Custom Designed 3D Printed Titanium Parts

Greetings all,

My company, Hardmarque Future Factories, offers design and supply of bespoke titanium parts manufactured using state of the art EBM additive manufacturing technology.

The 4 pillars of additive manufacturing are as follows:

1. Efficiency - make what you need when you need it
2. Low Volume - customize design, manufacture one-offs
3. Complexity - no shape restrictions, high optimization, unitized parts
4. Flexibility - make frequent design changes, test many variations quickly

We see potential in aftermarket auto for the kind of customized & high-value/low volume parts that this technology makes possible, and I am canvassing interest in the Z32 community partly because I own a Z32 myself, and also because the Z32 was a car ahead of its time and we also are trying to do something that is, shall we say, a little bit unconventional as well.

Apart from the fact that Australia has the world's largest reserves of titanium ore, and that we produce 0% titanium but import 100% of it from other people, we like the metal because of its light-weight/high strength properties.
Although we are not limited to just titanium.

The machine produces titanium parts under vacuum and at constant temperature, therefore the parts that come out of it are fully stress relieved and have mechanical properties better than cast, and equal to wrought and annealed. In other words it is not merely a rapid prototyper, it is a serious no nonsense production tool.

Because 3D printing removes the shape restrictions that other traditional manufacturing processes impose, we were able to recently design and print a titanium brake caliper concept as a 4-pot, one-piece, system that weighed a mere 612g vs our reference example: a cast aluminium 2-pot caliper weighing 2.4kg. The design is featured on our website (link below). We are currently in talks with a local brake manufacturer (the world's 3rd largest) to explore future development directions that utilize our design and 3D printing expertise.

You can check us out via our website http://www.hardmarque.com/ and on Linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/company/hardmarque?trk=hb_tab_compy_id_2538332, my personal Linked in profile is here http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=131386978&trk=tab_pro.

For more detailed info, as well as to ask me any questions, please don't hesitate to PM me or email me at nick@hardmarque.com.

Cheers
Nick Hardman
044 904 5205

 

Nick what sort of pricing we looking at? Like for example calipers?

Abraham

 

Hi Abraham
Price depends on the number of parts. We have a build chamber of metal powder measuring 250mm x 250mm x 250mm that we can turn into solid metal objects. Soon we'll have one measuring up to 630mm x 400mm x 500mm, although that one's a laser machine vs electron beam.

Basically the more parts we can fit into a single build, the cheaper the part price becomes. So I'm thinking we get a short list of parts together, design them for AM, and print them once we can pack the chamber effectively.

The caliper is worth around $2k in printed Ti6Al4V, but we could only fit one into the EBM chamber. If we could fit more, each caliper would be cheaper etc.

Cheers
Nick

 

Hate to say it but at those prices, you'll be very lucky to get a sale off of this forum. I'm not saying the prices are unreasonable, as I'm not trained in this field and therefore cannot comment on that. But Z32 owners aren't exactly known as big spenders, those that have sold up in the past with big, expensive gear have/still struggle offloading their stuff.

 

imagine if you had the money, you could build the all new 2013/4/5 Z32 300ZX with all the whizz bang new stuff :zlove: :zlove:

 

Looks pretty snazzy. What sort of safety factor have you used for the design? I know titanium doesn't really like high temperature, all taken into account I assume?

It just looks too flimsy.

 

Don't know that's correct? titanium is used in high performance brake components due to it's low thermal conductivity, ie pistons and backing plates, keeps heat out of the fluid.

Titanium is a 'brittle' metal though. I don't know that I would want to use it in anything structural.

 

Over 400degC and the tensile strength generally goes down. All the proper high temp stuff I have dealt with have been nickel alloys.

I don't know much about this 3D printing of metals and how that effects things though.

 

Have those brakes actually been track tested? It's nice using that design, but it would also focus the heat where the design strength relies on heat dissipation.

Just my guess, but I would want to see it thoroughly proven.

 

If calibers work and have test certificate, I would take definetly front 6-pot, rear will need to think.

 

an exciting technological initiative and development ... will be interested in following this and the economic feasibility of producing such parts.

 

Cheers guys

The caliper is just an exercise at this stage. It was done to ignite interest in the area of industrial design+3D printing and the innovative possibilities that that brings.

As I said we are talking to one of the world's major brake manufacturers at the moment, as they are interested in the caliper and our ability to produce light-weight organic structures. However a fully fledged brake system that you could put on your Z is a minimum 3 yrs development and would cost several $M.

We think that's a ways off for now, but innovation has to start somewhere somehow.

The idea behind future factories is a zero inventory pull production system that makes premium, customizable parts, available to the individual consumer. At the moment metals 3D printing lives in the engineering B2B (business to business) space, and there is nothing aimed at making AM and its benefits available to the consumer. The reasons for this are largely driven by economics and a lack of innovative vision.

Traditional mass production works on economies of scale, it operates effectively only when you have a simple design and want to manufacture that design in large quantities. However when you have a complex design, or a bespoke design, and only want to make it in low quantities or even as a one-off, it's no good.

This is where additive manufacturing shines, and we think a consumer focused model, operating in the auto space, holds a lot of disruptive potential.

Cheers
Nick

 

I'm all for innovation, but I have to ask why Titanium? In its commercial pure form it's a soft metal. Titanium alloy is where the strength factor/benefit is yet in this form weight increases to that of Aluminium.

I'm a 3D designer/fabricator myself, and dabled with this material for fabricating fastening etc. We quickly learnt that Titanium alloy requires specialist machining and comes with other such difficulties. Such implied a 10x cost factor over working with say Aluminium.

 

Maybe you should start small..

 

Wouldn't use CP titanium, but alloy Ti6Al4V.
Typical mechanical properties out of the machine for Ti6Al4V are:
Yield = 950MPa
Ultimate tensile = 1020 MPa
Modulus = 120 GPa
Fatigue = >10,000,000 cycles @ 650 MPa

Machining is needed for a machine finish and to prevent crack propagation on fatigued parts. This has to be considered in design.

Aluminium is indeed much cheaper, but Ti has a much higher strength:weight ratio than Al. It all depends on the application.
Ti is trending in AM because of utilisation by the medical device industry (implants), but it isn't limited to Ti.
We can also print in Al, cobalt chromium, and also nickel.

 

agreed.. more keys please

 

nope it is not..

 

More titanium keys coming soon guys with some other new parts as well !

 

Message sent - interesting stuff & keen to work with you on a couple of items if it's possible