As I’m guided around Renishaw’s booth at Formnext 2023 to get a first look at its latest, seemingly subtle, additive manufacturing (AM) development, all I can think is: how on earth did they keep this under wraps?
Having toured around the company’s UK production facility back in April, where in-progress laser powder bed fusion machines were flung open for all to see, there were whispers that something along the lines of a ‘next generation’ 3D printing technology was in the works. “It's been tough keeping it underground,” Ella Rees, Renishaw’s Marketing Communications Manager tells me, but in Frankfurt, peering into the window of Renishaw’s upgraded RenAM 500 system, that next generation was finally revealed.
It's called TEMPUS technology, a patented process which Renishaw says can cut AM production times by up to 50%. Powered by a new scanning algorithm that allows lasers inside the RenAM 500 system to fire while the powder recoater is moving, TEMPUS technology is said to allow for time savings of up to nine seconds per layer.
“It's all about reducing build time,” Louise Callanan, Renishaw’s Director of Additive Manufacturing explained. “When we spoke earlier in the year, we talked about the AM world moving towards serial production. That's what this member of the 500 family is: really focused on productivity, reducing build times, and opening up applications that maybe weren't suitable before.”
While the engineering company found its roots in metrology, its orange and black display in Frankfurt is very much all about its RenAM 500 metal additive manufacturing family. The RenAM 500Q Ultra is the latest edition, a four-laser machine which comes equipped with TEMPUS technology as standard, though existing RenAM 500 users can pay to upgrade their machines with TEMPUS technology. Save from the TEMPUS technology badge stamped across its casing, you wouldn’t notice this understated but impactful change until you peek inside the machine and see lasers dancing mere moments after the recoater has started its next pass across the print bed.
“The recoater typically has to do a full layer deposit before you can fire the lasers,” Callanan said. “That’s laser dead time. We asked how can we minimise that, maximise the efficiency, and get the build times down? All of that packages up to trying to remove those barriers to adoption, which is really what we're trying to do - improve AM adoption.”
The RenAM 500Q Ultra is not designed to replace the current RenAM 500, Renishaw’s flagship machine which is being deployed by the likes of Atherton Bikes to produce parts for its competition-ready mountain bikes, and fluid power specialist Domin to manufacture hydraulic valves. With the RenAM 500Q Ultra, Renishaw believes it now has a family of machines that serve different levels of adoption, and will allow users to scale their abilities as their needs and applications advance.
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Photo by Laura Griffiths
Partial dentures 3D printed with Renishaw's TEMPUS technology
It's all about time, and TEMPUS technology has been in the works for a while - as are a number of developments, Callanan teased. But in the last 18 months, the team decided to ramp up its focus on TEMPUS technology in a bid to respond to industry demand for better cost per part, and have it ready to present to the market at Formnext. Rather than go down the route of more lasers (a trend that continues to lead the laser powder bed market with companies like Bright Laser Technologies cramming 26 lasers into its systems), Callanan describes this meeting of software and hardware innovation as a strategic choice, not to go after something entirely new but rather go back to the drawing board with an established technology and figure out how to make it more productive.
“A lot of people want to use AM but when they try and compare it to traditional manufacturing, they sometimes end up deciding it's not cost effective,” Callanan explained. “We ran a survey last year on the stand, and that was the response, so that really focused us. How do we take the current platform, which is already the most productive on the market for that bed size, and look at eliminating the inefficiencies?”
The intent is to simplify the journey to production for customers who are already familiar with Renishaw’s metal AM technology but also incite newcomers who may have decided that AM, at least, in its current form, wasn’t for them.
“It's an interesting mixture,” Callanan observed. “Some people might come to it who have looked at AM in the past and gone, too expensive, and now they’re looking again. For existing customers that have a whole production set up, this enables them to really put their foot to the floor and go for it.”
Around the booth, I’m shown examples from automotive to medical industries where TEMPUS technology is allowing stacked build plates of car refrigeration pipes to be built in half their usual time, or multiple builds of partial dentures – 32 per build plate – to be manufactured in one shift. Renishaw recognises those rapid rates won’t be relevant for everyone or every application, which is why it’s keen on building out its RenAM 500 family to cover all bases, but it believes it does now open up possibilities for new products that might not have otherwise made sense for AM. Alloyed, for example, a long-time Renishaw customer, has been using TEMPUS technology behind closed doors since 2021 and has delivered positive results for applications in consumer goods; a single production run of titanium smart watch cases can benefit from a 20% build time reduction, saving three hours per build. That might not sound like a huge chunk of time, but for a consumer product, which you would expect to produce in high volumes, those three hours add up.
Photo by Laura Griffiths
Smart watch casings printed by Alloyed with Renishaw TEMPUS technology
Renishaw says TEMPUS technology can be tuned so that it is optimised to the user’s specific needs or application. “There's a lot of stuff to geek out about,” Callanan said, and that also includes advanced in-process monitoring software, which provides detailed insights into the build. Harking back to our conversation at Renishaw’s HQ earlier this year, Callanan says she believes it is Renishaw’s integrated approach, and legacy of quality management, that has enabled TEMPUS technology to come to fruition.
“We have control of the system,” Callanan explained, referring to the software's ability to 'talk to' different parts of the system, and equip users with valuable data during the build.
For existing customers already using Renishaw’s equipment for end-use parts, the response so far has been positive. Yet cost per part remains one of AM’s greatest challenges. Yes, AM can offer other benefits in terms of smarter design, shorter lead times, and localised manufacture, but when making direct comparisons with traditional manufacturing processes, high costs can make AM prohibitive. Instead of reinventing the wheel (though perhaps the recoater), Renishaw hopes by laser focusing on one of the industry’s biggest pain points and going under the hood of its own technology, it can help drive the adoption of AM even further.
“Everybody's looked into a machine a billion times,” Callanan says, peering into the upgraded RenAM 500Q Ultra window, “but there is something about having it here and saying, come and have a look.”
As I conclude my conversation with Callanan, and see visitors clamour to get a look inside the machine for themselves, I can’t help but wonder which of those other shrewd enhancements Callanan hinted at earlier could be next in line for this machine family.
“We’d love to do all of those things - in time,” Callanan adds.
