Desktop Metal gets $115M in funding to deliver metal 3D printing
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Also disappointing that, despite having an innovative piece of hardware, they still treat the software as heavily proprietary as well.
My client created an innovative piece of hardware without investing in proprietary software. In a couple of months, he found cheaper clones offered on aliexpress and taobao. While the design was good, the product failed commercially. Then the company found me, I’ve created heavily proprietary software for the next version of their hardware. The product sells OK so far.
In addition, creating software from scratch specifically for the given hardware delivers better overall value for the end users.
On the very high level, I’ve implemented a small subset of what Autodesk Netfabb premium does, the subset relevant to the hardware my client is offering. That Autodesk software costs $500/year, I guess that’s what differs our product from the clones: a clone would cost $500/year extra.
Another thing, 3D printers are too different, they use many different technologies (FDM, SLA, DLP, SLS, etc.), and within each there’re different printing materials. These things are very relevant to e.g. slicing and support generation. Compared to the software like Netfabb which has to support all of them, our software only supports a single printer and a carefully selected set of printing materials. That’s why, hopefully, we were able to deliver better overall UX.
That much makes perfect sense, and I would imagine that something as novel as a new metal 3D printer like this would want custom software to drive it as well. That doesn't prevent that custom software from being Open Source. And when you're talking about a product like this, in this price range, designed to support manufacturing with very tight tolerances, clones (and adoption of such) seem quite unlikely, even less so if they keep innovating with it. I'd rather see the "stickiness" provided by support, rather than software.
Because inevitably, software written by a single vendor for their hardware always feels very particular to their workflow, not integrating with anything they didn't anticipate, and not allowing much flexibility. And CAD workflows are exactly the kind of area where everyone has their own set of customizations they want to be able to do. I'd like an Open Source library and an API, not an opaque kiosk.
I’d rather see the product just works not requiring much support. Ideally, not requiring any support at all. This works OK for consumer electronics. I don’t see why industrial hardware can’t be designed the same way.
> not integrating with anything they didn't anticipate
Desktop software often solves the interop problem by supporting open file formats on input. For 3D printing, the de-facto one is STL. You can export this format from every CAD or 3D modeling software.
> I'd like an Open Source library and an API, not an opaque kiosk.
I prefer opaque kiosks. Opaque kiosks just do their job. Good ones do it well. Libraries and APIs require substantial amount of time to RTFM, integrate, debug integration, update integration with API updates, and so on.
Also, not everyone is a programmer. I can use APIs and libraries when I need to, but most people just can’t. For an average Joe, these things are useless. Even harmful: creating good libraries and APIs has costs (documentation, examples, developers support); these resources might have been spent on useful features instead. The equation changes if the product attracts large user base and third-party developers start using these APIs to create value. But market for 3D printers is currently very small, i.e. this is unlikely to happen.
Follow the reserve page through two more clicks.
Studio system is $120,000
Production system is $360,000
The first is printer, debinder and furnace combined. So close to a total cost. The latter is printer only, so think of that figure as a secondary deposit.
It apparently yielded very good results, winning the beetleweight category at Bot Blast. You can search YouTube for videos of it in action.
That being said, I am not sure how competitive the production unit will be. A lot of the commercial industry does not necessary care about weight reduction or aesthetics. I can't foresee that the parts made by these machines will be anymore cheaper than traditional sintering or more accurate than milling.
Strong but not nearly as strong as casting (especially without secondary processing), as for materials powdered metal printing is usually either ferrite alloys or nobel metals the former is much more common.
Resolution is in single digit microns or finer.
This is based on similar products not this specific one, it might be faster which is important but there is only that much you can improve on the process.
The speed also to me looks like a result of very limited market in terms of competitiveness. Existing products are few and they rather sell you more machines than drastically improve the printing speed by making it much smaller and focusing on smaller parts.
I don't know if they use induction or optical fusing based on the size I would go for optical so they might have found a good laser or a absorption facilitating epoxy/flux to go with the powder.
Edit: based on a comment here it looks like they don't do fusing as part of the print.
In this case its metal powder with a chemical binder (glue) which usually contains flux and vaporizes at a fairly low temperature.
After the printing the parts go into an oven (usually encased in sand for temperature control)
The oven brings the part to a high enough temperature for the crystal formation but not close to the melting point.
In this process larger crystals can form but not nearly as large as with cast forging.
I notice that Desktop Metal doesn't show their oven in the video. That's the big, expensive, somewhat hazardous unit. "Easily swappable aluminum gas canisters ... safe to use on the shop floor" says the data sheet.[2]
Wazer, the low-end water jet cutter that's still stuck at "pre-order", has a similar problem. They're trying to make a somewhat messy industrial process less messy. There's some hand-waving involved. You end up with a sludge that's a mixture of water, shattered garnet, and whatever you're cutting. They gloss over what you have to do to dispose of that.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9VOwqtOglg [2] https://desktopmetal.s3.amazonaws.com/Studio-office_friendly...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-FHY5FNsWc
12 minutes uncut. They go from printed model to working cast piece.
All new, Kaya Cast vac chamber they use is $1k, the Paragon kiln is $800, and the Electro-melt furnace is $350. Add in safety gear and incidentals and you are looking at 3-4 thousand dollars to go from a 3d print to a cast metal piece. Heck, depending on the complexity, the vac may be optional.
(The "maker movement" may have run its course. TechShop seems to be in financial trouble.[1])
Casting aluminum is easy, but not very useful. Doing this yourself you can't guarantee grain structure/size, inclusions/porosity, or temper. Plus it's usually plenty easy to mill from billet since aluminum is so soft.
Gold/silver is also relatively easy. You need better equipment since the temperatures are 2x higher. Strength isn't important, so casting stuff in gold/silver is quite common. Outside of jewelry there is basically no need for it.
Casting something more complex like good steels, or platinum, or nickel alloys- casting will be very difficult. Molds aren't so trivial, you need preheats, and a mistake leads to liquid metal on the floor or an explosion.
Sintering can be used with challenging alloys and requires almost no expertise. Everything comes certified and gets heat treated in the oven. If your time is valuable enough to warrant a metal 3d printer, it's valuable enough to make learning an entire discipline too expensive.
The important thing to remember is that the 3D printing doesn't generate the final part, the plastic binder in the filament has to be burned out and then the part has to "densify", e.g. the actual sintering where the metal particles fuse together creates the final material properties of the part.
The final part will be a lot smaller than the thing coming out of the 3D printer, controlling uniform shrinkage is probably a lot of the secret sauce.
The printing part just forms a "green" part, it's basically like you would make pottery, the actual strengthening of the part happens in a high-temperature furnace.
Or if you want the relevant portion quoted, see this article: (halfway down, below the graphene motorcycle helmet): https://hackernoon.com/an-innovation-taxonomy-d1ed0751b92b
3D printers are just another tool in the manufacturing toolbox. The sets of materials and structures printers are made from barely overlap with the sets of materials and structures that the same printers make.
If 3D printers could make themselves, I think they would look a lot more like biological organisms and a lot less like laser copiers.
That said, the Desktop Metal parts I've seen are beautiful.
Much like people think that the only thing standing between them and designing cool new useful software is all that pesky syntax, and that if they had some magic application to turn pictures into software, the rest would be easy.
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/artwork-selling-itself-on-eba...
Although, I think if they end up able to print robust, ready-to-use metal components with reasonable strength (say strong enough for a bicycle frame), that would be a pretty good leap forward. The base tech of what you can do on a desktop doesn't seem like it would quite get there today though.
Why didn't somebody already build something like this?