Sat side by side on a pair of stools with elbows pressed against the bar table, one says excitedly, “I’ve got a video for you, I love this video.” The other, following his tune, hypes it up some more, “Oh me too, I received it last night.”
A finger coordinates the screening, one touch to press play, another to display it in wide screen mode, and it buffers as the Wi-Fi lags. This is not a group of friends enjoying a goofy meme at their local watering hole, this is two colleagues sat at a trade show revelling in what they might achieve with additive manufacturing technology.
The video, a time-lapse, shows a Californian facility in the dead of night illuminated only by the passing of a dozen lights flashing over a dozen powder beds through until the morning. And as Forecast 3D founder and CEO Corey Weber pulls back his smartphone, he and Guido Degen, GKN Powder Metallurgy’s President of Additive Manufacturing, look pretty pleased - with the technology and themselves.
“It’s fantastic technology,” Weber says of the Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) process featured in the video, “and it’s only getting better with the new advancements of the 5210 – high yield, tighter tolerances, better repeatability. That’s almost half the fleet [in the video] but every single machine is running. It’s just getting better and better and opening up the markets that we can serve.”
Fresh off the back of that video landing in his inbox 12 hours earlier, Degen’s first words as he took his seat on the edge of GKN Additive’s Formnext booth were, “this was logical.” ‘This’ being GKN Powder Metallurgy’s acquisition of Forecast 3D in October. Among the motivations for the move was that GKN saw Forecast operating a different technology, with different base materials, in vertical markets it wasn’t familiar with and in geographies it had not yet entered. Much of Forecast 3D's expertise exists in polymer 3D printing, serving the aerospace and medical markets that thrive in its catchment area on the West Coast. GKN's food and drink, meanwhile, is metal parts, of which the company produced around 13 million a day, the bulk of which is for the automotive market meaning Central Europe and the Midwest of the United States is where GKN supplies.
"It's a relief because now we can really focus on polymers and let them handle metals."
It was on the pavement outside HP’s newly opened 3D Printing & Digital Manufacturing Center of Excellence underneath the glaring Barcelona sun with cars passing by on the road just over his shoulder when Degen last spoke to TCT. True to GKN form, the focus was metal, the focus was automotive. But while those efforts have built GKN into what it is today, as its work with additive manufacturing technology has become more prevalent, the company has noticed two things. One, metal additive manufacturing is 'at least five years behind' polymer technologies in terms of development and application, and two, the automotive space is a ‘rather slow adopter' of the technology.
“Historically, we have limited ourselves to automotive a bit,” Degen reflects at Formnext. “More than half of our current business in additive is outside automotive, but the mindset of the group is still automotive. It’s not that automotive is more difficult; we have to produce quality, we have to deliver on time, so the development cycles are pretty much the same. The adoption cycles are just taking longer. It takes years.”
A similar assessment has been made throughout the last two years as GKN considered the adoption and implementation of polymer additive technologies. Maybe, by harnessing its manufacturing expertise, its infrastructure and workforce, it could have built up polymer 3D printing capacity in its additive business, “but it takes years,” Degen says, “and in these agile markets, we do not want to waste time. Our goal is to be in the market-leading position and time matters.”
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Prototype of tactile handrail guidance system produced by GKN Additive with HP's Metal Jet technology.
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Prototype of tactile handrail guidance system produced by GKN Additive with HP's Metal Jet technology.
And so, the acquisition of a company mastering polymer technologies in markets beyond automotive was sought. When GKN highlighted the contrasting technological expertise that exists in both companies, the figureheads at Forecast were on the same wavelength. Weber, alongside brother and co-founder Donovan, had their interests piqued when HP announced the impending introduction of its Metal Jet technology. Already, Forecast has installed 26 Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) production machines (across both the 4200 and 5200 series) as well as two full-colour 580 platforms but expects Metal Jet to ‘do for metal additive the same thing that MJF is doing for polymer additive.’
Forecast had been tempted by Metal Jet - HP's metal additive offering which GKN is supporting the development of before its commercial release in 2021 - and was keeping a keen eye on its progress, at least until the company in charge of much of the development work turned up on its doorstep just outside San Diego, California.
“We knew that the opportunity is much bigger than the size of our pockets,” Weber acknowledges. “We needed resources and our goal was to get someone that shared our vision. We found those with GKN. I think [Metal Jet] is going to be huge. But, now that we’ve partnered with GKN, they can own that. And, honestly, it’s kind of a relief because now we can really focus on polymers and let them handle metals.”
Degen says progress is going as expected with Metal Jet, the partnership is in ‘good shape’ as multiple projects have commenced with several customers in addition to Volkswagen. The company is placing emphasis on repeatability, ensuring that printed part number one is of the same quality as printed part number 1,000. It is also hoping to shift the additive manufacture of Kueppers Solutions’ mixing unit, which has been re-designed for additive to include internal channels to mix air and natural gas, from selective laser melting (SLM) technology to HP’s Metal Jet by this time next year to achieve higher volumes. While conversations are still to be had with Kueppers in order to make that a reality, both Degen and Weber are already waxing lyrical about the capabilities of the technology.
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Kueppers Solutions' mixing unit additively manufactured by GKN Additive.
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Kueppers Solutions' mixing unit additively manufactured by GKN Additive.
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Kueppers Solutions' mixing unit additively manufactured by GKN Additive.
“Which other [manufacturing] process would it be possible to produce such a part?” Degen asks. “We would love to have thousands, hundreds of thousands, of engineers on the globe capable of having this design creativity.”
“It’s impressive,” Weber adds. “So many parts that we see are still conventionally designed. We’re only getting a very small fraction of parts that we produce that are designed for additive. I mean, companies are just leaving so much on the table.”
Weber’s assessments of additive manufacturing and how it can be best applied are set to contribute significantly to the cooperation between the two companies. He highlights GKN’s aptitude in data management and process control among the key benefits of now working as a GKN company and also points to the company’s international reach. GKN Powder Metallurgy has a presence in 15 countries across five continents where it researches, develops, manufactures and sells metal parts and metal powders. It also recently announced it would begin to produce powders in Europe to dramatically reduce the shipping of material to nearly half of its customers.
"We believe we have everything we need: we have technology, we have the right mindset, we have good market access."
This feeds directly into Weber’s outlook on how an additive manufacturing service should be run. While the company has for more than two decades operated out of California, serving a host of medical and aerospace companies, among players in other markets, there has been an ambition to branch out – an ambition that with GKN on board is much closer to being realised.
“Additive manufacturing needs to be somewhat local, maybe not down the street but in the region,” Weber says. “[GKN] already has infrastructure in 28 locations so the scale operation is going to so much easier when you don’t have to start from the ground up.”
It mirrors GKN’s perception of Forecast 3D’s growth over the year and why, when it came to investing in polymer additive manufacturing, it has been better to acquire a leading service provider than build it independently. Degen repeats that they have as much to learn from each other – “we are not being arrogant because our backgrounds are different” – and so, Forecast 3D will continue as it always did with GKN helping to fulfil the desire to expand it always harboured.
“We keep Forecast 3D as a brand because it’s a great brand on the market, there’s no need to change,” Degen explains. “We are really lucky that everyone, including both owners and founders of the business, will stay, so it means no change at all. We will smoothly integrate them, and the plan is to expand this technology to our GKN footprint, beginning with the US – the Detroit area – and then expand into Europe to grow that business as well.”
“It makes sense for them to keep the company intact, right, because they were after the growth,” adds Weber. “You can’t just go out and find people with additive knowledge. Good luck. Pretty much 90, probably 95, per cent of our people we have home grown, trained and brought through. You don’t hire people, generally, that have that, at least in our region, so you can’t replace those people. Replacing them is pretty much impossible, so there’s a lot of value that I think GKN saw; the talent of our team.”
Forecast 3D Freefly drone components
Drone components manufactured using HP's Multi Jet Fusion technology by Forecast 3D for Freefly.
Indeed, per Degen, the first thing GKN noticed when walking through the Forecast 3D doors to assess the business and its capacity for polymer additive manufacturing was talent. The business has come from a prototyping background, starting in the mid 90s with SLA technology, taking on SLS and CNC in 1998, DMLS in 2007, FDM and PolyJet in 2010 and HP’s Multi Jet Fusion technology in 2017, and evolved into somewhat of a production service provider. Harnessing just MJF, the company has built 2 million parts in the last year – more than a tenth of the total number across all of HP’s users according to the vendor – with most of them being end-use components.
Its capabilities like this, teamed with the company’s rich history using additive manufacturing, that has not only enticed GKN to acquire the business but also keep everything as is. The two companies, with their contrasting target industries, technologies and geography, seem to fit together like two corresponding jigsaw pieces. As Degen slides off his stool and walks back across the GKN Formnext booth with his new colleague, he believes GKN now has everything it needs to succeed in additive.
“When I entered [Forecast's] facility for the first time and I saw these 26 HP printers already running, it looked to me not like a design bureau, it looked like manufacturing," Degen remembers. “And then, the mindset of these guys is just incredible. It’s very agile, innovative towards production, and I haven’t seen this somewhere else. Most of the players are of a mindset of a design bureau and these guys are already beyond. That was just a great fit.
“As a global corporation we are always looking for opportunities, that’s in the nature of a global business, but now we believe we have everything we need: we have technology, we have the right mindset, we have good market access. We need to work on the integration, on the synergies, to make a success out of this story, but we feel really well prepared now for the future.”
