193983-NOV 2013.pdf

What Oak Ridge

National Laboratory

is Learning About AM

1113AM_Cover.indd 1 10/15/2013 8:29:27 AM

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Con t e n t s

N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3

AdditiveManufacturingInsight.com November 2013 1

04 10

02 Something to Add When Things Go Together

F E A T U R E S

04 Forget What You Know Additive manufacturing changes assumptions about

the design of manufactured parts. Oak Ridge

National Laboratory is discovering what the new

assumptions should be.

By Peter Zelinski

10 The New Pattern for Prototyping Ford is building engineering confdence through nearly

production-ready prototype parts, thanks to additive

manufacturing.

By Christina Fuges

14 Product News

15 News from AMTThe Association for Manufacturing Technology

ABOUT THE COVER: Oak Ridge National Laboratory is helping manufacturers experiment

with the possibilities of additive manufacturing. Read more on page 4.

PUBLISHER

Travis Egan

[email protected]

EDITORS

Peter Zelinski

[email protected]

Christina Fuges

[email protected]

ASSISTANT EDITOR

El McKenzie

[email protected]

MANAGING EDITOR

Kate Hand

[email protected]

ART DIRECTOR

Aimee Reilly

[email protected]

ADVERTISING MANAGER

William Caldwell

[email protected]

1113AM_TOC.indd 1 10/15/2013 8:30:31 AM

2 AM Supplement

Something to Add

2 AM Supplement

I believe we all like it when things work together

as opposed to fghting against each other,

including in the world of additive manufacturing.

Since the early days of rapid prototyping, addi-

tive technologies have caused quite a stirof

excitement, interest, confusion and anxiety. The

latter two terms continue to be applicable even

today, but it doesnt (and shouldnt) have to be

that way.

Additive manufacturing should be viewed as

complementary and augmentative to traditional

metalcutting rather than combative or competi-

tive, because the benefts of employing these

technologieswithin the right applicationsare

numerous. These benefts can include time to

market, cost reduction, quality (of both the de-

sign and the end product), upfront collaboration,

design freedom and environmental impact.

Instead of being, dare I say, threatened by

AM, you should embrace it as another tool in

your toolbox, whether you bring the technology

in-house or outsource the service to experts

in the feld. And when leading machine tool

builders known for innovation in their traditional,

subtractive methods enter the AM game, it is re-

ally time to pay attention.

Attending EMO, the worlds leading metal-

working event, this past September proved to

be very enlightening in this regard. AM was a

topic of discussion even at this event focused on

When Things Go TogetherSo who doesnt like it when things work together as opposed to

fghting against each other?

Christina M. Fuges

Editor

metalcutting machinery. I spoke with Greg Hyatt,

Ph.D, senior vice president and chief technical

offcer for DMG Mori Seiki, about his outlook on

AM, and discovered that more exciting AM ad-

vancements are on the way later this month.

Hyatt said he believes the machine tool

industry as a whole has been looking at AM all

wrong. A different point of view led to the de-

velopment of a hybrid machine that he says will

offer increased freedom and fexibility in design

and manufacturing.

There has been a lot of discussion about the

future of additive manufacturing and the poten-

tial that it will replace traditional material removal

processes, he said. DMG Mori Seiki sees the

two technologies as complementary, ultimately

increasing our customers ability to produce new

and more complex components. In November,

manufacturers will have the chance to learn

more about our approach to additive/subtrac-

tive production and our machines of the future at

Manufacturing Days in Davis, California.

DMG Mori Seiki will also exhibit its new hybrid

machine at Euromold in Frankfurt, Germany,

December 3-6. Euromold is a leading event in

the areas of moldmaking and tooling design

and application development, in which additive

manufacturing has a large role and will have

a huge presence on the show foor. DMG Mori

Seiki will join other technology suppliers exhibit-

ing new developments in AM.

The conference program itself also will

include a session on business and investment

opportunities in additive manufacturing and 3D

printing. Well be attending this event to see and

learn about this new technology frst-hand and

report the details back to you.

1113AM_Something to Add.indd 2 10/15/2013 8:31:13 AM

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4 AM Supplement

F E A T U R E By Peter Zelinski

One of the most important sites in the

United States for advancing industrys

understanding of additive manufactur-

ing belongs to an institution once associated

with the atomic bomb. In Oak Ridge, Tennes-

see, the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility

(MDF)part of Oak Ridge National Laboratory

(ORNL)is using resources as sophisticated

as a $1.4 billion neutron source to examine the

material structure of parts produced through

direct metal laser sintering, or through electron

beam melting performed on the facilitys own

Arcam machines.

The resources, technology and scientists

in the MDF are all available to help American

companies address their manufacturing chal-

lenges. Indeed, this is the very mission and

purpose of the facility. It was established by the

Department of Energys Advanced Manufactur-

ing Offce in the hope of providing industry with

affordable and convenient access to advanced

equipment, capacity and expertise. While

some of the research done here is initiated by

the Department of Defense for the beneft of

Forget What You KnoW

DoD suppliers, other research is initiated by

individual businesses, which enter into cost-

sharing research partnerships that tap into the

funding the MDF has been granted to assist

U.S. manufacturing. The aim of this facility is

to provide a conduit so that the technological

resources of ORNLresources bought by U.S.

taxpayerscan be applied toward giving U.S.

manufacturers a competitive edge.

Additive manufacturing is one of the key

research areas here. (Carbon fber technol-

ogy is another.) Within the MDF shop, additive

manufacturing machines that build in metal

and plastic are studied using thermal imag-

ing to chart the processes capabilities and

performance. One of the goals of the imaging

This component of a human-like robotic hand illustrates vari-

ous features of a part designed for additive manufacturing.

Instead of the part being solid, a mesh structure provides the

form. The channels connecting to the four knuckles once

turned at right angles, but in this improved version of the

design, they now turn more gradually. In addition, the part is

made of titanium 6-4, an easy material for additive processing.

In small ways and in very big ways,

additive manufacturing changes basic

assumptions about the design of

manufactured parts. oak ridge national

Laboratory is discovering what the new

assumptions should be.

1113AM_Feature1.indd 4 10/15/2013 8:32:17 AM


is the development of in-situ process controls.

Meanwhile, using ORNL resources located

outside this shop, parts produced additively are

examined with tools as advanced as neutron to-

mography to understand their residual stresses.

All of this work is directed at improving the

effectiveness of additive manufacturing, and ulti-

mately at realizing processes that are controlled

and predictable enough for mature, ongoing

production of a broad range of critical parts.

Along the way, the researchers involved

with this work are expanding their understand-

ing of how to apply additive manufacturing,

and growing in their appreciation for what this

technology will make possible.

One of those researchers is Ryan Dehoff,

Ph.D, who focuses on additive manufactur-

ing of metal components. He says the biggest

obstacle to realizing the full value of additive

manufacturing might prove to be our established

expectations, large and small, about the ways

that a manufactured part ought to be designed.

Accomplished manufacturing professionals

harbor many unseen assumptions about manu-

facturability that additive manufacturing renders

invalid. Are you ready for fuid shapes instead of

blockish ones? Are you ready for part geometry

itself to slip out of the control of the designers?

In some ways, he says, engineering students

are better equipped to apply additive manufac-

turing than their mentors. The students have not

yet been trained in what sorts of shapes they are

not supposed to be able to produce.

Therefore, when it comes to additive manu-

facturing, Dehoffs message to established

manufacturing professionals is essentially this:

Forget what you know.

Or more precisely, recognize your assump-

tions and be prepared to question them.

Additive manufacturing is not a replacement

The Manufacturing Demonstration Facilitys additive

manufacturing resources include equipment from Arcam, the

POM Group and Stratasys. Relationships with other facilities

performing additive manufacturing give the MDF access to

machine types in addition to these.


6 AM Supplement

F E A T U R E

for any existing manufacturing method,

he says. Instead, it is a design

enabler that will allow engineers

to solve problems by

growing or printing

components that would

have been all but impos-

sible to produce before.

However, between todays

engineers and the use of

that enabler lies the

need for a signifcant

change in mindset.

There are various aspects

of this changeagain, some

small and some large. According to

Dehoff, here are just a few of the areas in

which our conventional expectations about part

design will need to give way:

1. Right is Wrong

Take a quick glance at all of the objects around

you, and typically you can tell which ones are

man-made because of the presence of one fea-

ture in particular: right angles. The right angle is

commonplace, and it is characteristic of manu-

factured things. The reason for this is basic. The

foundation of most manufacturing is the machine

tool, and the easiest form for a machine tool

to generate is a right angle. In addition, a right

angle is among the easier forms to defne on

paper for measurement later. For these reasons,

an engineer evaluating the manufacturability of a

component design will almost invariably, without

even realizing it, look for diffculty wherever

the design departs from right angles. Depart-

ing from straight lines altogether into complex

curves makes the design even more suspect.

But this flter is about to become less use-

ful. Additive manufacturing produces organic

or complex forms as easily as cubic ones. If

anything, the process produces organic shapes

even more easily than cubic ones. In recogniz-

ing this, we begin to see just how many of the

right angles in the world around us are unnec-

essary. We have many of the square corners

we do simply because this is the most natural

feature to machine. When manufacturing is

based on an additive process, many of those

right angles should be abandoned.

For the MDF team, a robotic hand designed

to simulate a human hand served to emphasize

this point. The hand was created on one of the

facilitys Arcam machines, which employs an

additive process in which an electron beam

moves through a bed of powder to create each

layer of the part. The powder that is not melted

by the beam in this process remains in place to

support the part as it grows. This support system

is elegant, because it conforms to the part and

minimizes residual stress, but it also leaves

powder packed all through the internal fea-

tures when the part is fnished. Without thinking

about their choice, the robotic hands engineers

had arranged the hands internal passages for

cabling into a tidy and visually pleasing pattern

The MDFs work includes advancing additive manufacturing

process knowledge for metals used to make high-value

components. The set of test pieces shown here was built of

Inconel 625.



of straight channels that met at right angles.

Getting the powder out of the resulting internal

corners proved to be impossible. This problem

was solved in the next iteration, when the part

was refashioned to give each of the internal

channels a gently curving course like a river, re-

moving the unnecessary angles from the design.

2. Anything but Round

Another basic assumption of manufacturabil-

ity is that we expect holes to be round. This

expectation is also natural, because drilling and

boring produce circular holes. In additive man-

ufacturing, however, a circular cross-section

can be a particularly challenging hole shape.

Heres why: In an additive process, any fea-

ture potentially has to remain stable even while

it is incomplete, because features are built up

through gradual layering. For a circular hole,

this is problematic if the part orientation means

the hole has to be grown as it lays horizontally.

Maintaining the circularity as the incomplete

hole grows is likely to require extra support to

be engineered into the designa wasteful step

if that circularity is not actually needed for the

holes function. Where the holes purpose does

not depend on the cross section, a diamond-

shaped or triangular hole would likely be the

more stable choice. Therefore, it is important to

ask: Just what is the holes purpose?

Indeed, what is the purpose of any feature?

Dehoff says this point about hole roundness re-

lates to a larger issue in additive manufacturing:

the importance of being aware of design intent.

Designers and manufacturers have to be in

close communication, he says. Hole circularity is

In the image at right are two components (one atop the other) of a robot being

developed by the Offce of Naval Research for use on the underside of ship

hulls. One of the advantages of additive manufacturing is that it allows parts

to be grown with internal channels so that cables can be threaded through the

joints instead of interfering with them. (Another advantage is that a robot like

this might conceivably be grown hollow enough that it could foat if dislodged,

rather than sink.)


8 AM Supplement

F E A T U R E

just one example of a detail unthinkingly applied

that could result in unnecessary cost.

Of course, communication is needed in CNC

machining as well, but the communication here

tends not to require the same effort. In machin-

ing, any unmachinable feature will become

apparent and will lead to a conversation auto-

matically. But in additive manufacturing, there

are hardly any ungrowable features. Nor is

there any established language for communi-

cating which design choices are vital and which

forms are just casual or accidental choices.

Thus, there is nothing to stop the manufac-

turer from trying to produce the part precisely

according to the received design. This can be

excessively expensive.

In one project that ORNL took on, engineers

debated the best way to additively produce the

most challenging feature of the part modela

0.003-inch-thick fn. The high price ORNL quot-

ed for the part surprised the designer so much

that he questioned it, which was fortunate. It

turned out that the thin fn was just an STL error.

The client did not want it or even know it was

there. Once this feature was removed, the

part could be reoriented in the build chamber

for far more effcient production, resulting in the

quoted price dropping by a factor of 10.

3. The New Aluminum

When the choice of material does not matter for

a part that is to be machined, that choice tends

to be aluminum. The metal is easy to machine

and cheap. As a result, engineers frequently

specify aluminum as their go-to material, believ-

ing they are simplifying manufacturing. But

in the current state of additive manufacturing

process knowledge, this choice is little help.

As strange as it sounds, Dehoff says the

go-to metal for many additive manufacturing

applications should be titanium 6-4. From a

machining perspective, of course, this choice

is bizarre. Titanium 6-4 is relatively challenging

to machine, not to mention expensive. But thats

machining. The additive manufacturing per-

spective is different.

Titanium 6-4 is not hard to work with in an

additive process largely because so much

work has already gone into fne-tuning addi-

tive processes for this metal. Within the Arcam

electron beam melting process, for example,

this materials behavior is probably the best un-

derstood of any alloy. The build parameters in

this and other additive manufacturing process-

es are well known. In aluminum, this is hardly

the casethere has been much less additive

manufacturing work with this metal.

Plus, additive manufacturing actually makes

titanium cheap. While the material is still more

expensive than aluminum on an equivalent-

weight basis, the strength of titanium enables the

designer to use far less of the metal to attain the

same structural performance. In place of a solid

form, for example, a complex mesh structure

could be grown within the additive machine

so that the part uses only the amount of metal

necessary to safely support its intended load.

This freedom not only minimizes the weight of

the titanium part, but also controls cost to the

point of making the titanium component competi-

tive. And in cases where the strength of titanium

allows one additively produced titanium part to

replace what used to be a complex assembly

of multiple aluminum parts, that substitution can

deliver signifcant cost reduction.

4. Function Instead of Form

Of all of the design engineering departures

required to realize the potential of additive

manufacturing, Dehoff says one fnal point is

the most radical: Engineers should not directly

create the designs. Engineers should defne

needs and constraints instead.

To understand, consider the previously cited

idea of using a mesh structure to carry the parts

intended load. Additive manufacturing makes

such a structure easy to achieve. That struc-

ture could minimize both material cost and part

weight compared to making the part solid. How-

ever, how would the designer ever create the

mesh that precisely realizes this promise? That

is, what is the optimal mesh form providing the



best achievable performance-to-material-volume

ratio? That the engineer could know this is incon-

ceivable, particularly if the load is applied to an

organic form at a variety of angles. And it is just

as inconceivable that the engineer could create

the design directly. Would he manually model

each individual strand of the mesh in CAD?

We have never before faced a diffculty like

this in manufacturing engineering, because we

have never before had the freedom to realize

such sophisticated geometric solutions. Previ-

ously, component parts have been solid and

therefore relatively simple, so we have been

able to use relatively simple and direct methods

to model them.

In the future, says Dehoff, design engineers

will model performance objectives instead of

the actual manufactured forms. Rather than

directly constructing the model in CAD, the en-

gineer will defne load requirements and other

performance factors in detail, and also defne

design objectives related to weight, cost and

build time. From this boundary information, soft-

ware will calculate and generate the ideal part

geometry modelthe form that will ultimately

be grown through 3D printing.

Software is available that works on something

like this principle today. Design engineering

tools using this approach will need to be in much

more widespread use, Dehoff says. Computing

power will be a factor, because large parts with

complex performance requirements will pose

extreme computational demands. In short, the

real challenge of additive manufacturing comes

from the fact that, with its arrival, manufactur-

ing technology has now outraced the tools and

even the knowledge that design engineers have

available. We can now produce what we are

not yet ready to conceive. The manufacturing

technology is that far ahead. For the use of addi-

tive manufacturing to expand, our thinking about

design engineering just needs to catch up.

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10 AM Supplement

F E A T U R E By Christina M. Fuges

10 AM Supplement

Ford is building engineering confdence through nearly

production-ready prototype parts, which provide reliable test

dataall thanks to additive manufacturing.

The New Pattern for Prototyping

To gauge how widely the Ford Motor

Company uses 3D printing, just count the

number of castings in one of its vehicles

engine and transmission. On newer vehicles,

practically every one of those castings was pro-

totyped using 3D sand printing.

That is, 3D printing in sand is used to

quickly generate molds and cores for prototype

parts, without any need to make a pattern frst.

Because of the increased number of design

iterations that this type of prototyping permits,

relying on 3D printing in this way can result in a

better vehicle.

Paul Susalla, Fords section supervisor of

rapid manufacturing, is involved in much of this

prototyping. He works at a Dearborn, Michigan

facility where 3D sand printing is performed us-

ing ExOnes S-15 digital mold and core-making

system. He emphasizes that, though we are

speaking of prototypes, Fords prototype vol-

umes could surpass what many manufacturers

consider to be full production.



Ford technologist Dennis

DuBay removes sand that

surrounds sand cast molds

for engine components,

made through Fords 3D

printing process at its

facility in Dearborn Heights,

Michigan. The fuel-effcient

EcoBoost engine now in

Ford vehicles was initially

developed with 3D sand

prototyping. Pictured here

is the 3.5-liter V-6 EcoBoost

engine used in Ford F-150

trucks.

We use [the ExOne S-15 system] for almost

all of our prototype castings in powertrain, sus-

pension and other componentscylinder heads,

cylinder blocks, crank shafts, front covers, oil

pans, Susalla says. Basically, any castings you

see in an engine or transmission, we are proto-

typing here using 3D sand printing.

Those parts will go directly on engines and

transmissions that are run either on a dynamom-

eter or in test vehicles to obtain data to help

engineers understand the design and determine

any necessary modifcations.

And these are durability vehicles, says

Harold Sears, Ford additive manufacturing

technical specialist. They may run 1,000 hours

in a dynoequivalent to 100,000 miles in a test

vehicle.


12 AM Supplement

F E A T U R E

3D sand printing allows engineers to quickly create a series

of evolving testable pieces with slight variations to develop

the absolute best, most fuel-effcient vehicle for mass

production.

He says the prototypes for parts on Fords

EcoBoost engines were made this way, including

all of the original cylinder heads for the 2-liter

EcoBoost that you can get on so many vehicles

today. In fact, the frst 100 engines and their

cylinder heads were cast using this technology.

Before and After

A cylinder head is a diffcult part to make, requir-

ing 12 to 20 cores and mold components to be

sand-cast. Before using 3D sand printing for

metal castings, the process for making a cylin-

der head involved making patterns, usually by

machining them from tooling board, and packing

foundry sand in the mold.

Creating all of the tooling would take months

and a lot of money. Plus, Some of these cores

are extremely tough to make, Susalla says.

Now when using 3D printing, its just a mat-

ter of getting a fle and putting it through the

machine and coming out with the same cores,

he says. There is no tooling, no time involved.

3D Sand Printing Benets

The most important beneft of 3D sand print-

ing is the speed of the process. In a nutshell,

if you look at the traditional way of making a

casting, you are months out before you get your

frst casting, and with 3D sand printing you can

have a casting in a matter of days to a couple of

weeks, Susalla says.

He explains that, if you are using tooling, it

might be four months down the road before you

get your frst part and realize that its not what

you want. Then the tooling must be changed. If

you look at the product development cycle, Ford,

GM and Chrysler only give you x number of

months to years to put it on paper and then get it



Ford Technologist Mark Smith cleans a 3D printed part at Fords

3D printing facility in Dearborn Heights, Michigan.

on the street, he says. As an engineer, you only

have a certain amount of time to get your part

right. The traditional method might give you only

three shots at getting the part right, but 3D sand

printing allows you to create multiple iterations at

the same time because you are not committed to

tooling.

According to Susalla, instead of one design,

youre looking at fve to six designs right off the

bat, and then within a matter of weeks you can

have already tested those fve or six designs,

made some engineering decisions, and come

up with alterations or even new designs to test.

So with 3D sand printing, you have plenty of

opportunities to optimize the design for qual-

ity, cost, time, fuel economy, performance and

safety, he says.

Another known beneft of 3D sand printing

is that it eliminates traditional design limitations.

You can make something the way it wants to be

designed versus how it can be manufactured,

Susalla says.

He notes, however, that when Ford makes

a cylinder head, the mold is shaped exactly

the same as it will be in productionwith draft

angles and parting linesso that the test part is

representative of what will be coming out of the

production process.

According to Sears, not following this protocol

caused some problems for the company when it

frst adopted the sand printing technology. We

werent making parts like they were in production,

and we were getting fantastic testing, he says.

Then all of a sudden when we tooled up the part,

we lost performance. You

have to make it like its

made in production.

Both Susalla and Sears

agree that an additional

beneft of 3D sand printing

is that it promotes col-

laboration, helping them

as they work closely with

manufacturing engineering

when they run into produc-

tion issues.

We fnd things and

realize You know what,

the plants going to have a

problem with this, Sears

says. We then bring the

manufacturing and product

engineering groups togeth-

er and say, Look, we made

your prototypes and we

discovered this, which is

going to be an issue in pro-

duction. You need to fgure

it out. Then the two groups

get together to modify the

designs to accommodate

mass production.


Product News

14 AM Supplement

3D Printer Delivers High Precision at High Speed

The 3Z Max from Solidscape is the Stratasys subsidiarys

fastest 3D wax printer, offering higher throughput and

increased production when working with bulkier precision

designs in jewelry manufacturing, and industrial and

medical applications.

The fully automated printer is said to combine the

power of 3D high-precision printing with the increased

performance required by direct manufacturing. Its

user-friendly touchscreen and software are designed to

enable operators of any technical level to produce their

own high-precision wax parts ready for casting, making

3D direct manufacturing available to nearly any business.

solid-scape.com

3D Systems Introduces

Plastic Injection Molding-Like Material

3D Systems has introduced VisiJet M3 Black, a plas-

tic injection molding-like material for use in its ProJet

3500/3510 professional 3D printers. It is said to be the

printers strongest, most durable material yet, with excel-

lent toughness and fex properties that make it suitable

for snap-ft and assembly applications. Its jet-black color

also mimics injection-molded plastic performance so

engineers and designers can prototype, test and use parts

that look and feel like the fnal product, the company says.

3dsystems.com

ExOne, rp+m Develop

Bonded Tungsten Printing Material

ExOne and rapid prototype + manufacturing (rp+m) have

collaborated on a new bonded tungsten material that has

been added to ExOnes portfolio of 3D printing materials.

rp+m plans to use the material in place of lead in an

ExOne M-Flex machine to develop solutions for shielding

people and environments from ionizing radiation in the

medical imaging and aerospace markets. ExOne says the

M-Flex can create complex shapes for these applications

more easily than conventional manufacturing methods.

ExOne also has added iron infltrated with bronze as

a new 3D printing material and has increased the suite

of binder solutions for its 3D printing process to include

phenolic and sodium silicate.

exone.com / rpplusm.com

NIST Awards $7.4 Million for AM Research

The U.S. Department of Commerces National Institute of

Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded two grants

totaling $7.4 million to fund research projects aimed at

improving measurement and standards for the additive

manufacturing industry.

NIST is awarding $5 million to the National Addi-

tive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII) for a

three-phase collaborative research effort involving 27

companies, universities and national laboratories. North-

ern Illinois University will receive $2.4 million to develop

tools for process control and qualifying parts made with

layer-by-layer additive manufacturing processes.

nist.gov / namii.org / niu.edu

RapidFit Adds

Michigan Operations

RapidFit Inc., a provider of

3D-printed fxture solutions for the

automotive industry, has purchased

Advanced Machining in Chesterfeld

Township, Michigan, and plans to use it

as its North American manufacturing center,

producing CMMs and attribute-checking fxtures.

RapidFit is part of Belgiums Materialise Group. Its

RapidFit+ service provides customized jigs, fxtures and

quality-control solutions to check the dimensional quality

of car components and assemblies.

rapidft.materialise.com

1113AM_Products.indd 14 10/15/2013 8:35:12 AM

BEGO USA Bets on EOS Technology Biting Big

into Changing U.S. Dental Restoration Market


By Wiebke Jensen, Electro Optical Systems

Additive manufacturing is disrupting another tradi-

tional industrial technologythe fne art of dental

restoration, which rescues damaged teeth with

devices ranging from simple fllings created in the

patients mouth to crowns, bridgework and implants

that are manufactured via multiple processes

away from the dentists ofce. Many restorations

performed today still use lost-wax technology that

has barely changed in 100 years. But this appears to

be changing.

With skyrocketing gold prices and pressure to

fnd cost-efective methods for saving smiles, weve

realized that our present product line supporting

lost wax is probably going to be obsolete in 10 to

15 years, predicts Bill Oremus, president of Rhode

Island-based BEGO USA. Te end of casting is

approaching, as additive manufacturing alters the

dental landscape.

Tin cross-sections of alloy powder are sequentially

melted by a laser driven by this geometry, automati-

cally building complete 3D restorations with structural

fxtures not yet snapped of. (Photo courtesy of EOS

GmbH.)

Recognizing this, BEGO launched an initiative into

on-site production of non-precious-alloy restorations

with a direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) system it

purchased in 2011 from EOS GmbH. Within a year

of beginning to use the EOSINT M 270, BEGO was

producing hundreds of restoration units a week that are

fully dense and without porosity.

Our customers simply send us any open STL file of

a patients mouth scan, and, after a file review step,

we manufacture the coping in about 48 hours,

Oremus says.

Te laser sintering system holds a bed of powdered

metal material and processes the crowns or bridges

Wirobond C+ three-unit bridge manufactured by BEGO

USA using an EOS additive manufacturing system.

Support anatomy, precise marginal integrity and

smooth surfaces are produced consistently from every

STL fle. (Photo courtesy of BEGO USA.)

1113AM_AMT.indd 15 10/15/2013 8:35:38 AM

16 AM Supplement

Article continued

from page 15.

layer by layer. After a thin layer of the powder is

applied, a focused laser beam solidifes it, and the

powder bed drops by a fraction of a millimeter to

begin the next layer. Te DMLS system runs automati-

cally, quickly and economically with accuracy of +/-20

microns.

While the traditional casting process can produce

about 20 dental frames per day, DMLS manufacturing

is scalable to as many as 450 crowns and bridges in the

same time period. Te restoration only needs some

rubber-wheel fnishing in the margins and its ready for

veneering with ceramics, Oremus says. In the case of

a bridge, the end-product doesnt need sectioning and

just drops into place.

Te quality of the restorations is truly excellent, the

surface structure of the copings is so much better,

and the marginal integrity is phenomenal. We save

cost and time

In an industry where patient specifcity is critical,

these qualities are key. If you were to put 10

long-span bridges through the old lost-wax

technique, you would be looking at only 50-60

percent accuracy, Oremus says. Tats a lot of

do-overs and increased wait-time for the patient. Using

our EOS system today, were getting a 90-95 percent

success rate and saving time.

Since the EOS system can work with virtually any

properly prepared metal powder, BEGO has patented

its own high-performance chrome-cobalt-molyb-

denum alloy, Wirobond C+. Te material contains

more than 20 percent chromium, which, during

manufacturing, creates a passivity layer that prevents

the release of free ions, ensuring high biocompatibility.

Whatever alloy we are working with, we fnd that

EOS machines are head-and-shoulders above others

in terms of control of laser-beam size and efects

on diferent restoration geometries and materials,

Oremus says. Te fact that laser sintering systems

can be run with a wide variety of registered/validated

materials is also of particular interest to the dental

industry, which is always on the lookout for alloys

with improved characteristics. Durability and perfor-

mance are key in restorations, he says. Te muscles

of the jaw generate huge amounts of force on teeth

and they have to withstand thermal expansion and

contraction.

Plus, DMLS uses less material than more-traditional

manufacturing methods. A major advantage is the

cost-efectiveness of the build-up technique versus so

many of the other subtractive techniques, says Ryan

LeBrun, BEGOs CAD production manager. With

high-end metals, your profts are just ground away.

Teres almost no waste with additive manufacturing.

We can flter any extra unused powder and reuse it

on the next production run. Were able to pass our

savings on to the laboratory and the technician to

help give them a better proft picture.

Whats more, says Oremus, other advances in the

digitalization of dentistry are primed to support the

acceptance of the technology. Te use of chair-side

mouth scanners will make CAD modeling increas-

ingly common and further drive the use of additive

manufacturing in dentistry, he says.

For more information on EOS-Electro Optical

Systems, visit eos.info/en. For more information

about additive technologies in general, contact

Tim Shinbara, technical director, AMT-Te Associa-

tion For Manufacturing Technology, at tshinbara@

AMTonline.org or 703-827-5243.

1113AM_AMT.indd 16 10/15/2013 8:35:52 AM

1113 MFG Meeting.indd 1 10/7/13 3:27 PM

Come together.

Leave your mark.

COME

TOGETHER.

LEAVE

INSPIRED.

Save the date Sept. 813, 2014 ImtS.Com

Where else can you meet the minds that are moving manufacturing

forward? Nowhere but IMTS 2014. With a focus on success through

cooperation, the week will be flled with technology, education, and

ideas that we can all beneft from. Join us at McCormick Place Chicago,

September 813, 2014. Learn more at IMTS.com.

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