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New AM offering sees Melbourne electronics specialist getting jiggy with it

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The progress of 3D printing is making things more distributed, digital and dynamic for manufacturers, attendees at a recent meetup at Tekt Industries heard.

Additive manufacturing was at a kind of tipping point, the audience were told at the May 30 event, part of a roadshow for US 3D printer OEM Markforged to launch their new FX10 machine in Australia.

This year, the annual Commonwealth Bank Manufacturing Insights report included 3D printing for the first time ever, Markforged Senior Director Richard Elving said. 16 per cent of respondents saw it as a top-three technology having the most impact in the next three to five years for them.

The Australian environment is now very different from 2019, said Elving, when manufacturers typically talked about getting all their inputs cheaply, with the strength and length of the supply chain less interesting.

“Suddenly we’re talking about supply chain resilience. We’re talking about delivering parts the next day, next week, not in three months, six months from now,” said Elving. 

“We have lots and lots of these examples where the reshoring is happening to help reduce costs.” 

Elving cited customer the Australian Meat Processor Corporation (AMPC), which has scanned and reverse engineered members’ factory equipment, uploading this to a shared inventory.

“And now any of their 127 members can essentially pull down a part from the cloud – I know this sounds like magic – and then 3D print the part at the point of need,” he added.

Tekt CEO and founder Matthew Adams

Internationally, most customers are interested in replacing metal parts, shared Markforged CEO Shai Terem. The AMPC is far from alone in using AM for spare parts.

“The biggest companies in the world are adopting this solution – automotive, food and beverage companies – they are looking at how to optimise their own supply chain to ensure that they have the right parts printed onsite. Versus having billions of dollars sitting as physical inventory,” said Terem. 

“They believe that around 10 per cent of it can be printed. Which means that if you’re selling to these companies, they will not buy spare parts from you in three years. They will buy from you the licence to use the content once, five times, whatever, and they’re going to print it right there on the factory floor. This is where the world is going.”

Event host Tekt was established in 2009 as a product design firm, specialising in smart devices and industrial sensing systems. It brought production in-house to make prototyping quicker and better after getting frustrated with outside providers.

In its time it has delivered about 500 projects so far to more than 250 entities, by founder and CEO Matthew Adams’s count.

They started with 3D printing in 2012 or so, with “a humble Makerbot”, later upgrading to stereolithography and then FDM. After about two years of investigation, Tekt has invested in a Markforged FX10 machine, which is part of a new chapter for the company.

This year Tekt finished among @AuManufacturing’s Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers list, only narrowly outside of the top 10, for its Rapid Ordering System.

Markforged CEO Shai Terem

According to Adams the system uses advanced APIs and AI and can deliver PCB costings in minutes. It can also produce automated designs for test jigs, which can be printed through the new printer and reinforced with carbon fibre to improve stiffness and durability if needed.

It is only recently that printers have had the software, accuracy or materials to consider it – “a convergence of megatrends”, as Adams put it. 

“What we saw is an opportunity to use 3D printing to significantly bring down the time and cost to deliver a test jig, so you could then use them in prototypes. Which is virtually unheard of, because of the cost and the time,” he said.

“Normally you get the circuit boards and circuit assemblies back before a test jig. Now with this innovation we’ve created, you can get the test jigs back before the boards… That’s an interesting value proposition and actually a new market. 

“It’s opening up a new market where if these jigs were only used for 5,000 pieces per annum or beyond in terms of size of production quantities, now we’re saying ‘if you make 100 pieces and you care about quality you can now use a jig as well, and you can reduce your labour cost.”

As for the next megatrend, Markforged is trying to bring one into existence through its Digital Source platform, announced in September last year. This allows companies to create a catalog of their designs and licence them to other users to print wherever they’re needed.

“We are trying to build itunes for manufacturing. To make sure that if you have a design for a product, you don’t have to worry anymore about spare parts,” explained Terem. 

“You’ll be able to licence to your customer the ability to get the spare parts right at the point of need.”

In this episode of @AuManufacturing Conversations, sponsored by Markforged and recorded at the event, we hear more from Terem and Adams.

Pictures: supplied



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