Page 28 - 3DMP Spring 2022

FEATURE
Prototype
Metal Parts at
One-Tenth the Cost
...of conventionally manufactured prototypes, and completed in 3 days, vs. as long as 8 weeks. That’s the bottom line at window- and door-hardware manufacturer Caldwell Mfg., thanks to a Markforged bound-powder metal-filament 3D printer.
3D
Caldwell Manufacturing, a global certain components were sourced from it's one of those things that encouraged
overseas, which led to product-develop- ment cycles of anywhere between 6 and 12 months.
The company also had an employee- engagement problem, according to its management team. Turnover was high, and people lacked a sense of connection to the projects they were working on. A single job would require people to look for outside quotes or internal toolroom quotes, and any changes to internal tool- ing were time-consuming and expensive, so improvements needed to be significant to justify the expense.
“Sometimes businesses just end up layered with bureaucracy,” says Mertz. “And, one of the reasons people leave their jobs is because they don't feel connected. They don't feel that they've got the author- ity and the resources to do their job.”
In the company’s strategic-planning meeting in 2010, the executives looked at what kind of technologies were going to be disruptive, and unanimously agreed that 3D printing would be the key to their success. In 2014, Caldwell purchased its first FDM plastic 3D printer.
“3D printing was a technology we had been watching for a couple of years,” says Mertz. “And as its price points came down,
window- and door-hardware
manufacturer based in upstate New York, is “an integrated supply part- ner,” says company CEO Eric Mertz. “The springs that hold a window or door open, the hardware, locks, latches—all of the mechanical hardware that makes a win- dow or door operate, that’s what we're focused on.”
The company, which dates back to 1888, ships to thousands of customers in 70 different countries, and has factories in the United States, the United Kingdom and India. Its team is responsible for everything from design ideation to final product, tasked with developing and com- mercializing Caldwell’s components while simultaneously creating injection molds, springs and more.
The Challenge
For any piece of window or door hard- ware it manufactures, the team at Caldwell also must fabricate holding fixtures, assembly fixtures and error-proofing fix- tures—all of which the firm designs inhouse. And, until recently, the fixtures were fabricated by a third-party supplier. The internal tooling often took as long as eight weeks to design and develop, and
the buying decision.” Initially, the printer was brought in for rapid prototyping, but the team quickly realized that the printer could help them only evaluate form and fit, but not function.
Metal 3D Printing Needed to Prove Out Function
Many of the parts fabricated by Cald- well Manufacturing are from metal alloys, and the team found 3D printing of low- quality filament unacceptable when it came to the strength of their parts.
“The plastic 3D printer that we onboarded really resolved much of our external prototyping needs for plastic parts,'' says Rick deNormand, product engineering manager at Caldwell. “How- ever, we really needed to explore and introduce metal 3D printing as well.” Selective laser melting metal 3D printers didn’t fit the need of the organization, as the use of powder seemed too difficult to handle and the cost to introduce the tech- nology was too high. So, the team set to work looking for the optimal solution: an affordable filament-based metal 3D print- er that could easily be used within the facility.
“We wanted to put the control within
26 | 3D METAL PRINTING • SPRING 2022
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