Archive — This feature was published in 2020 and draws on interviews with Fraunhofer, IPC and nScrypt. Quotations and forecasts reflect that period; editorial clarifications distinguish research aims from demonstrated results.
With contributions from the Fraunhofer Additive Manufacturing Alliance, IPC & nScrypt
Research and development (R&D) support the development of additive manufacturing processes. In turn, 3D printing gives researchers ways to produce and test new geometries. This feature examines the relationship between the two activities.
To meet industrial needs, manufacturers invest in research, design and testing. The interviews gathered here explore how they use additive manufacturing, their objectives and the limitations they encounter.
Indeed, the advancements in additive manufacturing and its increasing use in R&D might raise confusion since it is now difficult to perceive if AM drives the R&D industry or if the R&D drives the AM technology advancements.
For Kenneth Church, CEO of nScrypt, the answer is both. “AM is maturing but there is still so much more to learn, to improve and to transition. R&D is the beginning of all great technology but the difference here is that AM provides so many new beginnings. AM is and will make such a broad impact, it is hard to put it into one single category.”
Church traces AM’s origins to the 1980s and links its wider adoption to factors including expiring patents and improved design software. He recalls working with his team on capacitors printed layer by layer from multiple materials in 1999. That experience predates nScrypt’s establishment in 2002.
“AM will also and has already, flipped the tables and will change the R&D community. Many look at AM as simple 3D objects or even complex 3D objects that you cannot fabricate any other way, but what most are missing is the intrinsic value that comes from the complex shapes or the melding of materials. Metamaterials [for instance], have been a big buzzword for many years but achieving certain metamaterial designs has been out of reach due to the complexity of the physical object. If you could fabricate the complex metamaterial object, you could discover new electrical, magnetic and even thermal properties that are not possible with material alone.”
How does additive manufacturing contribute to R&D?
R&D may be a crucial means for achieving future growth and maintaining a product in the market but it is a misconception that it is the domain of high-tech technology firms or even pharmaceutical companies.
R&D expenditure varies between sectors, companies and projects. It is therefore useful to examine how the work is organised and what it aims to achieve, rather than assign a general percentage of revenue to it.
Reducing lead times
R&D projects can require a long-term commitment. New tools may shorten particular design or testing stages without necessarily reducing the overall project duration, especially where validation is required.
Additive manufacturing can facilitate prototype iterations; the benefit depends on the part, process and operations after printing.
For example, on 13 June 2019, Stryker announced more than €200 million for R&D and innovation across three Cork facilities. The programme covered additive manufacturing, neurovascular activities and surgical instruments; it was not limited to customised implants.
Implant design can make use of AM’s geometric freedom, but benefits must be assessed for the intended use. Testing, clinical validation and applicable requirements remain decisive. Machine cost alone cannot establish whether treatment is affordable.
R&D in companies and research centres
R&D involves public and private organisations whose objectives, funding and timescales may differ. Industrial research must, in particular, connect technical possibilities with viable applications.
According to Dr. Bernhard Mueller, “AM is well-researched in manifold ways and R&D activities have globally exploded. The biggest challenge is to bridge the gap to industrial application, generating more business cases. Only few business cases have so far been proven and industrialized (hip cup implants 3D metal printed via EBM technology, repair of gas turbine burner tips via L-PBF metal AM technology, dental caps via L-PBF metal AM technology, aerospace ducts and hoses via polymer AM).”
Developing an additive manufacturing system can combine a company’s internal R&D with external collaboration.
Dr. Bernhard Mueller affirms for instance, that they use all relevant AM technologies (laser or other beam-based technology, powder bed as well as material deposition, binder jetting, bioprinting etc.) and process all types of materials (metals, polymers, ceramics, biomaterials). “Major applications have been successfully investigated at Fraunhofer including prove of industrial applicability, e.g. AM tooling for hot metal processing technologies, functionally integrated medical implants, several flying parts in aerospace developed at Fraunhofer jointly with industrial aerospace partners” Mueller continues.
Machine examples in the 2020 feature included the HP 5210, XJET Carmel 1400, 3DGence Industry F420 and da Vinci Color 5D. These names illustrate developments from that period, rather than a selection of current products.
In the automotive industry, Volkswagen developed prototyping and component manufacturing activities, including a 3D printing centre opened in its Wolfsburg toolmaking unit in 2018. The aim concerned vehicle components, rather than demonstrating an entirely 3D printed car.
“The 3D printing centre takes VW’s additive manufacturing activities to a new level,” Dr. Andreas Tostmann, Volkswagen brand production chief, commented during the opening ceremony. “In two to three years’ time, [3D] printing will also become interesting for the first production parts. In the future, we may be able to use 3D printers directly on the production line for vehicle production.”
The two-to-three-year forecast above was made at the 2018 opening; it is not a current deadline.
In its September 2018 announcement, Volkswagen described work with HP and GKN progressing from personalised items towards future functional parts. Customising a key ring did not by itself demonstrate the qualification of structural components.
Sharing resources and expertise
Collaboration can bring together funding, equipment and complementary expertise. Partners may include companies, universities and research centres; the benefits depend on the project and how the work is organised.
The European AMable project, funded by Horizon 2020, illustrates support for SMEs adopting AM. It ran from September 2017 to 30 November 2022 and is discussed here as a historical example.
The network brought together European technology centres to support ideas from design through manufacturing and post-processing.
The increasing use of AM as a R&D tool
In R&D, additive manufacturing complements other tools. Its value depends on the experiment to be conducted or the part to be produced.
Nathalie MAILLOL, Additive manufacturing project leader at IPC, comments: “AM is a complementary tool [alongside] other production processes, not a substitute. I think AM changes the R&D industry as people begin to think [of it] as [a] process with a lot of potential, not only a [prototyping tool].”
Indeed, when we look at R&D centres be it private or public, AM is rarely the only technology that is leveraged.
nScrypt for instance, does have traditional machining and electrical prototyping. According to Kenneth Church, these provide fundamental value in research, but to progress to new concepts, [they] have moved to the nScrypt 3Dn Direct Digital Manufacturing tool which has printing, machining, printed electronics and pick and place in a single tool. nScrypt has coined this the Factory in a Tool (FiT). “From this we can fabricate monolithic circuits such as an Active Phase Array Antenna where the active electronics are part of the antenna element”, said the CEO.
Maillol explained that, from its early beginning, the centre mainly focused on plastic injection. “In 2001, IPC began to work on laser powder bed fusion in order to build mould insert with cooling channels. These channels have a complex geometry that can [only be produced using an] AM process.” This experience has led the AM team to explore the possibilities offered by other types of AM technologies in R&D projects. Today, in addition to metal AM technology, their portfolio includes SLA and different types of FDM 3D Printers (among which large format printers, PEEK or composites-based 3D printers).
Those 3D printers might be a great tool but sometimes, their capabilities need to be enhanced in order to obtain expected results, to reduce costs or simply save time.
“We work with different machine providers to develop exposure parameters or to study powder recyclability. Recently, thanks to a European project, we could have equipped one of our machines, EOS M290, with monitoring systems: OT (Optical Tomography) and MPM (MeltPool Monitoring). They are in-line systems, which means that they watch the production running and collect data to evaluate the quality of the process. The objective is to detect if the melting of a part presents a deviation (like porosity or lack of fusion) during the production. [Such type of] equipment gives a clear advantage as a quality tool and avoid post-production test such as X-ray tomography which is expensive and time consuming”, explained the AM project leader.
Clarification: these systems monitor the process; they do not automatically replace finished-part inspection. The relationship between signals and defects must be validated. The EOS–ORNL programme announced in 2022 specifically examined correlations between monitoring data and metallurgical inspection.
The use of AM as a R&D tool might therefore enable researchers to evaluate both the advantages and disadvantages of the technology, and in some cases leads to improvements.
For IPC’s spokesperson, depending on the goal of the research, AM fosters many other developments. These developments can for instance, be observed at the material or the parameters level. “The development of monitoring systems is on the way in order to reach the right first-time manufacturing. The common point is to reduce the cost for parts produced with AM process. So, I expect more projects to investigate if AM is suitable for serial production and I also expect more development to improve the success ratio of AM productions,” concludes Maillol.
The specific use of AM in medical research
When it comes to research, 3D printing is widely used in medical-dedicated researches and several purposes explain the use of the technology: the generation of accurate replicas of a body part, reconstruction and plastic surgeries, customized implants as mentioned earlier. “R&D in AM will continue to increase, providing more and more technological breakthrough developments in terms of cost, multi-material AM, reliable ultra-light-weight structures, process reliability, application-specific technology portfolio widening etc.” said the spokesperson from the Fraunhofer Additive Manufacturing Alliance.
Bioprinting explores the fabrication of structures containing biological components. It must be distinguished from metal or polymer implants and anatomical models. Producing living organs for transplantation remains a research objective, as explained by the FDA.
Translating this research into human use requires addressing safety, effectiveness and product-specific validation.
Research and manufacturing inform each other
These interviews illustrate two dimensions of additive manufacturing’s role in R&D.
At an organisational level, the examples involve specialist centres, industrial teams and university partners. They do not, on their own, measure a trend across the entire sector.
Within projects, AM remains one tool alongside other processes. Experiments reveal its limitations and guide improvements in equipment, materials and process parameters.
We couldn’t agree more with Kenneth Church when he says: “the task in front of us is daunting, but it is not insurmountable and it is important. We need to continue to push the R&D in AM and this will drive R&D to a whole new place. R&D will be faster due to accessibility to fabricated prototypes with unique properties. AM will also disperse the R&D. Today, labs that have very expensive equipment get to have most of the fun. Tomorrow, your garage will be a lab and you will get to join the fun. Software will improve and what once was only for highly trained CAD users is now in your physical hand, your phone, you will create what highly trained CAD people might not have thought of.”
In the medical field, this work must also address applicable product requirements. 3D printing does not remove the need to demonstrate safety and effectiveness: the FDA evaluates printed devices through the same pathways as conventional devices.
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