Xerox acquired Vader Systems' liquid metal additive manufacturing technology back in January.
The entry of any well-known – or ‘2D printing’ – company into the additive manufacturing (AM) industry has become the pinnacle of not only a good headline but proof that 3D printing is serious business. HP baited its entry for some time before officially launching its polymer technology back in 2016, Ricoh built its own powder-bed system, and other household brands including Polaroid and Kodak have since introduced smaller desktop products aimed at more commercial and education facing markets. So, when Xerox, another digital print technology giant, tipped 3D printing, namely metals, as one of its key focus areas for its three-year innovation roadmap, our curiosity was one again piqued.
Perhaps the most surprising element of the reveal, which took place back in February at the company’s 2019 Investor Day, was that rather than being presented with a new acronym to wrap our heads around, onlookers were already somewhat familiar with the technology in question.
Xerox announced the acquisition of New York-based father-son metal 3D printing start-up, Vader Systems and with it, it’s Magnet-o-Jet liquid metal additive manufacturing technology in what Steve Hoover, Xerox’s former Chief Technology Officer, Technology Development and Commercialisation described at the time as a "modest” but “really important” acquisition.
The decision to join forces makes sense. There are several parallels to be found in Xerox’s experience in material jetting and Vader’s process which is said to deposit up to 1,000 liquid metal droplets per second. We’re also at a time in the industry where collaboration is king as an influx of partnerships are being struck to leverage expertise across hardware, software and materials.
“Xerox knows jetting physics,” Kevin Lewis, Head of Business Strategy for 3D at Xerox told TCT during the company’s first outing at RAPID + TCT. “We liked the differentiation of the technology but also the fact that Xerox's expertise could be put towards helping that technology progress even further. That's a pretty good marriage. Xerox is bringing a lot of our expertise in jetting, but also just general system design, product design, product development, all the things we do well for our high-end production equipment will be put against this technology.”
Xerox says its material jetting expertise and Vader Systems' technology makes for a "good marriage".
Joining the conversation was Scott Vader, who, as the name may suggest, is a co-founder of Vader Systems along with his son Zachary. Within weeks of the deal closing in January, Scott and other key members of the Vader team, drove the 60 miles from Buffalo, New York to Xerox’s facility in Webster where its 3D printing R&D is now being carried out in a dedicated space.
Liquid metal jetting is an entirely new process and though one may think a familiar powder-bed technology would have been a more failsafe route for the company to take, Xerox is confident that the differentiation of the technology combined with its jetting know-how will open it up to even more markets outside of the current go-to high-value sectors.
“Zachary was looking at ideas on how you could make metal jet additive manufacturing processes that were disruptive in terms of performance but also disruptive in terms of business case,” Scott explained. “We're not excluding the traditional AM markets such as prototyping and consumer but the key is to have processes that will support true manufacturing. It's all about meeting customers’ performance expectations, while adding speed and reducing the cost to broaden the addressable markets and get 3D metal beyond its core routes in medical and aerospace.”
When announcing the acquisition, Xerox highlighted four key AM pain points it is seeking to overcome; productivity, cost, material choice, and workflow. Hoover harked back to Xerox’s invention of “what you see is what you get” document printing, where the image you see on screen is the same as what you get on a sheet of paper. The company says it wants to do the same for AM by ensuring that the design you put in is the same as the physical product you get out. To that end, Xerox is also building out software tools and digital workflows that are said to increase efficiency by predicting manufacturing failures and suggesting design or process changes.
And it’s not stopping there. With a solid grounding in materials for digital production, Xerox is also well placed to grow the materials library, particularly in the form of polymer powders, which the company is looking at in addition to metals. Vader’s technology uses wire feedstock, which right now covers some of the most sought-after aluminium alloys in the market, including 6061 and 7075 but the company plans to expand that through its Advanced Material Solutions to meet the growing need for materials that match production requirements and consistency.
“Toner is essentially an engineered particle - it's very important to control particle size, shape of the particle, how it flows in a system,” Kevin elaborated. “We know how to develop that but we also have manufacturing scale - from very small pilot plant scale to very large manufacturing. 3D printing uses engineering particles; polymer powders for SLS or powder bed fusion, filaments and you need some of the same capabilities; particle size control, flow additives and all the other stuff. We just took that capability and said ‘let's look at how we can make powders for the industry’.”
Xerox is targeting 2020 for its customer pilot phase.
Xerox is reserving the rest of this year for “technology optimisation” as teams from both companies integrate not only on the engineering side but across supply chain to ultimately commercialise the product. The goal is to have a number of customer pilots in place ready for next year.
I ask Kevin if he believes big names like Xerox throwing their hat into the ring influences the validation of the industry for would-be adopters who may be on the fence. But he is quick to discard any assumptions that the weight of a brand is enough to make a mark and insists it’s all about making the right business case. Yet, the same point could be made for Vader, a little-known company which caught the attention of the big guys - surely that’s validation in itself?
“That’s terrific validation for the technology that we have,” Scott says, noting multiple conversations at RAPID + TCT with potential customers who had heard of Vader back in 2018 but now, following the acquisition, were truly listening. “A lot of people ask, ‘why did Xerox take so long to enter the market?’. Well, Xerox didn't stop innovating. Xerox has many, many patents that are public on the 3D side. There's lots going on underneath the surface that we can't disclose at this point.
“It's just the beginning. And this is a perfect time to come in with the kind of mass of some of these large corporations who have a strong history of execution and large-scale commercialisation. I think that certainly validates the entire industry.”
