Engineering design software developer nTopology and industrial 3D printing company EOS have announced they are proceeding with the development of a new Implicit Interop capability, which the companies say solves a major bottleneck in the additive manufacturing workflow, by allowing the transfer of complex designs in megabyte-sized files, quickening the time to manufacturing.
The development was previewed in November 2022, and nTopology say it was “eagerly received” by the company’s partners and customers.
File sizes for output to 3D printers can exceed 10s of gigabytes, but according to nTopology, together with EOS the new nTop Implicit File can result in up to 99% smaller file sizes, 500x faster file generation and 60% faster load time, which the companies say make the file more readily available to AM build preparation software for manufacturing.
An Implicit Interop plugin for EOS customers that is compatible with EOSPRINT 2.14, provided by nTopology, is expected to release in June 2023 according to the companies.
The preview of the development featured a large industrial heat exchanger, created as a proof-of-concept by Siemens Energy. Its complex design was exported to an nTop Implicit File in “a matter of seconds” according to nTopology, and required less than 1MB of storage space. The company says it was then “easily” exported to EOSPRINT and used to additively manufacture the heat exchanger on an EOS M 290 industrial 3D printer.
EOS and nTopology are also working with the 3MF Consortium on the standardisation of the Implicit File format. The companies say the technology will be further incorporated to the 3MF industry-standard 3D printing file format.
“nTopology has opened up design freedom and enabled engineers to design products that they weren’t able to do before. This has led to even more complex designs that have led them to uncover design data bottlenecks in printing those designs. With our focus on being a useful tool for engineers, to not just design but produce these parts, we worked with EOS to come up with a solution to enable these complex parts to be printed. We look forward to advancing the entire industry based on this type of partnership with OEMs,” said Bradley Rothenburg, nTopology Co-Founder and CEO.
Alexander Bockstaller, Software Product Line Manager at EOS said: “With modern design approaches such as topology optimisation, generative design, and DfAM on the rise, the complexity of part geometries has been skyrocketing. Discretisation of such complex models often results in meshes with file sizes greater than several gigabytes which can make them very challenging to handle in later production steps. EOS tackles the problem and drives the standardisation of implicit geometry representation, which makes it possible to build designs that were previously unbuildable.”
Ole Geisen, Head of Engineering Services for Additive Manufacturing at Siemens Energy said: “nTopology and EOS are years ahead of the game. The rest of the AM ecosystem now needs to catch up. File size hasn’t been much of a challenge in the past. However, with the industry’s advancements regarding topology optimisation, generative design, and design for additive manufacturing, part geometries are getting increasingly complex. As a result, exchanging such complex geometries with traditional data formats is becoming more challenging, severely hindering thermal management innovation.”
