BIG, Fast and FURIOUS

·??????Digital production, fast getting faster, and the circular economy gets serious

·??????Avi Reichental, CEO of Nexa3D, highlights the best bits of RAPID + TCT

·??????A virtual replica of Nexa3D’s stand can be viewed here

VENTURA, CA, October 25 2021 September’s RAPID + TCT event in Chicago is billed as ‘North America’s largest additive manufacturing show’ but it wasn’t just the size of the event that was remarkable. The buzzwords for this year were big, fast, sustainable, and strong. To mark the launch of Nexa3D’s virtual booth Avi Reichental, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Nexa3D, shares his highlights from RAPID + TCT:

RAPID + TCT proved that big and hybrid are here; that was the dominant message of the event. We are seeing much bigger additive manufacturing systems, capable of printing life-size boats, cars, furniture, and even habitats.

Back in 2019, the University of Maine printed a boat that was 100 feet wide, 20 feet long and 10 feet tall. It was awarded three Guinness World Records, including the world’s largest solid 3D printed item.

But some of the machines at RAPID + TCT this year almost made that look miniature. For example, Thermwood had a 5’x10’x4’ machine on its booth and it was one of the smallest-scale gantry printers in their range. BigRep had a 3D printer on its booth that was about the size of a small bedroom. The industry has advanced so much in just a couple of years that a 2019 world record holding behemoth, like the boat, is now par for the course.?

Digital production

Another thing proven by the event was that the digital thread is no longer a notion, but a reality. The work that Nexa3D did with Arcimoto, a US manufacturer of utility electric vehicles, really demonstrates this.

When Arcimoto came to us, they wanted to reduce the weight of the vehicle to deliver a longer range, lower price, and better environmental performance. We applied a generative design process to first reduce the number of parts required and second reduce their weight.

In one example, on the rear of the vehicle, the topologically optimized castings are sent to an investment casting foundry where the manual labor, jigging, and fixturing needed to produce the original subassembly for the vehicle is replaced with a single, digital process. The result is a part that is 50 percent lighter and that breathes new life into traditional foundries.?

This is a powerful reminder that automated and validated processes are the key to productivity and yields in volume production. The Arcimoto vehicle and its 3D printed parts can be viewed on our virtual booth here.

Fast is getting faster

It was evident throughout the exhibition that the serious AM players are focusing on breaking the speed and functionality barriers. There is a clear new generation of machines, spearheaded by our systems — which are 20 times more productive than competing 3D printers at every level.

This focus on speed also borne out by the awards at the event, where NASA Marshall Flight Center, NASA Ames Research Center, and DM3D Technologies won the case study award for a project called, “Rapid, large scale additive manufacturing of a full-scale RS-25 engine nozzle liner”. This was a ten-foot-tall piece of equipment that goes inside the nose of a rocket, and it was built 50 percent faster than industry standard. We are only just beginning to see the real speeds attainable in 3D printing.

Round and round

I’ve never seen the circular economy taken so seriously at a 3D printing event, and I say that as someone who has championed the concept from day one. It was clear at RAPID + TCT, that the AM industry is maturing its focus and its approach to being part of the solution to global warming.

There were several big players offering recycled materials for pellet 3D printing and much discussion of recycling metal powder as well as resins and support materials from a print. The key focus though was on streamlined design, optimization, and more efficient manufacturing.

Sitting naturally alongside the circular economy was the conversation about supply chain resiliency, which has come into even more harsh global focus in recent months. There were multiple industry players at the event who can clearly see opportunity to disrupt traditional complex and brittle supply chains with hyper local additive alternatives, as Covid lingers on. Not least among these was Nexa3D, with multiple direct to production machines on our booth.

Those very machines can be seen on our virtual exhibition, which can be found here. It brings the themes of the event into clear focus; RAPID + TCT was all about big, fast, sustainable, and strong, and so is our virtual booth.?

You can now visit Nexa3D’s virtual booth, a replica of the real life one they used at RAPID + TCT here.?

For more information on Nexa3D and its products, visit?www.nexa3d.com