Speaker 1 (00:00):
When should I consider additive manufacturing for production and when shouldn’t I? What’s the type of applications that work well for AM? Solutionology is about being unyielding with perseverance to get to the solution.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So welcome to the Solutionology Pod Minicast. This will be a short one. We’ve been prepping for MD&M, which is happening in Minneapolis, and we’re sharing with you really the most important part of the presentation that we’ll have at that show, and that’s the takeaways. What do you expect to learn if you come and join us at MD&M and you listen to Carl’s presentation?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, so we’re going to be at MD&M on October 10th at 9:00 A.M. It’s. The first presentation. Bring your coffee. We’re going to be talking about additive manufacturing. And we’ve got these takeaways here that we’re going to talk through in detail. First and foremost, build additive manufacturing into your plan early. If you want success, start as early as possible thinking about additive manufacturing.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
And we can help you with that. We can help you with that thinking.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
We do help with that. Yes, the reason for that is it requires a lot of ramp up. Additive manufacturing is not easy to implement, especially for production. Early you start allows you for more ramp up and greater success, and especially in applications where there’s high tolerance, it is possible to produce high tolerance parts with additive manufacturing, but only when you’re prepared for the process controls to be able to achieve that. If you’re doing all this stuff right, if you’re doing it in the right order, then it’s going to save a lot of time and provide you with a great deal of flexibility throughout your program.
(01:36):
On the flip side, additive is not a solution for all problems. It can be used as a resource adjacent to injection molding or with injection molding or with other methods. So it doesn’t have to be an all-or-one, and it shouldn’t be considered as the end-all be-all. It’s just a resource that’s on the table. But the thing is, when you’re thinking about it, you’re starting it early and you’re using it for the right applications it is a superpower. So it helps you in ways that traditional manufacturing methods can fall short, but it’s got to be the right areas.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
We’re going to look at thinking about applications. How do we pick out the right applications? How do we know when we have good applications for going to additive? So we’re going to review those and look at go and yield applications for additive.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
So then there’s a big question. People ask, when should I consider additive manufacturing for production and when shouldn’t I? What’s the type of applications that work well for AM? It’s a question that we often get. And as we’ve worked through this, we found some simple rules of thumb reasons to consider AM for production and reasons to avoid. Consideration methods are really simple. Anytime you can consolidate components, reduce the amount of hardware required or individually manufactured components, that’s a great reason to consider AM. Also, when you can simplify the assembly process with snap features or instructions built on the parts or by consolidation, that’s a great area where you can add value. Of course, if you’ve got an aggressive timeline and you can’t afford the tooling or traditional manufacturing spool-up, AM is a superpower. Where your design’s not manufacturable, you need to improve a user experience beyond what traditional manufacturing can do where you’ve got low volumes or you’re launching a product and you don’t have certain market conditions.
(03:40):
And last and not least, the ability to customize the product on the fly. So have personalization and mass customization. So these are great examples that if you’re ticking these boxes with your program, then it’s a really good idea to continue to consider additive manufacturing. So avoiding, it’s a lot of the opposite. You avoid additive manufacturing if the components can be easily manufactured with injection molding or machining. If another method can make the parts it’s easy and it’s cheap, then do that. Don’t over-complicate it. If the product is commoditized and you’re trying to provide a least cost solution, don’t use additive manufacturing. It’s going to be more expensive. If you have very high volume in the hundreds of thousands to millions of parts, it’s likely that especially with these other ticked items, it’s likely that a traditional method is going to be more effective. And then last but not least, if you have significant regulatory barriers or regulatory agencies or approving agencies haven’t adopted the particular AM method that you need, then traditional manufacturing makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So these reasons are really focused on the physical product or the product line. And they’re not really talking about other limitations that may exist in the organization. From the capability to find and see these things and the drive to make some of these changes, which it would be easy to look at a product and say, well, there’s no way you can consolidate components on here. Additive’s not a fit. What’s the best way to go about this process of figuring out what is a go and what is a yield?
Speaker 1 (05:25):
That’s a great question. And looking at it for a more holistic sense, there’s got to always be a champion. If there isn’t a champion for additive manufacturing, this discussion’s probably not even on the table. So at the very least, you have to have a champion for using AM as a solution. And then you’ve got to have stakeholders that are interested and willing to listen. And if you’re a champion and you don’t have the stakeholders that are open to this manufacturing method, that’s not to say that you don’t go, but it’s to say that you’ve got to a really clear strategy to drive the adoption.
(06:01):
Because there are some organizations that are more risk averse and adopting a new manufacturing technology is not high on the priority list. And that’s a real constraint. And if nothing else, it just takes more time for the adoption. And maybe that is a yield in terms of getting it adopted in a timeline. It’s not a stop, but it’s just to be wise about how you go about adopting it. The biggest thing that we see is that someone wants a cheaper part and they’re coming additive for the cheaper part. That’s probably not the right way to go. And sometimes that can also indicate more of a laggard mindset or laggard operation where you’re competing against other products that are very similar in price is extraordinarily important.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And we’ve supported some of our clients in guiding through this go and yield when they haven’t necessarily had all the right team members internally. There’s times that we’ve been successful in doing that and getting that mindset to switch. It’s not the times, just not the right time yet. So that’s timing is everything.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Timing is everything. And there’s no right or wrong here. I said that additive manufacturing should always be considered from day one, and that’s the truth. But there are times where you’ve got organizational mass that you have have to get moved, and it takes time to build that momentum. And I still believe that it’s always good to consider it on day one. And the more that you do that, the more that you’ll build that momentum. And you’re absolutely right. This is an area that we love to support on because we have experienced so many successes and driving that momentum forward, building that momentum.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
So we help our clients know when to yield from our perspective and our experience, and we help them to solidify when it’s time to go?
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Right. And that yield is probably just as important as the go because the last thing an organization needs is to invest resources and time into an initiative that’s not going to be a winner. And that’s really, really important. And that comes back to the value that we place on time. Which is why we believe so much in A.M. But if you’re not going to use it, you’ve got to make that decision and move on to the next thing so that you’re not wasting time. So let’s say for argument’s sake, okay, this is a go. We want to use additive manufacturing for production. When you do that, we’ve found that some key tips for success, one of them is to use the same prototyping method as much as possible is you intend to use for your production. And through that journey, you get to learn the variations and the nuances of that manufacturing method before you start going into production.
(08:54):
And the other thing that’s really important is you need to determine what the level of quality and precision requirements are for the devices that you’re going to manufacture. In a lot of cases, that drives the process that you’re going to use for manufacturing, not only in the technology, but also inspection and validation process. And there are some cases where some technologies are more suited to precision applications and others that aren’t so much. So knowing that early on is really important. One of the most important aspects is having a really clear Production Part Approval Process. PPAP for short. It can be easy thinking about additive manufacturing because I can can come up with a design today and hit print tomorrow and then have parts out. It’s easy to have that be a false positive. We can go to production tomorrow, but there’s this part approval process that’s really important to drive success.
(09:53):
The first step is establishing prints with the critical to quality dimensions. Rather than just having a three-D model for parts that are high tolerance or high precision expectations. Having a print where you’re calling out those critical to quality dimensions is necessary. It’s a method that’s used for most other traditional manufacturing methods, and it’s just as important for additive manufacturing. So that way we, as the manufacturer, know what matters and what doesn’t as much. And then from there, you produce the prototypes, you evaluate the fit and finish against those prints, and then oftentimes there’s an adjustment necessary for the design or the process to be able to achieve the intended outcome. Additive manufacturing is not yet an exact science where what you put in is exactly what you get out. There are times where we have to make adjustments to design for the process or tweak for the process.
(10:52):
After you go through that step, then you would produce a pilot batch and have a first article inspection. That’s where you’re starting to drill down a little bit more, evaluate the dimensions, validate to what changes you may have made, and then again, make any final changes that are necessary and lock in your process. And then from there, you open it up a little bit more. You produce more components as an initial production batch, you’re pushing the technology, you’re understanding what the variance on the larger scale’s going to be. You validate that production process and at that point you lock your process. So at that point, nothing changes. And then that’s when you’re able to go into releasing the program for serial production.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
For medical device clients, you’ve got details here for dimensions and finish, validate conformance. In some cases, we’re doing other process alongside of our clients to validate biocompatibility. When would a client engage us and when would we start to work with them to get those other requirements testing done?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
As early as possible. Now, every program’s a little bit different, but oftentimes it’s occurring in the prototype phase. If you’ve considered additive manufacturing for your clinical trials or for full production, then early on you’re starting to narrow down what methods are viable for that. And as you’re going through that viability analysis, that’s when the biocompatibility testing what happened. So you’re testing the same process that you believe you’ll ultimately use for production, have that tested for biocompatibility alongside in a parallel path with your prototype development. So the design may change after biocompatibility, but as long as the process doesn’t change, then it works fairly smoothly.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
In a perfect world, some of those requirements would live on the drawings. That doesn’t always happen today, but having some of those discrete requirements living on the drawing allows us to consolidate that on the front end and support. We ask as many questions as we can, but knowing what those are early is important.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
It is. And you say that having that called out in the prints is really important as well as identifying the process, locking that in on the prints to make sure that as that goes into the production scenario, especially if you have multiple suppliers, making sure that those process steps are followed for whenever that product is manufactured is key. We find probably some of the biggest shortcomings we find in preparing for additive manufacturing, is lack of revision control and lack of documentation. And having rev control and then the documentation requirements for process on the prints is a perfect world that makes it much easier on everybody to be able to follow through and then have a suitable traceability for the finished product.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah. Serial production.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah. So we’re going to be at MD&M next week. We hope to see you. I’ve got the presentation October 10th at 9:00 A.M. first day. But we’ve got a booth.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
We are in booth 23, 29. Is HP going to be there with us?
Speaker 1 (14:19):
HP is going to be there with us, and we’re going to be there for both days. So we’d love to have you stop by the booth and chat with us. We’d love to have you challenge us on some of our experiences and thoughts and opinions on additive manufacturing and let’s have a great conversation.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
We’ll see you then.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
See you soon. See you soon.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
See you soon.
