Page 32 - 3D Metal Printing Winter 2018

3D A Different Kind of Company, From Start to Finish
powered by microturbines. Here, as explained in a Rochester City Newspaper article, generators burn natural gas to cre- ate electricity, with steam produced during the process used for plant-wide heating and air conditioning. This provides anoth- er 20 percent of the company’s required energy. The remaining 20 percent—only via carbon-free sources—is purchased from the grid. To offset Harbec’s carbon emissions and those of company vehicles, the company purchases carbon offsets.
Conservation does not end there, how- ever, as Harbec, through water recycling and rainwater retention, relies on munic- ipally supplied water only for handwash- ing and drinking.
For his part, Bechtold, who once sought funding and acceptance of environmen- tally friendly initiatives based on a green philosophy, found much greater success pitching its real economic benefits.
“None of this started for marketing purposes, it was just Bob Bechtold’s pas- sion,” says Schneider. “He’s been at it for a long time, and sustainability has picked up steam, so to speak, so we can talk about it and point out its financial sense.”
Smart Finishing Takes Shape
Following years of interrogating radar systems for the U.S. Navy in addition to a background in engineering and additive manufacturing, Hutchinson, PostProcess Technologies’ founder, president and chief technology officer, had an idea. Why not interrogate 3D-printed parts to better per- form critical yet often overlooked post- processing? While design and build have garnered considerable attention during the ascension of AM, post-processing mostly was stuck in the past, with manual finishing—a 150-yr.-old task—the most common route for newly printed parts. According to the company’s own research, in more than 95 percent of cases, printed parts have supports to be removed, and more than 60 percent require surface and/or other finishing. Seeing that labor- intensive manual finishing could be trans- formed via technology and automation, he got to work and in 2015 PostProcess was born.
Located adjacent to a metal-AM machine, this surface-finishing unit smartly and quietly does its job.
Traditional finishing operations may house labs of employees, all with different skill levels, performing the somewhat mundane job of hand sanding. Companies may spend much time and money to recruit, train and retain these employees, and still, from part to part and batch to batch, finishing results will vary.
In developing the company, Hutchin- son saw the need to educate the 3D-print- ing community on his belief that AM is an integrated process with design, build and post-print intertwined. By taking into account each of these three facets along with the others, a better total project out- come may be possible. Focusing strictly on AM parts and envisioning an integrated process, Hutchinson identified a culture that would drive machine development.
“Culture, machines, software, consum- ables—these four set us apart,” he says.
Last September, PostProcess Technolo- gies moved into its new Buffalo headquar- ters, which includes expanded space for the company’s Finish3D lab. The lab hous- es R&D, customer-benchmarking and training activities, and offers product demonstrations.
In its facility, the company develops, refines and sells a suite of products, including support-removal, surface-finish and hybrid machines in various sizes, as well as wastewater-treatment technology. Key to machine performance is develop-
ment of proprietary software that takes into account material properties, part geometries and finishing requirements to optimize agitation intensity and direction as well as the introduction of detergent.
“Our machines work in a strategic way, knowing that the part must end up a cer- tain way,” explains Hutchinson. “Along the way, the algorithm reroutes the process to account for fine features and other part attributes. Our database of properties, cre- ated from hundreds of thousands of benchmarked parts, gives us the informa- tion to create these algorithms.”
Cleaning solutions and abrasive media can be selected to match the given mate- rials and requirements. Together, these developments represent a first in finishing technology for 3D-printed parts, accord- ing to company officials.
Works Closely with Manufacturers
Given its integrated-process culture, PostProcess often advises manufacturers on design and build issues that can affect post-processing, according to CEO Jeff Mize.
“We can make suggestions that won’t change the function of the part, but will increase the efficiency of finishing,” he explains. “Often times, a metal part may have more support than is needed. We can recommend perhaps a change in ori- entation that requires fewer supports and makes building and post-processing more efficient.”
The company’s equipment for remov- ing the supports uses proprietary tech- nology to check material density—in many cases, material density differs across supports and across parts—and remove supports while leaving the part intact.
Other technology enables cleaning of internal geometries and management of wastewater, which has proven popular with manufacturers, according to Mize. Despite all of the sophisticated high tech- nology, the machines are simple to install, program and operate, according to com- pany officials, and deliver dependable uptime while producing consistently post- processed parts no matter the material.
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