Randal Chinnock discusses improvements in Rapid Product Development with 3D printing at MD&M East 2014
Randal Chinnock, CEO of Optimum Technologies
Customers show up all the time with their hair on fire. Their investors are pressing them to get products to market as fast as they can and they come to us and they ask, “How long will it take?” Even before a product has been designed, we have to find a way to answer that question. And one of the most important aspects of product development is getting parts prototyped as quickly as possible.
So we use computerized design tools for mechanical, optical, and electronic components. We then have a whole variety of rapid prototyping service providers that we can go to, who can turn around prototype parts in a matter of days.
Here at the 2014 MD&M East, I’ve been out talking to some of these service providers and manufacturers of rapid prototyping equipment to understand what the latest advances are.
Andrew Lubicello, Area Sales Manager – East of EOS of North America
One of the strengths of the DMLS is that you can combine multiple parts that used to be machined, MIMed, and then brazed together. You can make them all in one time, over and over and over again with not a lot of manpower. It’s basically a printer that’s printing in 20 micron layer thicknesses out of titanium, out of cobalt chrome.
This is an eye implant that if someone were in a bad car accident and had to reconstruct their face, they could print things with a mesh that will actually grow back bone. There are other parts being produced that are integrated camera parts, lenses, gears and so forth.
Randal Chinnock, CEO of Optimum Technologies
So as for mechanical parts, I found one very exciting vendor here: 3D systems. They have the latest generation of stereo lithography printers (SLA) and they’ve reduced their resolution now to 16 microns. So this is a sample part that they’ve produced. It’s a round part with a whole series of tiny vanes in it and some mounting features. This is not a part that could be produced by conventional machining methodology. This can only be produced by digital techniques.
Having this kind of capability available allows us to make mechanical parts that we can use, for example for a very precise a lens barrel, spacers and apertures that go into an opto-mechanical assembly into which we can load optical components.
Another supplier that we found is called ProtoCAM and they specialize in rapid prototyping using a variety of processes including urethane casting and that’s a very interesting process for us.
Chuck Hawley, Technology Manager of ProtoCAM
So we’ve been doing this for about twenty years and we’ve developed techniques throughout that time to make some very, very clear parts, both raw as well as urethane castings. So typically engineers will send us files, we’ll print them out in 3D, generally in stereo lithography, polish the daylights out of them, and then make urethane castings with temporary RTV molds. The end result, we can cast them in any color we want, but the clear, as I understand you’re interested in, we specialize in.
We make them for medical companies, displaying implant devices for doctors, and we’ve had great success with it. Our customers are very pleased with the results. We can do light tubes and other type applications of lenses or light conveyance mechanisms, bringing like say from the back of a VCR out to the front panel, where you’ve got your light in one place but you need to bring it to a different part of the mechanism.
Randal Chinnock, CEO of Optimum Technologies
So we can use ProtoCAM’s urethane casting technology to make a variety of optical components, particularly in the illumination category. We can cast windows and light pipes that can be used to carry light from a light source to where the light is needed. It’s also possible that we may be able to work with a company like this to refine the process to be able to make optical components that are even accurate enough for imaging applications.
That would be the first time that any kind of casting technique could be used for that purpose. That would potentially cut many, many weeks out of the optical prototyping process and provide a much lower cost alternative to diamond-turning plastic optics.
But now we need another supplier that can make rapid castings that can be used to form an optical bench to hold a whole group of optical components. We found a company called Armstrong Rapid Manufacturing that has a process called one-shot casting.
Paul Armstrong, Director of Sales & Marketing of Armstrong Rapid Manufacturing
I wanted to talk about a new way to make metal castings quickly, where we’re able to take in a CAD file, 3D print up a Styrofoam master model, surround it with plaster, which then cures and we melt out the Styrofoam master, leaving a cavity of this shape that we can then fill with aluminum. Now this is Aluminum 356 Alloy, to a T6 heat treat, which will have the same properties die casting or other casting properties. We’re able to make it in a week. It costs us about $900 with no tooling.
Randal Chinnock, CEO of Optimum Technologies
This will allow us to use this part to build assemblies and to perform a whole series of engineering verification tests that will be predictive of what an actual manufactured assembly would be like.