for ballistics or heat transfer or lightweighting to remove material. But the general public may not be familiar with them, given how challenging they were to manufacture before the onset of 3D printing. Gyroids are my favourite structures, but there’s more than one way to lightweight a part. Strut-based latticing and topology optimisation are the other two underutilised design resources to reduce the amount of material in non-critical areas of your part. I see the greatest success with strutbased lattices in the medical sector, where we can 3D print implants with better osseointegration, since the porous structures more closely mimic those of anatomical bone. The porous nature of the lattice allows nutrients to flow through and around the lattice structure to aid in soft tissue and bone growth. (Mimicking nature’s biological designs? I’m getting that ASMR tingle again.) Topology optimisation is where 3D printing truly shines, as a part has

 its shape optimised for the given design space for a given set of loads, boundary conditions and constraints. Additionally, it allows you to efficiently combine multiple parts into one, while also reducing the amount of material required for your design. And that saves you not only cost, but time as well — especially if your organisation has invested in AI and machine learning.

NAILS ON A CHALKBOARD As I stood there with a smug ‘I told you so’ grin on my face, clacking my gyroid cube on his desk, my boss asked: “And how do you know it is sound all the way through? How can I trust that every point is where we think it is and that all the nodes are connected – even in places we can’t see?” My genius reply? “Uhhh…that’s a great question. I’ll get back to you.” I took upon the Sisyphean task of asking “What’s your favorite lightweighting method?” (or some variation thereof) as my networking ice-breaker for the ASME AM Industry Summit in June. To my surprise, 70% of the audience response cited topology optimisation. I asked a similar question at my very first Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) back in 2015, and the overwhelming response was strut-based latticing. So, I wondered, was this based solely on what was trendy in the media, or was there something behind it in the design or manufacturing space that I had missed? On Day Two, I followed up with a second round of questions and was able to discern that, like my boss, most of the higher up design decision makers were uncertain of how to tell if lattices were sound. This uncertainty was rapidly hindering adoption of the technology. But where is all of this uncertainty coming from?

OPPORTUNITY CLACKS Misophonia can generally be described as a decreased tolerance to specific sounds, triggering reactions such as anger,

Topology optimisation is where 3D printing truly shines, as a part has its shape optimised for the given design space and a given set of loads, boundary conditions and constraints

 annoyance or the fight-or-flight response. In a business context, it can be summed up in one word: Liability. If something goes wrong with a part that has been lightweighted, who falls on their sword? Is it the owner of the design? The owner of the printer? The printer manufacturer? Or does it fall on the owner/ licensor of the print software? Lightweighting could change business strategies across multiple sectors. As the technology grows, we can offer shorter lifecycles, greater customisation and more sustainable practices. However, if we were to impose liability on the printer manufacturer for any product the printer could potentially produce, we’d be creating excessive liability and damage the business case for 3D printing. After a long night reading papers on latticing, trying to find the answer to my boss’s question, I was early to work and making coffee when I overheard two members of our NDT team discussing the new CT software they were trying out. They were debating which demo part they should scan first. The grin slid easily back onto my face as I turned to them, coffee in hand, and said, “You fellas looking for a demonstration piece?” My other hand reached into my work jacket and tossed it across the table, where it landed with a very satisfying ‘clack’.

GET IN TOUCH: Contributor SJ is a metal additive engineer aka THEE Hottie of Metal Printing. SJ’s work involves providing additive manufacturing solutions and #3dprinting of metal parts to help create a decarbonised world.

12 AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2022 DEVELOP3D.COM

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COMMENT

Lightweight or bust? The business case for lightweighting and AM can come with some bottlenecks, but as Alexander Pluke writes, the solution often lies in a better understanding of family dynamics

he challenge when it comes to cool things is that they can lead even the smartest among us to miss the most obvious facts. And let’s face it: lightweighting is cool. But amidst the beautiful design thinking, there are headaches, too, because design is only the start of the production story. This is especially true when paired with additive manufacturing (AM), where new materials, processes and geometries fly in the face of tradition, and can be difficult to stomach all at once. There’s a lot to digest for design engineering’s wider family. First, in our analogy, we have the material science and simulation cousins, who must explain how these new materials and structures will perform. If behaviours can’t be predictably and repeatedly explained, then they can’t be used in real applications. Then the elder siblings of production engineering must manufacture these fantastic parts. If operating workflows are too complex and costly, then scale production won’t be achieved. Next, the aunts and uncles of quality engineering must ensure parts work as expected. If material and process variability combine with uncertain behaviours that are hard to measure, risks stack up and/or costs associated with avoiding part failure increase. Finally, the executives — the parents in our analogy — must satisfy business needs. If lightweighted AM parts aren’t attractive when compared to other, more certain options, then applications won’t graduate to production at scale.

FAMILY DYNAMICS Lightweighting is a business case that requires executive approval, and its success clearly relies on the whole family working well together. While creative design engineer geniuses (the teenagers, if I may?) are focused on stunning lightweight creations, their elder siblings and aunties around the table are

gawking at the implications. The parents, meanwhile, are questioning how much it will cost and when it will be ready. All the while, everyone in the family is trying to be supportive, but recounting the struggles that arose the last time they indulged ‘Junior’s next project’. The growing pains behind every lightweighting success story are a good sign. It shows that the engineering family is on a mission to adopt the designer’s newfangled approaches, but past methods of fixing production issues won’t work in this scenario. The solution is found in getting the family together, tearing them away from their own siloed activities (or phone screens) to talk together around the table. Grumbles arise, thoughts are shared, goals are set, and in the end, each has a clearer view of the other’s perspective. This is especially important when adolescents come of age, and everyone needs to reset their expectations and grow. In our analogy, this is easy to visualise, but in reality, it creates the logistical challenge of presenting a business case, in terms that the parents will understand, from a central pool of multidimensional information. And this becomes even more complex when different sides of the family speak different languages, and trade-offs in each choice affect different members in complex ways. The frequency of required meetings, coupled with the issue of translation loss between groups in the workflow, may mean the family needs to spend all its time around the table — with no actual work being done.

COMMUNICATION MATTERS This is one of the drivers for our work at Additive Flow: after a harrowing 80-hour week translating a ‘simple’ lightweight design to build prep with state-of-the art tools and back-and-forths between experts in the chain, I couldn’t bear repeating this torture each time we move from design to production. If families are engines for sharing and improving learning between generations,



The solution is found in getting the family together, tearing them away from their own siloed activities (or phone screens), to talk around the table



the equivalent for engineers are the technologies and practices that teams evolve and deploy over time. At Additive Flow, we’ve created a platform for consolidating and optimising across the different dimensions of data throughout the engineering family, while linking these with business case objectives for executive decision-making. Through deploying best-of-breed standards such as volumetric 3MF, we connect across the ecosystem, reducing my 80-hour handover to minutes. A unified optimisation interface allows production siblings and executive parents to trade off production speed and cost against design engineering’s optimality, while also keeping the aunties and uncles of quality engineering happy. In the same way that parents share experiences outside the school gates, crosslifecycle family members working together implies a culture of more open innovation and data sharing between industry players as well. More viable business cases equal more growth for everyone — and the multi-billion dollar AM student can graduate to the multitrillion dollar manufacturing world-of-work. As well as the commercial gains, there are also meaningful opportunities for real-life families. Each kilogram saved per printed part is equivalent to the CO2 impact of two deciduous trees. This means our industry has the potential to deliver environmental benefits equalling thousands of acres of forest, year on year. How’s that for an incentive to unlock the business case of lightweight AM for the next generation?

GET IN TOUCH: Alexander Pluke is CEO and founder of Additive Flow, a software for the simultaneous optimisation of the entire AM workflow, which has worked with companies including Saint-Gobain, Royal Haskoning, Tata Steel and Zeiss to maximise their AM value. hello@additiveflow.com DEVELOP3D.COM AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2022 15

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VISUAL DESIGN GUIDE COMMONWEALTH GAMES MEDALS Designed by four students from host city Birmingham’s School of Jewellery — Amber Alys, Francesca Wilcox and Catarina Rodrigues Caeiro — and manufactured by local company Toye, Kenning & Spencer, the 2022 Commonwealth Games medals celebrate diversity and inclusion

JEWEL-LIKE Instead of being round, the medal has a non-traditional shape, designed to resemble the pendant of a necklace and be worn as jewellery as well as a medal

INSIDE AND OUT Winners will be given a round box in which to keep the medal, featuring an aerial map design that provides a clear connection to the medal’s origins

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FOR ALL SHAPES AND SIZES The ribbon has been designed to allow athletes to adjust the length of the medal so that it sits in the correct position on anyone who wears it

CELEBRATING NETWORKS The embossed areas and the pattern on the box represent an aerial map of Birmingham’s road and canal network, as well as symbolising the journey that athletes take to reach their goal of competing in the Commonwealth Games

TACTILE EXPERIENCE The designers wanted athletes to be able to feel the medal as well as see it, so that those with a visual impairment could appreciate the pattern too

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SCAN ME

» Hill Helicopters is on a mission to bring a heightened sense of excitement to the business of luxury transport, by combining the glamour of the hypercar with the unparalleled convenience of vertical take-off. Claudia Schergna meets the brand propelling a new era of rotorcraft 20 AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2022 DEVELOP3D.COM

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The HX50 from Hill Helicopters is due for launch at the end of 2023

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wning a helicopter is like having your own magic carpet. There’s no need to worry about traffic, road closures, red lights or runways. It’s travel at its most luxuriously expedient. However, the personal helicopter industry has suffered in recent years from a lack of the new blood needed to bring competition and innovation to any sector. The team at Hill Helicopters intends to change that. The company’s launch product, the HX50, is dubbed a “flying supercar” by founder Jason Hill and is due to launch at the end of 2023. The aim is to position the brand on the cutting edge in both design and engineering, updating helicopter standards to rival the exclusivity and luxury seen in top automotive marques. The story begins when Jason Hill first spotted a gap in the market for a helicopter designed specifically for the modern private owner. These customers are some of the richest people on earth and they expect the very best, he reasons – but few manufacturers directly address their needs and expectations. “We have a lack of competition, because it’s a stagnant industry,” he says. “The price point has become completely disconnected from what’s economically viable. [Other companies] have got to the point where they’re doing less for more,” he says. “They are trying to piggyback a supply chain broken up into lots of different tiers, and trying to make a living and run an aerospace-qualified business off selling 20 [products] a year. Obviously, it’s got to be expensive.” What allows Hill to market his company’s products at a more competitive price is no secret, he says: “What we’ve done is to cut all that nonsense out,” he explains. “By vertically integrating, we’re going back to how we used to make aircraft in the early days of aviation, where the company makes the whole aircraft. We make everything.” This approach, he reasons, will enable the brand to sell

the HX50 at roughly half the price of the nearest five-seat helicopter on the market. But when buying a helicopter, retail price is just the tip of the iceberg. Additional costs come from three main areas, Hill explains. First, there’s depreciation; helicopters have a relatively short number of hours that they can fly before components need to be replaced and only a number of years before they need a major overhaul. Second, there’s the aforementioned lack of competition, which means the handful of companies that produce parts have a virtual monopoly. Third, there’s the cost of insurance, which is directly proportional to how expensive the asset is. “We have to find a way to sort those problems out for general aviation,” says Hill. The key is to make it possible for more people to be able to acquire a helicopter, either personally or as a small group or syndicate – way beyond the 12,000 people per year who currently learn to fly them. Another difficult aspect of designing and launching a new aircraft is dealing with regulations. Besides the challenges that come with meeting laws in the country where the aircraft is produced, there are international regulations to meet as well. These can prove tricky to negotiate, says Hill, because the stagnancy seen around design and engineering is also seen in the approaches taken by regulatory bodies.

The HX50’s GT50 engine was developed and built in-house by the Hill Helicopters engineering team

PROOF POINTS After working on early design schemes, engineering layouts, and looking into ways to upgrade traditional aircraft engines by using automotive derivatives – including types of diesels, two-stroke and four-stroke engines – Hill came to the conclusion that the technology he was after simply did not exist yet. Faced with this problem, he and a small team of engineers began preliminary work to prove that they could build a brand-new engine, a project that rapidly moved on to designing the entire aircraft. With their

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COVER STORY The app is ‘‘ generating

such a groundswell of excitement. It means we can communicate with customers exactly where we are, what we’re doing and how it’s going

’’

initial 3D CAD design showcasing the project, they were able to secure a £1.4m grant from Innovate UK to begin further development of the private-use HX50 and its commercial-use variant, the KC50. The difference between the models is minimal – simply a different approach to achieving airworthiness approval, Hill explains. Because of this, the launch date for the KC50 will be further off in the future. “It’s the same aircraft. We’ll just subject it to lengthy bureaucracy,” says Hill. “The HX model is purely focused on a streamlined path through regulations, much like it used to be in the old days, before the bureaucracy reached these dizzy heights that they’re at today.” This involves using experimental or amateur-build regulations, he continues, “where we can bring the owners to the factory and get them involved in building their own helicopters as part of the ownership experience.” The experience of being involved with the design and build of the helicopter is what attracts most customers, in fact. “One of the interesting questions [that comes up when] dealing with these kinds of people is: ‘What on earth do you buy for people who have already got everything in the world?’ And the answer is these kinds of once-in-a-lifetime experiences that money can’t buy.” How much future owners can expect to personalise their rotorcraft? Around 51%, says Hill. Through the Hill Helicopters app, they are connected directly with the development facility, can receive live updates, leave

feedback and ask the developers questions directly. “It’s generating such a groundswell of excitement,” says Hill. “It means that you’re properly communicating with all your customers about exactly where you are, exactly what you’re doing and exactly how it’s going.” The app will grow to include all the information one could possibly need about the management of an individual aircraft, with a portal for accessing safety and maintenance instructions. It also features a digital cockpit, where customers can choose from a wide range of options, from exterior paint colour to interior leather choices, personalising their helicopter before they visit the factory and have a chance to work side-by-side with engineers and technicians. Renders are also produced in-house using Blender, to create marketing materials that generate initial interest, as well as bespoke work to aid customer buy-in. “We use renders to allow us to validate the as-designed appearance of the general vehicle aesthetics, fits and finishes,” Hill explains. It’s a way to ensure that the quality of the aircraft matches the expectations of customers and the broader market before the design is finalised and the company commits to tooling. Besides being key for visualisation purposes while an aircraft is still in development, Hill foresees that rendering will be a key tool for the commercialisation of the aircraft, as it’s easier and more convenient to generate stills and videos with modern rendering tools than traditional photography, even when the helicopter is finished.

MODERN APPROACHES TO TRADITION

In contrast to the innovation seen in its design, the team at Hill began the development of the HX50 with the most traditional method: “Our design process starts on a white board, or on a piece of paper, or the back of an envelope,” he says. “We ideate, get the big picture and get all the bits in the right place. And then the next stage is to move into 3D and start concepting things. And then very quickly, we’ll bring in simulation.” To accommodate designers from different backgrounds and education, the team uses a mixture of software tools. But overall, the process relies heavily on the company’s backbone of PTC Creo for 3D CAD and Windchill for PLM, supplied by its CAD technology supplier Concurrent Engineering. The team runs initial simulations using methods including FEA and CFD to get an idea of the physical attributes of the concept, heat transfer, vibration characteristics, fluid dynamic issues and aerodynamics. Calculations are carried out using PTC Mathcad Prime, to make sure as much empirically derived data is used as possible. Analysis is performed using the Ansys suite. The team then moves on to more comprehensive analysis to simulate rotor aerodynamics, structural

1 The design process ●

starts with some free-hand sketches, and then moves to 3D CAD using PTC Creo 2 ● 3 With its Hill Digital ●

Cockpit, and integrated iPad system, the company aims to make flying the HX50 convenient and intuitive

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We’ve got ‘‘ the full suite

of tools you would need to be able to develop an aircraft to the greatest possible extent in the virtual world before you ever build stuff

’’

dynamics, flight dynamics, flight mechanics and control systems. “We’ve got the full suite of tools that you would imagine you would need to be able to develop an aircraft to the greatest extent possible in the virtual world before you build stuff,” says Hill. “And then once you’ve done as much as you can, the next trick is knowing when to stop. You’ve got to know when to break the pencils and take people’s keyboards off them!” Digital designs then move into physical prototyping, using HyperMill to programme the parts for in-house machining. The CAM phase is just as important as simulation, says Hill: “The thing that people need to be reminded of is that you learn so much by making things.” Early versions of the concept are produced, to make sure the design meets all the requirements and is fully compliant with what the manufacturing process can deliver. “Otherwise, you have to start that whole journey after you think you’ve finished.” Being vertically integrated is an enormous advantage, says Hill, as it allows more efficient communication between departments: “The guys that are designing stuff sit next to the guys that make stuff, and they sit next to the guys that run the machines. People can see that they’re not an island. They can’t just do what they want, and then chuck it over the fence, and have somebody else worry about it.” Building a strong, reliable company is just as important as making an innovative, effective helicopter, he adds: “We’re developing the processes that make the helicopter. Not just the helicopter.”

THE JOURNEY TO ZERO EMISSIONS Even though they are powered by standard helicopter jet fuel, Hill claims its helicopters are the most efficient way to take off vertically. The modern rotor systems, both for the main and tail rotors, are both more efficient and quieter than existing systems.

4 ● 5 ● 6 The HX50 features 5 ●

individual leather seats, which can be customised by customers during the aircraft’s build, via the Hill Helicopters app 7 Cleverly designed storage areas ●

make it easy for users to stow and retrieve their luggage 8 The Hill GT50 engine exploits ●

a 3-can combustor system, which offers greater fuel flexibility 9 Creating photorealistic renders ●

using Blender allows Hill Helicopters to validate designs and communicate with customers

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COVER STORY

9 This power system is complemented by the lowest drag coefficient of any helicopter in its size class. “We’re around a third of some similar size helicopters, because of the quality of the aerodynamic design. So our power consumption for a flight, particularly at higher speeds, is incredibly low,” he says. While he agrees traditional fuels are not sustainable in the long term, Hill’s actively on the hunt for ways to reduce the carbon footprint realistically in the short term. As he explains, “There’s no point in pretending that you’re going to be able to make a battery-powered helicopter anytime soon. It’s just not possible! A lot of the configurations that the top companies are looking at have worse energy efficiency than our helicopter.” Biofuels are the immediate solution, he reckons. Electrifying the helicopters will make them even better, but a way to electrify them without using batteries – which creates a lot of other environmental issues like unsustainable mining efforts and the difficulty of disposal – is yet to be found. “In the short term, the way to get to 95% carbon neutrality is to use appropriately sourced biofuels and sustainable aviation fuels,” he says. His own in-house developed engine, he points out, is designed to run on different sources of fuel, and these include biofuels.

‘‘ This is how we’re going to solve the technical challenges we face to make aviation more environmentally responsible in the short term. I’m not claiming that this is the answer for 30 years’ time. It’s the answer for now

’’

“This is how we’re going to solve the technical challenges we face to make aviation more environmentally responsible in the short term,” he says. “I’m not claiming that this is the answer for 30 years’ time. This is the answer for now. And it buys us time to solve the bigger problems with where we get all those electrons from.” This vision sits with what Hill calls a ‘second wave of general aviation’, a movement for which he wants to be a leader, helping save the industry from further neglect, bringing the aviation sector up to speed with modern automotive standards, and getting people interested in flying again. This wave is about fulfilling the desires of flying amateurs with models like the HX50, providing people with the magic carpet they’ve always dreamed of owning. www.hillhelicopters.com

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INTERVIEW

Q&A: CLEAR SKIES AHEAD FOR AEROSPACE AM? Aerospace is rapidly adopting additive manufacturing in all areas, from space rocket components to aircraft interiors. We asked Vinu Vijayan, aviation and space specialist at EOS, how the technology demands of companies in this sector are changing and where they’re planning to take us in future

: The aviation industry was hit hard by the pandemic. What trends are you seeing now, coming out the other side?

: I think that additive manufacturing (AM), contrary to other technologies, saw opportunities even during the crisis. The space industry has been substantially more resilient, and we see that the adoption of AM is substantially increasing. There is a really strong movement, from single-laser systems to large multi-laser systems, indicating that customers want more parts or bigger parts. We have been working with big companies and names in the space industry, but also with start-ups that are contributing towards the new space economy. The startups have begun investing in in-house manufacturing AM capabilities. That’s a key enabler. Earlier manufacturing had to be undertaken with select external companies with specific established infrastructure and competency, because it was too complex to be done internally. We saw this new space evolution happening in the US first, but it has now reached Europe, India, China, Japan and Korea. We see a lot of movement on the metal side, but also on the polymer side. Many aerospace qualifications are well underway, and aim to replace parts with additively manufactured components based on process-level qualifications, where the system as well as the material will be qualified. Apart from this, issues such as taking a circular-economy approach through elements such as a good processes for powder lifetime management are becoming very tangible and relevant, with research underway now.

Q A

: What is the ecosystem like for aerospace start-ups?

: All these aerospace-related start-ups have capexintensive ambitions – they need the funding. But what additive gives them is the ability to try out their concepts substantially faster. Even though AM might appear to be an expensive technology at first glance, if you’re not looking at producing the same parts for the next five years, without too much complexity, then in comparison to traditional technologies, the initial steps that you need to take are not so expensive. There is no need to invest in long-term fixed assets, tooling and so on, which means they can focus on their concepts and possibilities, rather than worry about manufacturing bottlenecks. So, I think that business model, product and design innovation are the focus, for which AM is an enabler.

Q A

: What is EOS doing to help with qualifying parts?

: For EOS, it is important as the first step to establish a healthy level of confidence and trust in the technology, which means that we are investing time and experience with clients to qualify material, systems and processes, not just partially. And then, once you have confidence on that level, we are trying to enable the end users of the technology, such as an airline, by building up the data needed to give them confidence in the process controls. On the materials side of things, we can test and establish industry-standard technology readiness levels, providing the data required to have a minimum level of compliance. This is then guaranteed through the quality control processes we have. Where an organisation is using distributed manufacturing, our systems can include functionality that enables secure digital rights management. This enables a customer to create a process for a 3D-printed part that can be sent to any hub to be printed, and the customer can be confident that nobody has tampered with it.

Q A

: What do you find most exciting about the future of additive and aerospace?

: The most exciting part of AM in aerospace is that it is constantly transforming the way components, sub-assemblies, and even complete systems are designed and manufactured. AM is transforming many parts of industry in an almost irreversible manner. This is happening both by increasing the footprint of AM (both in terms of size of parts and number of parts) and reimagining the design space. The other side is where you’re looking at the upstream process. There is a limit to what a human designer can do there to use AM to its maximum potential, and this is where companies like Hyperganic come in. The design for an aerospike engine that we showcased together recently hasn’t seen a single day of CAD – zero CAD! It was completely algorithmic. Algorithmic design is super-focused on performance. It lacks the bias of a designer who’s scared to try out things. The designs are then sent directly to our 3D printing system. The aerospike component was a case of a first-time-right print. Technology like this is creating components that are from a completely different solution space, a space that is almost inaccessible to us as humans.

About the Interviewee Vinu Vijayan is responsible for Aviation & Space within EOS for the EMEA region. He originally comes from the aerospace industry, having worked for companies such as Airbus, with several years of leadership roles in aerospace, manufacturing, sales, business development & project execution. Vijayan graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, followed by a Master’s in Automation & Robotics (Flight system identification) in German, and an MBA from the Collège des Ingénieurs, Paris

www.eos.info

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‘‘

Algorithmic design is superfocused on performance. It lacks the bias of a designer who is scared to try out new things

’’

Along with partner Hyperganic, EOS recently showed off this generatively designed aerospike engine

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LEVEL

UP » After hitching a ride on SpaceX technology, Launcher’s plan is to place in orbit private cube satellites. Stephen Holmes hears how in-house additive manufacturing helps Launcher keep tab on the costs of being a cosmic courier

‘‘

As a modern space and rocket company, we have several important goals. The first and most obvious one is for Orbiter to deliver the lowest cost in the industry for the highest propulsive capability

’’

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PROFILE

ith the small satellite revolution ready for take off, Launcher plans to become a big name in the business of precisely placed satellites. After first hitching a ride on the SpaceX SmallSat Rideshare Program, Launcher’s Orbiter satellite transfer vehicle will then independently venture on into space, before launching satellites of its own. It is estimated that, this way, a 400kg payload of cubesats and small satellites can be deployed per mission, allowing them to be precisely placed into whatever orbit their owners desire. Beginning in 2024, the company will offer its own launch service—Launcher Light. This is a liquid-fuelled rocket measuring 15.2m long and 1.1m in diameter, and capable of carrying 150 kg and 105 kg payloads into lowearth orbit and sun-synchronous orbit respectively. Development timelines for Launcher are short, to

say the least. Orbiter’s design began as soon as SpaceX announced in early 2020 that it would begin selling payload space on its Falcon 9 rocket. Based in Hawthorne, California, the Launcher team realised it could make its satellite deployment system compatible and decided to fast-track the project. None of this would have been possible without additively manufactured metal components, according to Launcher head of manufacturing Tim Berry. The most challenging of these are produced on a Velo3D Sapphire 3D printing system. Before joining Launcher, Berry worked at SpaceX for close to a decade. During this time, he led the Falcon 9’s second-stage integration team. That work was followed by leadership roles on the Dragon’s crew and cargo capsules, before transitioning to head of additive manufacturing. Today, he oversees Launcher’s 24,000 square foot factory floor and its team of machinists, welders and technicians,

Once launched into space, Orbiter can independently send off small satellites of its own

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PROFILE

1 Optimising payload as well as the company’s small fleet of metal 3D printers, ● volume is vital to chief among them being the Sapphire systems.

prosperity and growth for Launcher 2 By using 3D ●

printing in-house, the company is also able to cut time and costs associated with new parts

‘‘

The team at Velo3D took the challenge and we ended up with a finished part that exceeded all of our performance objectives. That was the beginning of our relationship

’’

to achieve that, it’s critical to have in-house design and manufacturing capabilities. “Every time you buy a separation ring, propulsion SPACE-PROVEN TURBOPUMP system or support structure from a third party, your costs To begin the design process, Launcher licensed the and lead time easily rise by a factor of 10. So instead of drawing for a space-proven turbopump, and then set the week or so it takes us to design an engine, print, and about improving its design using 3D printing. test it, we would spend maybe two or three months with One notable part is the engine’s shrouded impeller, an outside provider. It’s prohibitive.” a critical and complex Inconel part that spins at 30,000 Berry interjects and points to the fuel tanks as a typical rpm, which must withstand more than 300 bar of outlet example. “Shop around for a space-graded tank able pressure, and is filled with notoriously hard-to-print, to withstand 3,000 psi of pressure and you’ll probably zero-degree angle surfaces. hear lead times of 8 months to two years, especially if “The team at Velo3D took the challenge and we they’re custom,” he said. “That’s not an option in our ended up with a finished part that exceeded all of our environment, so as with many of our components, we took performance objectives,” says Berry. “That was the the approach of designing based on our available tools.” beginning of our relationship.” As it happens, the Orbiter’s 22-litre tanks exactly match Launcher subcontracted most of its parts to a network the Sapphire’s build volume. Launcher began by printing of contract manufacturers. And while those companies the parts out of Inconel, and although they performed did a good job, CEO Max Haot realised that the company well, Berry and the team started looking for ways to would never achieve his goal of fast, flexible and above all optimise the design. Moving to lighter-weight titanium cost-competitive manufacturing unless Launcher became was the obvious choice. as vertically integrated as possible. “That’s what brought us to our second machine from “As a modern space and rocket company, we have Velo3D,” he explained. “It can print the exact same tank several important goals,” says Haot. “The first and most but with less weight and higher pressure capabilities. We obvious one is for Orbiter to deliver the lowest cost in already thinned the walls a bit compared to the original the industry for the highest propulsive capability. But design, but once we have the first few launches under our belt, we’ll probably reduce them even further as we continue to push the envelope.” That’s one of the biggest advantages of having inhouse printing capabilities, he notes, as Launcher can continually push for more aggressive designs and higher performance without losing a lot of time or spending a lot of money. As such, the company is 3D printing a range of components on its Sapphire systems, among them brackets and other secondary structures, combustion chambers and injectors. “We don’t have to completely change our design to make it work with the Velo3D printer,” said Berry. “And in most cases, we can use whatever geometry we had planned. There’s no need to make a bunch of compromises like there so often is with metal AM.” The start-up hopes to soon place payloads into customised orbits for a little more than $8,000 per kilogram. “These rideshares occur every three months, but if SpaceX’s timing or trajectory does not meet our customers’ requirements, we’ll also have a premium launch service through our Launcher Light offering,” said Haot. “Either way, these services come at a price tag that’s unprecedented in the space industry.” www.launcherspace.com

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Messe Frankfurt Group

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LUNAR RETURN

» As NASA prepares to return to the moon with its Artemis mission, we speak with Aerojet Rocketdyne, a company that is modernising systems from the Apollo era to accelerate future moon missions

t Aerojet Rocketdyne, a producer of advanced propulsion space systems, engineers have optimised the design of a thruster module previously proven in space during the Apollo programme moon missions nearly 50 years ago. Used to orient and propel the Orion crew module in space, not only is the new Reaction Control System (RCS) quad thruster 67% lighter, but it also helps reduce the overall production cost of the thruster by 66%, enabling fast, economical, and sustainable lunar exploration. In preparation for NASA’s Artemis programme and other commercial efforts that aim to explore and colonise the moon, the engineering team redesigned the RCS module by leveraging the advancements of the five past decades in propulsion, design and manufacturing technologies. Having already successfully demonstrated that 3D printing could help consolidate the assembly of the thruster’s injector block as a single component, the team needed to further optimise the design for weight and cost – making the 600-plus thrusters required to make an exploration effort the size of the Artemis mission economically viable. The legacy design of the RCS module consisted of the four thrusters, a manifold that feeds the fuel and oxidiser, and a multi-part, thin-walled casing to piece everything together. James Horton, an aerospace engineer and mission architect at Aerojet Rocketdyne and his team identified many opportunities for improvement.

(Above) Aerojet Rocketdyne is a key partner of NASA on preparations for the Artemis mission (Below) 3D printing has been used to create parts for the Reaction Control System (RCS) quad thruster

The ability to reduce the number of components through part and function consolidation immediately reduced the cost of assembly, while consolidation also reduced potential points of failure, increasing the system’s reliability. Aerojet Rocketdyne’s engineers also decided to incorporate advancements in rocket propulsion technology to improve the system’s performance, adding a more reliable rocket fuel and oxidiser combination. This is easier to store during long space flights and requires less energy to prevent freezing, reducing the system’s overall energy consumption and weight. Using nTopology, the design team successfully shelled the part on its first attempt. As a bonus, filets could be added to all edges to alleviate stress concentrations and improve the part’s fatigue strength. To further refine the structure, Horton’s team controlled key design parameters using nTopology’s field-driven design, allowing it to create a smooth transition in the lattice beam thickness — thinner in the centre and thicker near the shell — to further reduce the part’s weight. In a few hours, Aerojet Rocketdyne’s engineers were able to create a manufacturing-ready design candidate with a 2.5x factor of safety, based on the maximum tubing pressure. The part was produced using a Velo3D Sapphire 3D printer in Titanium 6Al-4V. The material has approximately half the density of the Inconel 718 used to build the legacy part, helping to further reduce the thruster weight. www.rocket.com

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PROFILE

TOP-DOWN PROTECTION As summer sees travellers return to the skies, aircraft makers are finding innovative ways to control in-cabin airflow. Stephen Holmes speaks to Pexco about how the company has engineered a creative solution to keep passengers breathing easy in their seats

ontrolling airflow on passenger aircraft has never been more important. Yet long before Covid reared its head, designers and engineers were already working on improving the onboard experience for passengers. Pexco Aerospace was one such company looking to improve air circulation in plane interiors — keeping air moving not just along walkways and around passengers’ heads, but right down to the HEPA filter collection points by their feet. However, as the company’s engineers researched this idea, they quickly discovered they were not alone. At product design consultancy Teague, others had already developed a concept that could be retrofitted to ‘gaspers’, the ceiling vents above passengers. A partnership between Pexco and Teague soon followed, in which Pexco acquired the rights to Teague’s design. “We felt like [Teague] was trying to accomplish the same thing we were: we had patented the sidewall technologies and they had started the patent process of this AirShield technology. So we really felt like we had it pretty well covered,” says Pexco president of aerospace, Jon Page. The AirShield design, installed over the top of existing air vents, repurposes purified air from the HEPA filtration systems, in order to create protective air barriers around and in between each passenger. Nozzle tips harness the Bernoulli principle, drawing in surrounding cabin air and doubling resulting airflow, while also reducing shared air particles between neighbouring passengers in an economy cabin by 76%. The focus for the initial design was narrow body passenger aircraft, specifically the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320, says Page. There’s more of them around and more people flying on them, he reasons, especially as the industry bounces back from Covid. 34 AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2022 DEVELOP3D.COM

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‘‘

We’ve looked at a lot of different technologies for AirShield in the future, but for now, it’s about getting it certified and on to aeroplanes

’’

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PROFILE

FREE FLOW OF IDEAS Initially, the team started by assessing CFD performance, building on what Teague had done using Ansys Fluent, adjusting the CAD designs in Solidworks, and then creating over 20 different versions that were then 3D printed for physical testing. The ability to prototype so many iterations was a key factor in perfecting the design, especially given the size of part and the cost of its tooling, which would run to around $600,000 to cut. Using its in-house 3DXTech Gearbox HT2 3D printer to produce single-piece FDM prototypes, the final design was then reengineered to make it easier to manufacture using injection moulding. “We went through that whole process so that, when we engage with our toolmakers, we understand, ‘Can we get this undercut?’, and ‘Can we do all these things?’” explains Page. “When you get into mass production, we have to go to injection moulding.” The innovation doesn’t end with the tooling. Pexco has a long history of polymers development, creating unique formulas to match every part’s niche requirements and enabling them to fully pass strenuous FAA testing. “The requirements are a lot higher for fire protection, and it has to be lightweight, but also incredibly durable. So, it’s not like a standard type of plastic. It’s very specialised,” says Page. That’s why Pexco invests in technology and personnel to be able to produce its own highly customisable substrates for plastics, giving it market agility. For AirShield, this means Pexco was able to add an anti-bacterial additive to the polymer — important, given its function and position in the cabin. “Because if [passengers] see it, they’re going to touch it!” laughs Page. “Even though they can’t really adjust it, they’re gonna see something new!”

FANTASTIC PLASTIC The supply chain challenges of recent years have seen Pexco move further into specialty polymer production, says Page. “We’re seeing air people calling us daily asking us if we’ve got 200lb of this, or 800lb of this, or 1,000lb of this. And it’s been very interesting; we’ve ended up becoming like a distributor of plastics by accident because of supply chain challenges.” This knowledge has stood Pexco in good light, both with customers who want the lightest possible product, and with testing authorities that need it to meet key safety standards. “We know what makes it lightweight, but it also has to perform in the burn and the durability tests. We can make this AirShield bulletproof, but it would weigh six pounds and fall off the ceiling,” states Page. The production AirShield will weigh under a pound, but is remarkably durable. “We’ve looked at a lot of different technologies for this in the future, to where maybe we can make it lighter by putting some recycled carbon fibre in and some other things, but right now, it’s about getting it certified and getting it on aeroplanes.” Page remarks that aerospace is an extremely conservative industry – nobody wants to be the first until

3 it has full FAA approval – but once AirShield achieves this (and at the time of writing, it was at the penultimate stage), then it is expected that take-up will be swift as carriers look to enhance the onboard experience and give 1 AirShield creates improved air-quality assurances to passengers. ● an individual The use of AirShield, after all, is a powerful indicator protective air barrier that a carrier is doing everything it can to make journeys for each passenger as safe as possible — a bit like the plastic barriers that 2 Each part must be ● separate staff and customers in a bank or supermarket. capable of passing “There’s a visual cue that this company is concerned with stringent FAA tests 3 Pexco has included what’s going on,” says Page. And that will be a valuable ● an anti-bacterial reassurance for passengers, many of whom may be additive to the embarking on their first trip for some years. polymer used to build www.flyairshield.com

AirShield

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09/08/2022 17:00

PICKING UP During the century, some high-profile designs suffered cataclysmic failures as a result of naturally occurring frequencies not being calculated, says Laurence Marks. While we have the tools to calculate them today, some engineers still overlook this issue, he warns

ecently, I had the chance to catch up with a friend who was an aerospace engineer in the 1960s. He worked on some incredible projects, such as the Apollo programme and the F105 Thunderchief supersonic fighter-bomber. As he recounted over drinks, if bombs from the F105 were dropped even slightly out of sync – measured in mere hundredths of a second – a vibration was initiated that rapidly grew in magnitude through the body of the plane, until it reached a level forcing the pilot to bailout. This, for me at least, is the new physics textbook classic, overtaking the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, where miscalculated vibrations tore the suspension bridge apart, causing it to collapse into the ocean in 1940. I haven’t written much about dynamics in these articles, but this conversation reminded me that I ought to do

so. All structures have a resonant or natural frequency. In fact, they generally have quite a few, and these are a property – just like mass, colour or surface finish. You don’t have to do anything to the object for it to have a natural frequency, and it’s a metric that can be quite easily calculated. Or at least, it can if you’ve got a finite element analysis (FEA) programme. Degree-level engineering courses spend a good deal of time taking students through how to calculate the natural frequency of a spring/mass system. And I’ve probably spent too long here talking about how finite element models are essentially elaborate arrays of springs. So, if we add a representation of the mass to our array of springs, the natural frequencies can these days be extracted from the whole thing, if not with ease, then at least with speed.

Laurence Marks built his first FEA model in the mid-1980s and his first CFD model in the early 1990s. Since then, he’s worked in the simulation industry, in technical, support and management roles. He is currently a visiting research fellow at Oxford Brookes University, involved in a wide range of simulation projects, some of which are focused on his two main areas of interest: life sciences and motorsports

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When designing structural components, it’s important to consider how energy from the operating environment, such as external airflows, can excite the vibrational response [Credit: Cadence and Bombardier]

P FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED For lots of design scenarios, this is critically important information. Knowing at what frequency things will kick off – like an F105 dropping its bomb load asymmetrically or a bridge in Washington State with a curious relationship between its natural frequency and the airflow over its deck – is pretty important. The solution will also give you a mode shape, or a series of mode shapes, which correspond to the natural frequencies. Armed with this information, modifying the design to shift frequency away from the troublesome range becomes an intuitive process. It should be a basic part of every design process – but it almost certainly isn’t. Which brings me neatly to what happens when the world around our design or machine starts getting involved. In the real world, for the dynamics to reveal themselves, something has to be putting energy into the system and, to some extent, there will also be energy escaping the system: excitation and damping. Generally, it’s easier to assess the first than the second, though both can be added to finite element studies. At this point, the game gets a lot more serious. Earthquakes, industrial machinery and lots of other forcing functions can all be modelled. However, damping remains a problem, because it’s the dissipation of energy, and it takes many forms – friction in joints,

heat generated as material is deformed, and so on. There are many ways energy leaves the system, one being by moving around the fluid surrounding the object. Which takes us back to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, because not only will fluid damp the vibrations, it can also excite them. If the natural frequency and the flow transients are at the same frequency, the results can be ‘exciting’, to say the least. If we want to simulate the problem, we enter the world of closely coupled multiphysics. Twenty years ago, there was plenty of talk about multiphysics and FSI. So by now, you might expect it to have become commonplace. But it hasn’t. So why isn’t fully coupled CFD and structural FEA a regular thing in the world of simulation? In some places, it plainly is, but it’s not exactly run of the mill in everyday simulation workflows, even given the huge increases in compute power now available to everyone, either on their desktop or in the cloud. Like so many simulation holy grails, usage may well be restricted to those people with a combination of big budgets, big problems and a pretty comprehensive understanding of the physics involved. That would certainly describe the designers of the Century Series jets (including the F105) back in the day. But even here and now, we get regular reminders of what can go wrong in design when vital calculations get neglected – not least with this Formula 1 season’s ‘porpoising’ cars.

‘‘ Modifying a

design to shift frequency away from the troublesome range should be a basic part of every design process — but it almost certainly isn’t

’’

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Sponsored content

There are so many functionalities for different utilities we need. It’s all in one package with Fusion 360. I can’t think of a competing product in the space that comes close to that — Jonathan Ward, CEO, ICON

robotics in junior high school and an Instagram post. “My son was really interested in pursuing a career in mechanical engineering,” Ward says. “I asked about it on our Instagram account and the responses were amazing. Autodesk was one of them.” After a trip to the Autodesk Technology Center San Francisco and getting a glimpse at Fusion 360 back in 2016, Ward was excited to see how he could begin to incorporate it into his work. “We were getting pretty frustrated with Solidworks,” he says. As Fusion 360 grew as a product and its capabilities expanded over the years, Ward was able to include it more and more throughout his design and manufacturing processes. Now, Fusion 360 is the goto for a variety of components—whether it’s knobs, steering wheels, handles, grills, panels, you name it. Moving forward with new projects and Fusion 360 Throughout the pandemic, ICON has been as busy as ever with multiple jobs. Like most industries, they’re still feeling the pinch of supply chain issues, tracking down the right materials, and labour shortages.

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But Ward is continuing to innovate and dream big with Fusion 360. Right now, he’s looking into retrofitting EV systems into their internal combustion engine intended platforms. He’s thinking ahead to his next venture, too. After designing a watch in Fusion 360 a few years ago, he’s now using the software in another unconventional way. This time it’s for handcrafted leather goods. According to Ward, the leather goods industry is rife with paper-based processes and workflows. With Fusion 360, he can both protect his IP and easily produce one-to-one scale PDFs for manufacturing. At the end of the day, Ward can use Fusion 360 for ICON or wherever his next passion project takes him. “There are so many functionalities for different utilities we need,” he says. “It’s all in one package with Fusion 360. I can’t think of a competing product in the space that comes close to that.” Learn more about Fusion 360 here: https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/

05/08/2022 12:07

talking heads Time stands still for no one and certainly for no design tool. We asked executives from leading companies in the market, plus some more recent entrants, for their opinions on the development of CAD, from initial concepting workflows to the impact of artificial intelligence. How can we keep our software up to date?

IAN PENDLEBURY FUSION 360 VP OF ENGINEERING AUTODESK traditional process needs to persist, so we don’t see it going away anytime soon. Instead, we expect to continue seeing a hybrid set of offerings.

Q : How do you view the increase in AI impacting design tools the most?

A : In the very short term, Q : How do you imagine sketch tool environments evolving?

A : As cloud-powered CAD becomes more prevalent and its AI capabilities more accessible, the need to define a design via sketches is giving way to describing the requirements and receiving design suggestions from the computer, taking a multitude of factors into consideration. The computer is beginning

AI will get much better at quickly and naturally making design suggestions to a CAD user that are close to what that person would otherwise create on their own. One example we are working on will automate the timeconsuming process of creating a 2D drawing from a 3D CAD model. Machine learning will look at how a designer typically dimensions similar parts and automatically create a drawing that is very close to what that designer would likely draw.

‘‘

AI will get much better at quickly making design suggestions that are close to what a CAD user might create on their own

’’

to offer design suggestions that balance all the design requirements. For the first time, CAD is truly becoming computer aided.

Q :

READ OUR PANELLISTS’ ANSWERS IN FULL AT ■ www.develop3d.com/cad/the-future-of-cad

Q : When will CAD software be able to take advantage of modern graphics APIs for better 3D performance and advanced features like GPU ray tracing?

Downloading regular updates to a 3D CAD package is A : We are actively working on more common – is this the way adopting USD (Universal Scene all 3D CAD is now heading? Description) and the USD Hydra rendering framework, A : While we see great benefits which are fast becoming to all users being on the same industry standards, into Fusion cloud-powered, up-to-date, 360. USD is all about incredible always-on version of a 3D performance through heavy use CAD package, there are also of multithreading and GPUs. instances where the more ■ www.autodesk com

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TALKING HEADS

MANISH KUMAR CEO SOLIDWORKS DASSAULT SYSTÈMES

STEPHANOS ANDROUTSELLISTHEOTOKIS CO-FOUNDER & SENIOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPER PHENOMETRY

Q : How do you view the

expected to complete the current operation and what the current options are help guide the user and reduce their cognitive load.

increase in AI impacting design tools the most?

A : We have to recognise that

Q : How do you imagine sketch tools evolving?

A : There are new design workflows that are evolving where sketching is becoming less important. Two essentially sketch-less workflows are the use of direct edit methods for the reuse and/ or modification of existing components, and the adoption of Sub-D modelling. One very important workflow where sketching is evolving is in the reuse of freehand sketches, ink, or imagery as the starting point or reference for designs. Making use of existing artwork to create sketch entities will be a great time saver for industrial designers. You can also expect to see the increasing use of AI to anticipate the needs of the user during repetitive tasks and recognise the recreation of similar sketches, by dissecting past designs and automatically notifying users that a very similar sketch already exists.

the CAD design process can include repetitive, boring tasks. We see AI playing a huge role in augmenting a designer’s workflows by carrying out mundane tasks, freeing up time to be creative. Browser-based tools in 3D Creator, 3D SheetMetal Creator, and 3D Sculptor have AIbased Design Assistants built into them. Machine learning algorithms learn from the way the user designs and reduces or automates repetitious tasks, such as selecting edges, inserting mates, or predicting new sketch entities and giving users an option to insert them automatically.

Q : How do you imagine the users of your software will change and how do you see this impacting the software?

A : Today 3D has been democratised to the point that it has become a universal language to collaborate and share ideas between all age groups and geographies. It is no longer just about providing a product, but also delivering a great experience around this – it must be aesthetically pleasing, reliable, robust, and perform well during regular use. ■ www.3ds.com

‘‘

3D has been democratised to the point that it has become a universal language to collaborate and share ideas

’’

Q : Will all 3D CAD rely on OTA updates, or will annual releases and standalone products manage to survive?

A : While there is still wide use Q : How do you imagine sketch tool environments evolving?

A : Browser-based collaboration will definitely play an important role. Google Docsstyle collaboration tools have already been adopted by major CAD software such as

of standalone products, the shift towards cloud-based benefits is clear and irreversible. No one enjoys the overheads incurred by downloading updates, installing them and making sure nothing clashes or breaks. Similarly, a fully cloud-based CAD software product vendor doesn’t have to worry about multiple platform compatibility, system issues or

‘‘

Advanced gestures, touchscreens and more direct interaction with the model are key for a more intuitive user experience Onshape, allowing their users to interact and collaborate with each other on shared documents, while at the same time reaping the benefits of behind-the-scenes updates.

’’

have to maintain countless code branches for each version or platform.

Q : How do you imagine the

users of your software will change and how do you see this Q : How do you imagine impacting the software? designers will interact with CAD UIs in the future? A : We think digital innovative design tool use is going to reach A : It’s high time that CAD UIs significantly more users in the moved away from countless next few years, with products that huge menus with items and are easy to use and have sharing sub-items that users need to and collaboration capabilities spend a lot of time memorising. being significantly favoured. Advanced gestures, Phi’s architecture and touchscreens, and more direct approach to freeform modelling interaction with the model are were designed with the above in key for a more intuitive user mind, so the software can cope experience. Constant, non- with a wide range of users. obtrusive feedback on what is ■ www.phi3d.com DEVELOP3D.COM AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2022 43

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talking heads

JAY TEDESCHI PRODUCT MANAGEMENT PRINCIPAL, ONSHAPE PTC with it and with others using it. For users who have spent a career using more traditional file-based systems, the transition to these tools is more of a philosophical change than anything else. This subset of users quickly sees the advantages of working with these new tools once they overcome their initial resistance to adopting this new way of interacting with both design data Q : Downloading regular and design team members updates to a 3D CAD package is more common – is this the way Q : How do you view the all 3D CAD is now heading? increase in AI impacting design tools the most? A : To some degree, almost all vendors now supply their users A : We feel that one of the with hotfixes/updates between strongest uses of AI is in major releases. What we can areas of the product which are say is that Onshape’s full SaaS typically not considered when implementation means that discussing AI as a design tool Onshape users do not have to aid. As a full SaaS/Cloud native deal with product downloads, product, Onshape can compile installations or updates. data about not only how the product is being used, but also Q : How do you imagine the how effectively it is running on users of your software will a specific network, on a specific change and how do you see this server, at certain times, with impacting the software? certain traffic, and so on. All of that information A : For a generation of users can then be analysed and well-versed with collaborative development decisions made applications, Onshape is in response to the data. This one more tool that leverages promises to have a much this familiar paradigm. The larger impact overall on user fact that it is a design and productivity than just the engineering tool becomes current implementations. secondary to how they interact ■ www.onshape.com

‘‘

Users quickly see the advantages of working with new tools once they overcome their initial resistance to adopting new ways of interacting with design data and design team members

’’

ISTVAN CSANADY CEO SHAPR3D Q : How do you imagine the users of your software will change and how do you see this impacting the software?

A : I believe that accessing CAD will not be a privilege of a small, highly trained group of engineers, but it will become a tool that all stakeholders can access. For designing, reviewing,

‘‘

CAD doesn’t need to be clumsy and fragile. It’s only like that because legacy CAD companies are still building software like they did in the 1990s. It’s time to change that

’’

Q : How do you imagine conceptualising, collaborating, designers will interact with prototyping and manufacturing CAD UIs in the future? – all stakeholders will be able to use the same design platform in A : Touch and stylus is a more the future. natural and often faster way New generations of CAD to use a CAD system than users expect their software to a keyboard and a mouse. be accessible across different The only thing that could be devices: they want an equally even more natural is a well- great mobile and desktop designed AR or VR experience, experience. Consumer-grade which is something that still usability and accessibility of belongs to the future. software is a basic expectation, not just a gimmick. Q : Downloading regular Legacy CAD companies are updates to a 3D CAD package is having a tough time adapting to more common – is this the way this tectonic shift in customer all 3D CAD is now heading? expectations.

A : The truth is that CAD is Q : When will CAD software just a piece of software like any other software. It doesn’t need to be clumsy and fragile - it’s only like that because legacy CAD companies are building software like they did in the 1990s and their customers are suffering from those obsolete practices. It’s time to change that.

be able to take advantage of modern graphics APIs for better 3D performance and advanced features like GPU ray tracing?

A : Well, Shapr3D already does and will do even more, but I can’t talk about that just yet! ■ www.shapr3d.com

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TALKING HEADS

2022

PAUL BROWN SENIOR MARKETING DIRECTOR, PRODUCT ENGINEERING SOFTWARE SIEMENS CAD, being able to say, ‘have I got anything similar?’ instead of ‘Shape Search’, makes it easier for users to get more from their systems no searching for file names or icons. NX Voice Assistant uses Microsoft cognitive services to allow users to drive NX and increase productivity.

Q : How do you view the Q : How do you imagine sketch increase in AI impacting design tool environments evolving?

tools the most?

A : We have been employing A : The use of machine AI to help remove the need for the user to predefine the rules and constraints, finding and implying them at the time of edit without forcing the user to do the work. This makes sketching far more flexible, and faster for doing initial design studies and concepts. This approach allows people

learning and artificial intelligence will have a massive impact on making it more productive for users to use CAD tools, having systems that can learn and promote best practice from power users and have that knowledge shared around an organisation delivers massive benefits.

‘‘

The future for AI will see it expanding to offer more help and advice to users in design decisions, acting as a support for choices in design

THIS NOVEMBER MEET THOSE SHAPING THE FUTURE OF CAD

3 stream conference

FREE develop3dlive.com

’’

to think about what they want The future for AI will see it to create rather than trying to expanding to offer more help battle with rules or constraints. and advise users in design decisions, acting as a support Q : How do you imagine for choices in design. designers will interact with Areas like generative CAD UIs in the future? engineering opens more opportunities to use AI to help, A : New approaches such as advise and learn, doing rapid voice are beginning to break design iterations automatically, through. Using voice and increasing use of AI in this cognitive services allows you area will help based tools to drive CAD commands using helping engineers make better natural language, freeing the decisions faster. user from having to speak ■ www.sw.siemens.com

1 November

2022 University of Sheffield

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FEATURE

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JEWEL IN THE CROWN Blending new technologies and ancient traditions isn’t easy. Claudia Schergna talks to jewellery designers looking to make their industry faster and greener and their products more tailored to customer demand

‘‘

For me, it only makes sense to use 3D printing if you can express the full potential of the technology

’’

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FEATURE

S Alberto Ghiradello 1 ● 5 ● 4 ● 6 ● 7 ● 8 ● 10 ● 15 ● 18 ● 19 ● 20 ● 23 ● 24 ● 4 The Synapses ●

collection was designed by Ghirardello for the online store Cyrcus Design and is 3D printed on demand in either nickel-plated steel or gold-plated steel. 8 The Sunrise ●

collection was designed by Ghirardello for the collection is available on the online platform Septem, both in the metal and the plastic version, and is 3D printed on demand using SLS or SLA 3D printers Zoe Sherwood 12 ● 21 Sherwood’s ‘Save ● Earth’ collection is 3D printed using Fishy Filament material and sold at Selfridges Tariq Riaz 9 ● 11 ● 13 ~● 14 ● 16 ● 22 ● 11 3D printing changed ●

the game for Riaz, as it allows him to quickly print resin prototypes of his designs and visualise them at an early stage of the process

●

22 Riaz

designed the Abrazo collection of stretchable rings, for bodies that change with age, pregnancy, arthritis and temperature Christian Tse 2 ● 3 ● 17 Thanks to ● Desktop Metal, Tse has integrated direct metal 3D printing into his workflow using 925 sterling silver

ince the dawn of time, humans have adorned their bodies. To do so, they have used the materials and technologies available to them: from stone and bone, to gemstones, to today’s 3D printing and CAD. Digital technologies are now a powerful asset in the jewellery industry, but most designers are still keen to maintain history and tradition. As a result, a lot of modern jewellery aims to blend centuries-old methods with digital innovation, while making the industry faster, more sustainable and accessible. Take the example of lost wax casting: introduced in around 2,000BC, it remains one of the most widely applied technologies in jewellery design. But these days, hand-sculpted models are replaced by 3D printing in materials that have the same melting point as wax. Such advancements enable jewellers to speed up and simplify production, without their workflows turning it upside-down. That’s certainly the case for award-winning, third-generation jeweller Christian Tse, who represents in his style and workflow the meeting point between high-tech equipment and tradition. Having worked in his family business since the age of 12, he is both knowledgeable about the engineering behind jewellery and excited about where new technologies can take it. When starting a new project, Tse likes to first come up with a pencil and paper sketch. From there, it is translated into CAD, so that any mechanical movement can be simulated and the final product can be visualised. “It helps us perfect the design before manufacturing so that it will move well and wear well,” he explains. The CAD model is then 3D printed in wax and cast in silver, with the finished article having passed through the skilled hands of at least six tradespeople: a CAD technician, a caster, a jeweller, a setter, a polisher, and a quality assurance expert. A partnership with Desktop Metal has given Tse the chance to integrate direct metal 3D printing into his workflow using 925 sterling silver. The material is now qualified for Desktop Metal’s large-format Production System platform. Support for other precious metal alloys, including 18K yellow gold, is being developed. Direct metal 3D printing can be very expensive, especially for pieces that are not mass-produced. However, Tse and his team feel it is an investment worth making: “We foresee direct 3D printing will overtake casting. Powder manufacturing is key in direct printing. As more companies adopt this 3D printing technology, cost savings will be achieved when the company sees the advantages.”

FASTER AND EASIER PROTOTYPING 3D printing remains key for prototyping, helping designers visualise what they are working on and allowing them to share a tangible model with customers before production begins. Jewellery designer Tariq Riaz explains that, at the beginning of his career, he would use clay or wood to make models. But the process took so long that, by the time it was finished, he had often lost interest in the original idea. “3D printing changed the game for me,” he says, explaining that it allows him to send an STL file to his desktop 3D printer and, within a few hours, hold the physical design in his hands. A former mechanical engineer, Riaz started his career

in jewellery design for a very practical reason: resizing his wife’s wedding ring so she could wear it when her fingers got swollen during pregnancy. His wife loved the ring and he loved designing it. When he decided to start making jewellery for a living, he didn’t abandon his engineer mindset and kept practicality at the forefront of his mind: “While designing my first few pieces of jewellery, I realised that a perfect size ring is a concept, because a ring must pass over the middle of the finger, which is bigger than the final place on the finger for a ring.” This was the start of Abrazo Fit, a collection of stretchable rings designed to adapt to bodies that change with age, pregnancy, arthritis and temperature. “Abrazo is a term used in tango dancing and it means to embrace — the perfect amount of pressure and tension exerted by two dancers while they embrace, and the elegance comes into play,” explains Riaz. To create Abrazo, Riaz spent three years researching and testing several technologies: “The most challenging and difficult part to achieve is to make all gaps between the individual pieces truly even. The ring should not even look like it’s expandable. It should look and feel elegant, not bulky and thick.” Riaz’s workflow starts with a pencil-on-paper sketch: “This starting point takes me to where I need to get more specific with dimensions and tolerances. That’s when I know what needs to be added on top of the skeletal idea. There is no better way to do this than in CAD software.” When he started designing jewellery, he would use SketchUp, but these days, he is constantly switching between Rhino and Matrix: “The most favourite feature that CAD gives me is the ability to see my idea in 360 degrees, including close-ups and far away. I can check the tolerances and gaps and translate instantly if it’ll be possible to make that precise shape or form before even getting started with the process.”

THE ‘PHY-GITAL’ APPROACH The use of 3D printing and CAD in jewellery design isn’t only revolutionising processes and workflows. It also has the potential to radically transform the experience of designing, selling, buying and wearing jewellery. Additive manufacturing offers the possibility to print jewellery in-house, reducing transport costs and producing strictly on-demand parts with no waste. This is the idea behind Imageneria, the ‘phy-gital’ platform for 3D-printable NFTs. Designers all around the world can upload their designs as STL files or NFTs and, after a selection and revision phase, customers can purchase and print them at home, or even use them in the Metaverse. A relatively more traditional approach is offered by the Japanese platform Septem, which allows designers to upload their projects in the same way, which are then printed and shipped to customers on-demand. The Milan-based designer Alberto Ghirardello has been designing for both platforms, as well as for other brands that commissioned him to make 3D-printed pieces of jewellery. He is currently collaborating with the Italian fashion design brand Maison 203, a project that will see him realise a collection of 3D-printed chains for necklaces, rings and bracelets. In his workflow, 3D printing plays a central role in two different stages: first in prototyping, and then in manufacturing. “First, I draw something in CAD and

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FEATURE

‘‘

We foresee direct 3D printing will overtake casting. As more companies adopt this technology, cost savings will be achieved

’’

print a rough prototype in a filament printer. Then I work on it again and print the final piece of jewellery most of the time with a powder bed printer, SLS or SLA.” What is particularly important for Ghirardello is thinking of 3D printing not only as a manufacturing tool but as an artistic choice. “It’s a shame to use 3D printing just to make objects that could be made with other technologies, because most of the time, those other technologies would be cheaper. For me, it only makes sense to use 3D printing if you can express its full potential.” To do that, Ghirardello has come up with a collection of chains for Maison 203 called Molecular. “[AM] is one of the few technologies that allow having elements that embed in one another, like a chain.” Traditionally a chain is produced by creating many round shapes of the same size, with a small cut on one end which is then welded manually by the jeweller. This process can be enormously simplified by employing 3D printing, which can efficiently nest multiple pieces into one build. “What makes 3D printing expensive is the quantity of material needed and the printing time,” explains Ghirardello. “But very often, the material quantity is derisory, so what makes the difference is how many pieces you can fit in the printing area and how much time you can save by doing that.”

NON-TRADITIONAL MATERIALS Metals, resins and nylon are no longer the only materials for jewellers to choose from. Experimentation in that field has grown exponentially in recent years and AM is facilitating it. London-based designer and artist Zoe Sherwood has created a line of jewellery based on self-empowerment and climate change awareness, which she 3D printed with a filament made out of waste fishing nets. Her supplier here is Cornwall-based Fishy Filaments, which produces recycled nylon filaments (also known as PA6) specifically for 3D printing. “The owner Ian is fantastic. He can basically tell you the harbour and the boat that the nets are from,” says Sherwood. “Fishing nets only last a matter of months before they have to be renewed, so there is an abundance of them,” she explains. “Over 56% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of fishing gear.” Beyond allowing her to use fully recycled materials, 3D printing also offers Sherwood the opportunity to make her pieces more accessible and available for her customers. Her wordy pieces of jewellery used to be handmade from millinery materials that could take days to make. 3D printing allows her to produce more pieces and sell them at a more accessible price. She admits she was surprised by the possibilities that the technology could offer when she first looked

27 into it: “I was always told computers love straight edges and squares. All of my edges are rounded, delicate and detailed, which is an ongoing challenge in FDM printing. As I strive to create pieces with longevity and out of 100% recycled materials, this is at the forefront of my current and future narrative.” One of the biggest challenges is achieving quality and consistency with the prints: “It’s so small, you can see everything, so I hand-finish and check every piece. If it’s not up to my high standards, it will go back to Fishy 25 ● 26 Christian Tse ● starts every project Filament to be shredded down and made into filament with a pencil-andagain. I love that the process is circular.” paper sketch which is Beyond making the process more sustainable and then translated into accessible, AM is enabling a full industry transformation. CAD for visualisation and simulation Whether we’ll start wearing recycled materials instead 27 Tse’s workflow ● of gold and diamonds, or print jewellery at home, or buy it for our avatars in the metaverse, remains to be seen. But then goes on to either 3D print casts, or we can be sure that the industry will keep innovating and manufacture the piece of jewellery transforming, without forgetting the centuries of history employing direct and tradition that brought it to where it stands today. www.tariqriaz.com | www.christiantse.com www.zoesherwood.co.uk | www.albertoghirardello.com

metal 3D printing provided by Metal Desktop technology

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INTERVIEW

AHEAD IN THE Software, automation and the cloud are all set to play huge roles in the future of manufacturing. Stephen Holmes speaks with Oqton CEO Ben Schrauwen about how the company is bringing together different production software tools within the 3D Systems portfolio, in order to help designers get the best out of existing manufacturing set-ups

he acquisition of Oqton by 3D Systems last year caused a stir, as many feared the former’s impressive brand-agnostic, cloudbased Manufacturing Operating System (MOS) might disappear into the closed shop of 3D System’s technology stack. The acquisition transpired to be part of a wider change in positioning for the 3D printing giant. The days of 3D Systems protecting its nascent IP for prototyping technology have made way for end-part production technology, ready to be used in diverse shop floor environments. “It’s much more often used in heterogeneous environments. You need to make the shift to being open, and interestingly, the 3D Systems leadership team is now really pushing for that openness – openness for materials, openness for software, openness for machine

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HE CLOUDS platforms,” says Ben Schrauwen, CEO of Oqton, which proudly continues to operate under its own banner and remains open to most 3D printing systems. That brand now includes all of 3D Systems’ software products from prior acquisitions: from Geomagic’s reverse engineering and digital sculpting platform, added back in February 2013, through to Amphyon, bought as recently as May 2021, for SLS build simulation. In short, the portfolio holds a striking range of technologies. Schrauwen excitedly points out that these fractured tools are now being brought together as a more coherent package, one that is leading the new era of 3D Systems’ openness and expansion. “In the past, for example, 3DSprint was only for 3D Systems polymer machines; 3DXpert was only for 3D Systems metal machines. We’re taking those products and really allowing them to be used on any type of equipment – particularly with 3DXpert, the one we’re focusing on first,” he says, explaining that support is now added for systems from Trumpf, SLM Solutions, Renishaw and more. To maintain this neutrality, Schrauwen says a data firewall between Oqton and the rest of 3D Systems has been erected, giving external OEMs reassurance when cooperating with its team of over 300 experienced staff on developing manufacturing software.

BRIDGING THE GAP Having previously worked at Autodesk, Schrauwen is aware of the trend to package CAD software with other tools, such as CAM and CAE. But he feels that this doesn’t really solve a fundamental issue with manufacturing: that production realities are often very different from what engineers have in their minds. “And so one of the reasons I left Autodesk is really to work on this vision, where in my mind, engineering tools need to be much more closely connected to the production reality,” he says. The Oqton CEO explains that the first step needed is to capture the production state, “which is really three different systems combined.” These include: an MOS that captures what the operators are doing and their training levels; the IoT platform and what the machines are doing; and quality management. “These three things together really represent the current state of the production environment,” he says. Oqton’s slick additive manufacturing automation solution has expanded to production technologies like CNC machining and welding robots, says Schrauwen. “Those are two different manufacturing technologies, where we also demonstrated that AI can lead to 100%

automated preparation of these technologies, all from the core Oqton MOS.” This knowledge can be used at the earliest stages of the development process, allowing teams to design parts that their existing production environments can support. “That’s the underlying agenda. That’s what I’m working towards and that’s why I call it a Manufacturing Operating System. Everything needs to be centred around this production capability,” states Schrauwen. “Changing bits is easy, changing atoms is really hard. So, changing your production environment is really difficult, whereas as long as you can automate everything, it’s much easier to change a design than it is to change your production environment,” he adds. “If you want to bring things to market more quickly, you need to design for what you’re able to do today and not for a hypothetical factory that you might have to build.”

LEAVING LEGACY BEHIND To enable this to work, Oqton has taken the existing 3D Systems desktop software and added it to its cloud, creating a connected platform. “The expert user can still use the desktop tools, but they are part of an automated workflow that we orchestrate through the web platform,” says Schrauwen, adding that the refresh has allowed for any poor legacy algorithms to be left behind. “We’re really bringing them to the cloud and turning them into services that allow us to automate these processes much more significantly.” The days of OEMs shunning the cloud are now over, he says. As evidence, he points to the CIOs of automotive giants like Volkswagen and BMW, who have flipped their policies 180 degrees in as little as five years. “Cloud is now the thing they want to deploy first, because they understand that is the only thing long term that is scalable and maintainable, and that will allow them to innovate and move faster. And that’s what we’re really seeing with Oqton. Everything – the whole spectrum – is moving to the cloud.” Of course, each industry has its own strict regulatory framework for compliance, and it takes a lot for software like Oqton to be able to operate within these mandates. But as Schrauwen says, it also solves many IT management issues for companies that would otherwise have had to do it all in-house. Speaking with Schrauwen, it’s clear that if automation is key to the future, then Oqton might hold the key that opens the factory door to next-stage digital manufacturing. www.oqton.com

‘‘ Changing

bits is easy, changing atoms is really hard. So changing your production environment is really difficult whereas, as long as you can automate everything, it’s much easier to change a design

’’

(Left) Oqton’s Manufacturing Operating System is designed to handle the automation of manufacturing workflows (Above) Ben Schrauwen is cofounder and CEO of Oqton, leading its mission to enable ‘self-driving’ factories

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PROFILE

CUTTING THRO THE COMPETIT » Finding ways to outpace competitors is important. Stephen Holmes visits Guhring UK to learn how adopting digital tools in-house has reinforced its position as a market leader in precision cutting tools

1 At Guhring, initial uhring is a world-class producer ● 3D CAD models of precision cutting tools for are produced in manufacturing – the types of cutting SolidWorks and reaming tools used in CNC 2 The company has ● machines to create end-use parts for now progressed to 3D printing tool bodies building other products. in metal The company offers customers a huge range of mass-produced tools, as well as custom-designed pieces built to exacting specifications. In an increasingly competitive market, the engineers at Guhring’s Specials Manufacturing Centre in Birmingham, UK, realised the company would need to innovate to maintain its position in the industry. The team initially began 3D printing polymer prototypes, which help guide customers during the design process, checking for fit and increasing buy-in on expensive or complicated projects.

Parts are designed by Guhring’s team, which works alongside customers to produce tools capable of cutting the metal of particularly demanding features, or even whole parts. An example might be found inside the cylinder head of an automotive engine, where valve seats are round and valve guides are long and thin. Guhring’s team can develop a tool capable of machining both elements in one machining ‘touch’, dramatically reducing the time needed to produce a finished component. After producing a 3D CAD model in Solidworks, the design is 3D printed using Guhring’s Markforged Mark Two 3D printer and shipped to the customer. With the polymer prototype, the customer can better assess its potential before committing to metal, even running it in the machine spindle along the CAM-programmed path. Should a plastic prototype collide in error, it simply snaps – unlike a metal part, which might cause thousands of pounds worth of damage. In this situation, the design process would need to be restarted, with big implications for development times and cost. Using plastic is believed to save around six weeks of development time and the cost of producing a full-metal tool. However, Guhring felt it could do more with its 3D printing technology. The team was already fans of the company’s Markforged Mark 2, and were fully trained in its Eiger build and process software, so they approached reseller Mark3D to find out what else was possible.

CUT IT OUT

The steel blanks used to create custom tool bodies are painstakingly machined in multiple stages. To these, cutting tips are attached by a skilled Guhring employee, hand-braising a slither of Polycrystalline Diamond (PCD) into a machined pocket on the tool. Mark3D proposed 3D printing a tool body in metal, using a Markforged Metal X 3D printer. The Guhring team was initially sceptical. A prototype design was worked up in Solidworks, which instantly got the development team thinking. The heat generated by the machining process is what blunts tips, so in Solidworks, the team was able to place coolant channels

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ROUGH ITION inside the 3D-printed tool body, directing coolant onto the cutting surface in whatever configuration was needed and prolonging the life of the tool. The pockets for the PCD tips previously had to be machined and were therefore curved. Now 3D printed as right angles, these offered much better support for the tip. Already accustomed to using the Eiger user interface for the Mark 2 3D printer, the team used it to further develop the tool design for the Metal X, assigning extra wall thicknesses where the part would need to be machined back to meet tolerances and adding a lattice infill that reduced the part weight by nearly 40%. The prototype part was sent to be 3D printed and post processed at Mark3D on the Metal X, an FDM process that prints a green part from filament, before it is post processed and sintered. For the Guhring prototype, the process means a 15hour print time, followed by post processing – a 12-hour wash and four hours drying. Then, it is sintered in the benchtop Markforged oven for 27 hours, resulting in a 99.89% solid metal part. “What’s important to remember here is that Guhring is one of the biggest sintering companies in the world,” says Mark3D managing director Ian Weston, noting that it has ovens so large that it drives forklift trucks into them. “So, when we introduced the [Markforged sinter oven] to them as a technology, they just smiled!” With the PCD tips braised into place, it was time for testing the part on a milling machine in front of the Guhring team. The first test was over a favourable vertical cutting path – drilling down into the stock material – and it worked as well as a steel part. Growing in confidence, they decided to pocket out a hole, putting the tool under increased sideways load, where any kicking could snap it. The tool continued to work diligently, clearing material along its path. As a final test, the operator cranked up the spindle speed as far as it would go. Everyone was over the moon, says Weston, given that the tool survived, outperforming everyone’s expectations, and making his client the first in the world to do this with Markforged technology.

‘‘

We were delighted that the tool was able to exceed everyone’s expectations

’’

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PROFILE

‘‘

Guhring is one of the biggest sintering companies in the world and can drive forklifts into them. So when we first introduced the desktop Markforged sinter oven to them, they initially just smiled

’’

(Above) Prototype polymer tools built on the Markforged Mark Two 3D printer (Below) Tool weight is reduced by around 40%, allowing more design freedom

CHANGING OPINIONS All the Guhring staff still recall that first test as a groundbreaking moment. Since then, the development of further 3D-printed parts has been fast, with new benefits being unearthed. By reducing the weight by some 40%, there’s less load on the machine tool, extending the life of the CNC machine. Tool designs previously were capable of machining 12 to 13 parts per hour now get through 40 parts and can still be returned to Guhring to be retipped with new PCD, rather than needing an entirely new tool, saving money and waste. The H13 tool steel printed on the Metal X comes out of the oven case-hardened, and early reports from customers suggest that it lasts longer than machined and heat-treated steels. The ability to 3D print tools with more freedom means that designs have become more elaborate. This includes an incredible design for a drill that, due to a hollow drum through its centre, automatically ejects the swarf as it cuts it from inside of an engine cylinder. Despite what appears on paper to be a long post processing methodology to realise the final parts, compared with traditional manufacturing, lead times have dropped from over six weeks for a new tool, down to a week or two. Equally, R&D work is less costly and less error-prone, giving the team confidence to try out new ideas. Guhring’s custom work is winning back old clients and drawing the attention of new ones, while helping increase the visibility of the company’s existing products and services across the board – all thanks to its team being willing to pioneer a new technology to gain a cutting edge. www.guhring.co.uk

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LAST WORD

Lightweighting might be the focus of major hype right now, but its downstream impact promises to be truly exciting, writes Stephen Holmes, who’s admiring some lattices before they get hidden from public view

ightweighting is currently a sexy engineering topic, already mentioned several times in the pages of this issue. That’s because designers have always looked to use less material and make products lighter — but the combination of today’s optimisation technology and additive manufacturing has thrown this mission into overdrive. Everything must be lighter, just like everything had to be smaller in the 1990s, curvier in the 2000s and thinner in the 2010s. In fact, ‘topology optimisation’ and ‘lattice infills’ are now terms you might find in a review of a consumer product, in much the same way as its author coos over composites, user interfaces and connectivity. Lattices are now much-hyped features of shoes, saddles and car seats. With their almost-butnot-quite organic forms, parts that are built using simulation-driven algorithms are visually so outside of the current norm that, whatever your thoughts on them in terms of styling, there’s no doubt they catch the eye. But for me it’s all a bit ‘Dieter’ — a case of function over form. That’s why some of the less flashy uses of lightweighting are actually the most impressive, and it’s exciting to think of the impact they will have.

sort of tool body becomes commonplace, it will in turn have an impact on CNC machine makers, which could find that they are able to reduce the material needed to build machines, lowering costs. One of my favourite recent uses of lightweighting is to be found at Ocado Engineering, the technology arm behind the UK online grocery fulfilment company. Earlier this year, the company announced it had optimised the design of its latest 600 Series robot, using HP 3D printing to produce more than 300 of its parts. As a result, the robot is five times lighter, making it significantly faster at picking up your avocados and sourdough, and more cost-effective to manufacture and run than previous models. The downstream effects are that the lighter robots make the planning of Ocado’s fulfilment sites easier. The lighter robots use less electricity, boosted by reduced refrigeration requirements, since faster robots move products around before they lose their chill. The gantries on which robots and stock move can be lighter too, meaning Ocado’s warehousing operations can move into a wider variety of buildings. While the trickle-down of technology from Formula 1 cars to family hatchbacks is a slow one (aside from some dubious examples like BMW’s topology optimised boot hinges), agricultural and heavy machinery makers are ahead of the curve. If it’s traditionally big, heavy and slow, then the performance benefits of lightweighting are much greater than on an already skinny supercar. And as long as they maintain the necessary strength to plough or shovel all day, then big lumps



Some of the less flashy uses of lightweighting are actually the most impressive and it’s exciting to think of the impact they will have



LATTICES TAKE THE STRAIN Take, for instance, the case of Guhring’s drills, featured on p54. Here, a lattice-filled design helps maintain the part strength, but the resulting weight loss has even greater impact downstream. A lighter part puts less strain on the CNC machine on which it’s used, meaning faster machines operating at less stress. If this

like earthmovers and tractors get payoffs that are measured in more than potatoes.

HYPE AND HEYDEYS Soon this ability to cut weight using innovative algorithms and additive processes will lose its novelty. We’ve seen a similar change of image with 3D printing: in its 2014 heyday, we were promised we’d be 3D printing a spare kidney in time for the weekend on our kitchen tables by now. But today, 3D printing is working away behind the scenes, helping manufacturers to build custom jigs and fixtures on their factory floors, saving them huge sums of money in the process, and slowly graduating to building end-use parts, as calculations around cost, efficiency, quality and assurance all begin to add up. In a similar fashion, many of the great successes of lightweighting are likely to be hidden away from mainstream praise, all the while contributing to better products. So, while many of us flinch when looking at optimised designs and naked lattices laid bare for all to see (and a nightmare to clean), we should probably be enjoying this odd period in the timeline of design.

Lightweighting robots at Ocado is set to have a huge effect on productivity and energy efficiency (Credit: Ocado Engineering)

GET IN TOUCH: After managing an issue delving deep into algorithmic design, Stephen will now return to renovating his knackered 1870s house. If you hear anyone insisting “the Victorians were great engineers”, then feel free to bring them round for a look. On Twitter, he’s @swearstoomuch

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