In an age when the sustainability of planet Earth is in the balance, the concept of building new infrastructure on the next closest planet comes into sharp focus.
It is, as SPEE3D CTO Steven Camilleri describes, the heaviest of the heavy industries and progress in that mission simply can’t be made without additive manufacturing. “We need to use our best brains to come up with the industrialization methodologies for getting up there,” he says. “And it’s got to be additive. It can’t be anything else. It’s got to be very efficient, very flexible, very easy to move around, and very easy to scale. And it has to be very easy to work with a range of different feedstocks.”
That’s the north star for SPEE3D and its latest innovations. But the starting point is using its brain power to provide solutions to other heavy industries, like maritime, energy and defense. If you’ve been paying even the slightest attention in recent years, you’ll know SPEE3D’s cold spray additive manufacturing technology has penetrated the defense sector, with the Australian Armed Forces, US Armed Forces and the Ukrainian Army all deploying its products in military exercises, experiments and all-too real war efforts.
Having established itself in that sector, it is now turning some of its focus elsewhere, introducing TitanSPEE3D, a new large-format cold spray additive manufacturing capability, and industry-relevant materials like its Nickel Aluminum Bronze offering.
SPEE3D has applied R&D capacity in this area due to the demand from heavy industries for large, high-quality components produced in quick-time. Its LightSPEE3D, WarpSPEE3D and XSPEE3D platforms, while delivering on two of those three criterion, have been limited in terms of the size. Because of how the machines work – a fixed nozzle blowing out material with a robot controlled substrate moving around – they haven’t been able to cater for parts above, for example, 40 kilograms. There are ambitions to be manufacturing components that weight tonnes – and tens of tonnes.
That comes with its challenges, however. Camilleri references the linear cube law which recognizes that something twice as big dimensionally will see its surface area squared and its mass cubed. It explains why small creatures and big creatures are treated differently by physics. In essence, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. It is the same for metal parts.
Camilleri uses the example of the Stanford bunny – the object of the first 3D scan experiment conducted by Stanford University – which, at six inches, weighs a pound and takes 12 minutes to print with SPEE3D’s cold spray process at a cost of 50 USD. A 20-inch bunny would weigh 37lbs, take 7.4 hours to print and cost 1,850 USD, while a 40-inch bunny would weigh 297lbs, take 2.5 days to print and cost 14,829 USD. At 100 inches, the bunny would weigh 4,632lbs, costing 231,620 USD and taking more than a month to print.
“Now, let’s start thinking about how to handle those parts,” Camilleri says. “You’ve got to have overhead cranes and forklifts to carry the parts. If you want to touch up something on top, you need to build a scaffold just to get up there. You could print something that has a poor center of gravity, it topples over and crushes someone. How do you heat treat a part like that? What does the furnace look like? How long does it take to cool down? Think about measuring it; you need a fairly detailed bit of equipment and process to deal with that. If you want to test the material, how do you destructively test something?”
SPEE3D is aware of the challenges and is in the process of coming up with the solutions. Building large parts with its large-format cold spray additive manufacturing process will be akin to building buildings. You wouldn’t erect a building without measuring for quality and accuracy at regular intervals, and nor will users manufacture large-scale parts without doing the same on this new platform. Software automation is another key focus of SPEE3D’s, ensuring any defects can be identified and remedied while the print commences.
Other capabilities include being able to manufacture parts in the tonnes, thanks to a robot arm now doing all the toolpath work while the part remains stationary on the ground. Similar to other SPEE3D machines, it can achieve print speeds up to 13 pounds per hour – a rate the company will continue to increase – and has a floor area of approximately 20 square-meters.
With these capabilities, SPEE3D is targeting parts that may typically be made with casting processes, offering the potential to produce parts quicker in a wide range of aluminum alloys, copper alloys and stainless steels. It is expected the large-format system will be commercially available early next year, but the company is already making headway with a selection of early access customers to develop applications, identify areas for improvement, and go about the company’s mission.
“The reason we exist is to make it easier to get metal parts,” Camilleri finishes. “Polymer just doesn’t give you the material properties, the high temperature, durable, high-strength components, so sometimes you just need metal. If you then add scale to it, you make the parts bigger. The idea of making large parts is beyond the scope of some cities, so we want to make it easier to get large parts too. It feels, in many ways, more important than being able to get small parts. So, it doesn’t really matter how you slice it, making large parts is very difficult. Even for AM it’s difficult. What we’re trying to do is make sure it’s substantially easier.”
Developing NAB with the US NAVSEA
SPEE3D
Nickel aluminium parts produced with the WarpSPEE3D
SPEE3D Australia at Los Angeles Convention Center
SPEE3D has developed its Nickel Aluminum Bronze (NAB) material in collaboration with the US Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), with NAVSEA having access to a powder that meets its stringent specifications and other customers having access to a commercial grade that meets 97% of those properties. The commercial version of the material, unlike the NAVSEA grade, does not require Hot Isostatic Pressing, saving users time and cost.
The NAB material is highly corrosion resistant and tougher than SPEE3D’s traditional aluminum bronze material. It is primarily known for its lubricity, resistance to cavitation damage, and resistance to stress corrosion cracking, making it an ideal choice for maritime applications because of its ability to withstand seawater and other aggressive environments.
NAB is suitable for a host of applications, with SPEE3D using the material to print an 11.3kg prop strut in 3 hours, a 6.9kg bushing in 2 hours, and a 1.7kg camlock fitting in just 30 minutes. With its new large-format cold spray additive manufacturing capability, SPEE3D also believes its NAB material can facilitate the manufacture of rudders, propeller shafts and engine infrastructure.
TCT
NAB material specs
“Most maritime nickel aluminum bronze, or equivalent, parts are all done with castings. As a general rule of thumb, and this applies to most things with cold spray, we’re typically better than a casting from a material property standpoint – our density, the elongation, our toughness,” SPEE3D Application Engineer Mark Bashor says. “It’s more cost effective and better than the alternative of casting from a property standpoint, and there’s also the lead time/ supply chain considerations where we’re not constrained to the casting supply with a process like this.”
In addition to the NAB material, SPEE3D also offers Aluminum Bronze, Copper, Stainless Steel 316L and Aluminum 6061 powders. The company’s Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing technology also works well with many other non-weldable alloys, with an open system allowing users to develop their own materials, offering greater.
This article originally appeared inside TCT Europe Edition Vol. 32 Issue 4 and TCT North American Edition Vol. 10 Issue 4. Subscribe here to receive your FREE print copy of TCT Magazine, delivered to your door six times a year.
