“This is super boring stuff to 99% of people in the world, but for me, as a materials scientist, I’m super geeking out about this.”
This excitement is routine for Essentium CEO Blake Teipel. It comes to the fore whenever his company is ready to unveil the latest products of its in-house materials or lift the curtain on an ongoing collaboration. Discussing announcements made in conjunction with Formnext Connect, and prior to the virtual exhibition and conference, the excitement is twofold.
First, materials.
Expanding its Carbon-fibre range, Essentium’s 15% carbon fibre reinforced Polyethylene terephthalate (PET)-CF material is considered by Teipel to be a ‘utility-grade’ product that exhibits ‘great printability, great surface finish and low moisture uptake relative to nylons and other polyamide-based materials.’ It is said to be chemical resistant for common solvents and, when annealed, has a temperature resistance of 155°C.
Certified for use on Essentium’s High Speed Extrusion (HSE) and open for processing on other platforms, it enters the company’s product portfolio as a cheaper alternative to the HTN CF25 material launched at last year’s Formnext, while giving a slightly better performance than the PA CF grade, which has been used for biomedical and tooling applications.
“This PET carbon fibre is a little bit harder, slightly less tough [than PA CF, but], with a mid-pack carbon fibre material, we’ll still enjoy the benefits of stiffening a material: dimensional stability, thermal stability, mechanical stability, all those things you enjoy when you typically put carbon fibre in,” Teipel tells TCT. “I mean, you can overdo it with carbon fibre, but at the same time, if you engineer the compound properly, then you can push the mechanical limits in some areas like strength and stiffness, while not degrading the mechanical properties in other areas like toughness and ductility. We’ve been able to accomplish that. It’s good for applications where you would like that little bit of extra stiffness, but you don’t necessarily have the budget to pay the next level up material, which for us would be our HTN CF25.”
Another of Essentium’s new additions represents a first for the company, as it combines electrostatic properties with colour. Anti-static, strong, resistant to abrasion and with 58 Shore D hardness, the Essentium TPU 58D-AS is ‘perfectly tailored’ for jigs and fixtures and answers customer requests for the ability to designate tools that are used in different departments or areas of a facility by colour. The material has been developed in collaboration with Croda and is based on the company's Ionphase permanent anti-static additives.
Panel cover printed in Essentium TPU 58D-AS.
Panel cover printed in Essentium TPU 58D-AS.
It is another example of Essentium not resisting industry pull. Earlier this year, the company told of its development of Essentium 9085 (made SABIC's ULTEM 9085 resin) in response to the demand from the aerospace sector. That material, which is manufactured and certified by Essentium in its ISO 9001- and AS9100D-certified facilities, was fast tracked for release after the US Air Force awarded the company a four-year contract. The certifications followed.
“There are a number of steps that we’ve taken to build out the capability for Essentium to be able to respond to an incredibly strong pull,” says Teipel. “We see industry pull from a variety of sectors writ large, but the strength of the pull from the Air Force for a different option is truly remarkable, in my opinion.”
Meanwhile, Essentium 9085 is now commercially available, and though versions of the material have been applied by the likes of Airbus and Boeing for interior cabin parts at the front of the lifecycle, Essentium is targeting application midway through or at the ‘tail-end’ of the lifecycle of planes. Through its work with the US Air Force, Essentium is looking to have a positive impact on the organisation’s maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) and ground tool operations.
“Aeroplanes are always expensive,” Teipel says. “They’re expensive when they’re flying but they’re also expensive when they’re sitting on the ground. So, you need both types of printed part. The one you can print and certify to fly, and the printed part you can use while the aeroplane is on the ground to do the service and turn around that aircraft as fast as possible.”
This is the second reason for Teipel’s excitement.
As Essentium has aligned with the US Air Force over the last 12 months, it has witnessed the organisation reshape its industrial base, embrace advanced manufacturing methods and ‘encourage companies to work with the military, without them necessarily becoming a defence prime.’ Via its AFWERX division, the Air Force is becoming an early-stage investor and looking to tap into US and global tech ecosystems. Through this, the US Air Force has begun working with around 1,000 new companies over the last couple of years, while 3D printing vendors like GE Additive, Optomec, Open Additive and Essentium have all received contracts in the last 12 months.
The collaboration with these companies then helps the Air Force rapidly sustain its ground and air vehicles through the aptly named Rapid Sustainment Office. It is looking to keep its fleet of vehicles ‘up to par’, trying to improve the total flight hours of each aircraft. Essentium, Teipel says, has been able to ‘plug into and respond to’ these goals, having a ‘tiny impact’ on what is a big drive from the Air Force to modernise its operations and enhance efficiencies.
Teipel’s company came to be involved in these efforts after members of his team saw a lot of what they perceive Essentium to offer in a US Air Force report published to Congress. They quoted its demand for advanced additive capabilities that are open back to the government department and are now working with the Air Force to support MRO and ground tooling, while also providing a boost to the industrial base that helps to supply the country.
Through the multi-year contract it was awarded, Essentium is using the expertise it pitched to the Air Force to address many of the organisation’s problems. Among them, is certifying materials at greater speed and volume that is currently possible. Working with the Air Force Research Lab, who are tasked with the requirements involved to certify a material, Essentium is set to harness the sizeable build volume of its HSE machines and their high-speed capabilities, to certify four times the quantity of materials at reduced time and cost.
“As a result of Essentium’s machines being faster, we can now print the statistically large number of sample parts that are required to undergo full certification much faster,” Teipel explains. “The speed of the machine helps in two ways. When you’ve got a part that you need to produce in a short amount of time that goes into some end application, it’s always great to have that faster, but when you’re trying to certify a material on the front end for use over time then you’ve got to produce hundreds or thousands of test specimens. And if you can produce those parts five, six, seven, eight times faster, because they’re high-spec specimens, then you can get to certification much more quickly.”
The other key issue being addressed in collaboration with Essentium is one that allows Teipel to exercise his geeky side. Such is the old age of a lot of Air Force aircrafts, many of the internal structures are made from 28 different military specified grades of phenolic materials, which were defined back in the 1950s. While the materials can be used to produce brackets that hold hydraulic hoses, wiring and mechanical systems in place, phenolics are also highly toxic via oral exposure, such as inhalation and eye contact. What’s more, because much of Air Force aircraft have been in use for decades (the average is around 30 years, but many are even older), some phenolic parts are wearing out and there’s no direct replacement materials to make those parts. Enter Essentium.
“Now they’re saying, ‘how can we 3D print a bracket or this little piece that will become certified to go on the aeroplane, but it’s a replacement mechanically for the performance that was able to be achieved - the creep resistance, the V0 burn test, - for the phenolics?' There are depots that we’ve seen that are not able to replace those phenolic materials like for like so they’re using, in some case, wood and other things to hold up parts of the aeroplanes,” Teipel says. “We’ve got numerous material scientists on our team, we took a look at the mil-specs and we designed a compound. There are four compounds we want, we got funded to do the first one, and we think they will address the 28 mil-specs that are currently out there.
“We’re going to start with a material that we think will address about 25% of those mil-specs and provide the ability to be 3D printed on site, because what the Air Force wants is two things: they want expeditionary part production, where you’re downrange or you’re on a base and you have this printer drawing a part file from a repository, and they want to print at the point of service. They’re wanting to do this consistently with machines that are lower cost and very fast so they can do this across the enterprise.”
Across the four-year contract, the Air Force and Essentium are hopeful of providing drop-in replacements to address all 28 mil-spec phenolic grades, make the certification of such materials more efficient, while also enhancing ground tooling and MRO operations. Essentium is thought to be able to assist in this last endeavour because of its range of chemical and solvent resistant materials that can be applied to parts that may come into contact with de-icing fluids, hydraulic fluids, gases and other solvents in what is described as a ‘very caustic environment.’
A more positive environment is that of the Strategic Financing (STRATFi) programme, of which Essentium is an inaugural member. This initiative underpins the activities of the Rapid Sustainment Office, AFWERX and Air Force Research Lab by sourcing and investing in the required tools in the first instance. It has been stood up by Will Roper, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics, and by the sounds of it, additive manufacturing is valued pretty highly.
“You’ve got to have the right tool for the job,” Teipel says. “Essentium can do things Optomec can’t, they can do things that we can’t. [The Air Force] is investing in it, prioritising it, focusing on it. They’re looking at it very, very maturely and you’ll see this ever-broadening focus, an ever deepening investment in various types of additive to bring about specific value propositions at large scales. It’s very exciting.”
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