Strolling down the Las Vegas strip, amid the clashing sounds and neon lights of a hot May evening, I’m not so quietly reminded that engineering is everywhere. From the motor drives and control systems that cause the Bellagio Fountains to dance in sync to Sinatra, to the stationary drive machinery of the monorail which takes visitors from one castle-themed hotel across to the tropical motif of another. It is the latter where Siemens Digital Industries Software is hosting its flagship event, outlining the impact it believes artificial intelligence and the industrial metaverse will have on the future of industrial software.
But not before a quick additive manufacturing (AM) reality check.
“Overhyped” is the word chosen by Tony Hemmelgarn, President and CEO of Siemens Digitial Industries Software and a veteran of PLM, to describe AM during an opening keynote session. Before I can take off my 3D printing editor hat and shuffle away quietly, he contextualises that AM is “making a tremendous difference” but it’s just not the cool new kid on the block anymore.
While not particularly controversial or sobering, it is an interesting take from a company sharing with the 2,000 attendees at Realize LIVE Americas how similarly hyped technologies will fundamentally change how products are designed and manufactured. Hemmelgarn believes we’re “on the cusp of an innovation that’s going to greatly accelerate,” and when I sit down with Aaron Frankel, VP Additive Manufacturing Software Program, later that day, it’s clear Siemens is taking a sensible approach to pursuing these emerging technologies.
“AI can help in so many ways, it's really up to our imaginations at this point and working through different scenarios,” Frankel told TCT, suggesting that for AM, some of those scenarios could include anything from scanning through a catalogue of parts to find the best fit solution to resequencing of scan vectors.
Is AI the new AM, I wonder? With everything from cooking recipes to vacation itineraries being sought on AI platforms, it's certainly riding a similar path, where a boom in consumer interest turned an otherwise 'techy' product into a tool for the generalist. Yet, while AM was propelled by Star Trek references and ‘revolutionary’ headlines, that buzz led to a lack of understanding and then disillusionment around the technology's real value and industry acceptance. Siemens is conscious of that in its push towards meaningful adoption of AI, targeting generalists over experts.
“I think sometimes companies treat it as special,” Frankel said of AM. “Sometimes you have to do that to get started but if you continue to treat it as a special thing, it's never going to become a part of the fabric and the culture of the organisation that needs to adopt it, and that's something I think that companies need to be made aware of. Don't treat it as special because if you do, only a handful of people are going to end up using it.”
Get your FREE print subscription to TCT Magazine.
Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.
But Siemens has plenty of customers that are successfully implementing AM at scale. Frankel shares how Schubert Group remapped its spare parts supply chain using AM on demand. Leveraging Siemens’ Additive Manufacturing Network and NX Software, the machine builder’s subsidiary Schubert Additive Solutions GmbH has reported a 90% reduction in lead times and 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It also used NX and digital twin technology to develop its in-house Partbox 3D printer, halving development time and allowing engineers to perform tests and ‘prototype’ the machine within a digital environment. Now, customer orders are all processed within the Additive Manufacturing Network, and the entire workflow is facilitated with NX.
“When it comes to additive, I believe that we're in a leadership position as far as being able to offer a digital thread solution, all the way from the idea to the part,” Frankel explained. “I think we’re in this unique position because our approach has been to develop software tools that fit into the tools that all of the engineers and manufacturers use from our portfolio, and give them the ability to take advantage of additive, whether it's design, simulation, or manufacturing.”
Siemens Digital Industries Software
Modelling in Siemens NX
For additive, there are numerous steps between concept and end part, which have historically meant multiple tools and software products. But as Frankel posited, manufacturers don’t have time to figure out niche tools for every step, and are instead “looking for a single solution that they can easily learn and then grow into additive.” Bolstering that notion, the theme of the ‘digital thread’ was one of the event’s major takeaways, but linking up every part of that workflow, and making the most of the valuable data generated along the way remains a challenge for manufacturers.
"One thing that's maybe interesting about additive manufacturing over other manufacturing processes is that its capabilities are expanding rapidly,” said Frankel of the technological developments that make AM an ever-changing landscape. He points to the dramatic rise in multi-laser technologies which have seen machines launched with daunting laser counts, each requiring different capabilities to support. Frankel says Siemens works closely with customers that are operating “on those bleeding edges,” observing the technologies they’re adopting and where they are going, in order to define its product roadmap through in-house capabilities and partnerships.
“I think that in many cases, companies that are looking to adopt [AM] will be frustrated if it doesn't work in the thread that they're trying to build,” Frankel said. “So, I think there's more to do there. There's more openness that's needed. There's more collaboration that's needed in order to support some of these more advanced capabilities that are being developed so rapidly.”
Within NX for manufacturing, Siemens is paying close attention to AM, from design and build prep, to post-processing and process management. Frankel says it has invested heavily in its simulation capabilities within the build process, and recently "made strides” focused specifically on metal powder bed fusion that aim to address that "generalist” user.
Read more:
- #148 Olivier Diegerick, Siemens Digital Industries Software on creating smart additive manufacturing solutions
- "Sustainability is an important outcome of digital transformation" - Eryn Devola, Siemens Digital Industries
Across three days at Realize LIVE, I clock plenty of AM, but as Hemmelgarn observed in his keynote, it’s typically not the headline story. Sintavia, for example, the Florida-based metal AM supplier to the aerospace and defence sector, partnered with Siemens Digital Industries Software back in 2020 to develop an end-to-end AM software solution as a part of Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio. The mutual exchange has seen insights shared between the two for future AM solutions, and Sintavia has since implemented an extensive part of Siemens' portfolio including NX for design, Simcenter for the simulation of new products, and Teamcenter for executing production orders from customers in highly regulated industries.
“It's an amazing story,” Frankel said. “The team that delivered this for this small-medium business started with three young engineers who were given this task to pull together a big aspect of managing a digital thread and executing it in production, and given a short amount of time to do it. They totally delivered.”
Elsewhere, a new mixed reality device from Sony has attendees lining up for a demo following a keynote presentation that leaves me pondering the relevance of 3D printing as a prototyping technology, which remains its most valuable use case, in a world of virtual environments and metaverses. The HMD (head mounted display) was designed using Siemens' NX software and features 4K OLED Microdisplays and controllers to allow virtual interaction with 3D objects.
“I think they're complementary,” Frankel argues. “I think instead of having to look at a digital model on a flat screen, to be able to see something that almost feels like you're holding it in your hand is going to be great but then I also think people are going to want to be able to, in some cases, touch and have that tactile feedback. I think these two worlds are always going to continue to come together.”
So, AI might not be the new AM, and it seems we’re only on the cusp of exploring how these tools will work together in this digital future.
“Maybe someday we'll get to the point where we don’t need to produce it first and try it out,” Frankel concludes. “Maybe we are seeing some progress in that direction, which is fine, because I don't see 3D printing as a prototyping tool, so I'm okay with the digital element of it. If we can get to the first part without having to print things or fail any of the builds getting there? That would be killer.”
