Additive Manufacturing

MAY 2016

ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING is the magazine devoted to industrial applications of 3D printing and digital layering technology. We cover the promise and the challenges of this technology for making functional tooling and end-use production parts.

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AM / Caterpillar Lays the Groundwork additivemanufacturing.media 27 those team members are focusing on shorter-term potential benefts of AM, one of which is speed at delivering service parts. A fuel flter base for an engine family used in motor graders and excavators provides an illustration. The intricate alumi- num alloy component was originally manufactured through casting, but the supplier is no longer operating. As a result, to support aftermarket customers, Caterpillar is facing a long delay to ramp up a new casting supplier combined with a large minimum order to justify the tooling cost. Or, there is an alter- native. A version of the part grown through laser melting has passed all necessary functionality tests, and this part requires no tooling, no supplier and no minimum order. With AM, aftermarket parts such as this one could be grown without delay, and grown as they are needed. Thus, even though the promise of additive relates to parts that are designed for this process, here is a success involving no redesign at all. That success provides Caterpillar with an intrigu- ing possibility. If enough short-term successes such as this one can be realized—successes perhaps mostly related to aftermarket parts—then the savings from these applications might be able to fund and encourage the larger efort the company realizes it needs to make. That is, the benefts today might help advance the spread of additive manufacturing knowledge throughout the company, so that Caterpillar is prepared when AM as a mature production resource fnally arrives. An important step toward this larger goal was the opening late last year of a new Additive Manufacturing Factory near the company's Peoria, Illinois, headquarters. This "factory"—which is smaller and quieter than most facilities one would associate with that word—includes 3D printing capabilities such as FDM, SLA, SLS and material jetting for polymer parts, along with two laser melting ma- chines for metal components. I visited the site to talk to various Caterpillar team members there, including Deb Conklin, Austin Schmidt and Joe Taylor (more detailed introductions below). Conklin explained one of the more fundamental points underlying this facility. That is, why does AM need its own facility and its own team? This fuel flter base is used in the engines of various products, including the excavator on the facing page. The part seen here was produced through additive manu- facturing instead of casting. Because it is an aftermarket part, it was grown to match the design of the original component. Here, the advantage of additive is not design freedom. The advantage is speed in delivering a legacy part. Cleaner and quieter than most factories, the Additive Manufacturing Factory includes various capabilities for 3D printing functional parts in polymer and metal. AM is Diferent Why does additive need its own facility? That question is related to this one: Does additive manufacturing represent a diferent way of making parts or does it represent a diferent way of designing them? Yes, says Conklin. Both. As director of the company's emerging technologies portfolio, she has responsibility over technologies the company's executives have identifed as disruptive. AM is perhaps the poster child of a disruptive technology, because its likely impact touches on so many diferent disciplines within the company. Earlier in her Caterpillar career, Conklin worked in logistics. To her, therefore, additive not only addresses long-standing problems in manufacturing and design, but also is clearly a logistics solution. The fuel flter base is above all a logistics-related success. While the

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