8/1/2023 0 Comments Mass production 3d printing![]() “It usually starts with prototyping - ‘Ok, these parts are actually pretty good, let’s make some tools because that fits in the sweet spot.’ And usually what sparks next is a spare part, circumstance: ‘We need a part, and we have the tool to make it.’ And then once you print a part, that’s your in with a customer, right? You’re putting it into an environment, and it’s like, wait a minute! We can do this. Considering how urgently the US military ( especially the US Navy) views the need for a national buildup of the most powerful classes of metal AM platforms, Markforged’s inroads into the defense industrial base could realistically lead to an accelerated growth trajectory in the very near future. On the other hand, Adams pointed out that it’s common for customers to move up to higher-cost, higher-complexity machines once they’ve gained a familiarity with the platforms, like the X7, that are most often used for rapid prototyping. Of course, no one’s putting a PX100 on a submarine any time soon. Regarding Markforged’s aforementioned popularity with the defense sector, I think the most intriguing example of that so far this year was the installation of the X7 carbon fiber platform aboard the USS New Hampshire, one of the Virginia-class submarines in the US Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) fleet. Ross Adams, Markforged’s business development manager And that proved a really good point to their engineering team, that binder jet is a process that you can rely on.” a part in a Cadillac that’s been fully adapted for this process. ![]() We’re just starting to get into this right now. So, all the different belts and buttons and knobs, being able to put your initials on them or pick your design, or any different type of logo. It’s much more about personalized customer experiences where you make the customer feel like they had a say in the car that they selected. From the opposite angle, it is also an increasingly valuable tool for operations that rely on conventional mass production methods, but which are also now branching out, more and more, into smaller runs revolving around product personalization.įor instance, from Adams’ perspective, “Automotive is starting to shift in the way that they bring products to market. Moreover, that same consideration is critical not just in terms of allowing suppliers accustomed to lower-volume production to increase capacity. If you can be running your machines everyday and keep everything on maximized uptime, you’re going to be a very profitable business.” If are already on and they have extra space in there, it can be more effective for them because they’re aggregating a lot of demand from different industries and different customer profiles.” This is where series production could truly start to have a big impact on the emergence of economies of scale in the AM sector: “The higher throughput you have, the more capacity you have, the better unit economics it equates to. “For them, it’s okay to do like ten parts in a build. “We have a lot of contract manufacturing customers that take orders in from all different areas,” Adams said. Ross Adams, Markforged’s business development manager, explained to me how important the increased capacity for metal AM series production is in order for OEMs to attract the all-important contract manufacturer market. It is all part and parcel of the same strategy of which the PX100 could quickly become the centerpiece. The company has been on a particular tear lately, especially in high-value sectors like defense and automotive. This is real series production.”Īs with any ambitious young original equipment manufacturer (OEM) in the AM space, Markforged has had to evolve especially quickly over the past few years, and its work seems to be paying dividends. “ has done serial production for ten years using metal binder jetting technology, and that makes us quite unique… making batches of twenty or thirty or forty thousand parts for years. And, today, we’re here under the Markforged umbrella…and it’s a real machine,” said Lönne. ![]() “It’s a great day for me to be here today, because I was here at RAPID exactly one year ago, and I showed a shell of this machine - but the machine was empty.
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