Initially developed by a small team in Sweden, Digital Metal began as a subsidiary of Höganäs AB as a relative unknown in 3D printing. When Christian Lönne joined the company in 2019, it had grown from its startup roots using completely new technology to having a presence in a number of industries.
Digital Metal’s 3D metal printing machines with proprietary, high-precision binder jetting technology, required further commercialisation to get into the hands of industry.
“When I arrived, we were ready to scale,” he said.
“I realised we had fantastic engineering capacity and we could see the inherent opportunities of serially producing additive manufacturing. We had mechanical engineers who refined the technology, but didn’t have the expertise in software.”
After many changes, Digital Metal’s biggest move came in July last year, when Makrforged – the creator of the integrated metal and carbon fibre additive manufacturing platform Digital Forge – entered into a definitive agreement with Höganäs AB to acquire the company.
This is what ‘the next step’ looked like for Digital Metal.
The acquisition was a perfect fit for both companies. Markforged has always been looking to solve manufacturing problems. The months it takes to transition from traditional production to manufacturing is a major problem. Poor unit economics and third-party supplier risk are also issues during the ramp up period and low volume periods. Powder binder jetting is a highly scaleable technology for producing production grade components at the time of need.
With Markforged’s experience and go-to-market scale, Digital Metal has been able to grow its technology on the mission to help more manufacturers produce the high-volume metal parts they need to drive highly productive and cost-efficient operations.
Crucially, Markforged’s Digital Forge platform is helping take Digital Metal’s mechanical solutions to the next level – the easy-to-use platform, best-in-class software capabilities and material expertise felt like a natural fit together.
The now Markforged binder jetting technology brings new capabilities in Australia to the Digital Forge platform – a production system capable of fabricating thousands of complex end-use metal parts.
“We slot into that ecosystem of combining hardware, software and materials,” Lönne explained.
“Coming from that more mechanical background where powder metallurgy is very intensive on the engineering side, we have widened our perspective to the bigger picture. I think this is where digital manufacturing is going and the vision which Markforged has is very appealing to become a part of, so we are integrating into that world.”
Serial production: the keys to success
Metal binder jetting, as a batch production process with serial production capabilities, is an exciting technology within the additive manufacturing industry.
This technology allows for many parts to build at once. Most 3D printers are built piece-by-piece, scaling up or down by adding additional printers. It doesn’t make a difference whether you are building a single part or 1,000, thanks to metal binder jetting.
This technology has proven to be a powerful tool that manufacturers can use to increase their flexibility and reduce the time it takes to get to market. As Lönne explained, the technology enables designers to iterate their designs quickly and produce parts in a serial manner, without having to go through a long industrialisation phase.
Markforged’s Metal Binder Jetting 3D printer – the PX100 – aims to bring manufacturing home, offering supply chain resilience and capabilities to manufacture small to large-scale serial production of metal parts at the point of need.
The PX100 is a newer version that has doubled the print speed without sacrificing the quality of surface finish. This machine is also completely gas-tight which is essential for applications involving reactive materials.
“It gives an ability to go from prototyping to production seamlessly,” Lönne said. “You don’t have to do a lot of lower prototyping at the start to then find a way to produce your part. Once you’re happy with your design and iterations, you’re straight onto serial printing.”
Developed by Digital Metal over nearly 20 years, Digital Metals has made many incremental changes on the platform – including a new technology co-developed with an Australian company – but the base technology remains the same.
The printer offers a unique combination of high precision and high throughput to ensure the user gets a robust production solution as well as being a future-proof platform to support manufacturing needs – both foreseen and unforeseen – in the future.
“One of the unique things with Digital Metal platforms is that the owner can upgrade the printer and modify it to the latest specs, so even if you bought your printer five, six years ago, you can upgrade it to the latest standard,” he said.
“That means you can protect your investment because you don’t have to buy a new printer when technology updates.”
PX100, simply put, allows for changes. The PX100 allows for change.
A new design in injection molding can take as long as six months to produce and incur a large additional expense. This reduces flexibility as you must make the same parts over and over again and produce large numbers to pay back that investment.
Lönne noted how companies will adopt this technology in the future is one to watch, especially given the shorter product life cycles industry is experiencing.
“People are used to changing designs or changing formats much quicker, which is why it fits very well,” he noted. “I think it will become a mentality – people expect that if you need to change, you won’t have to go through different bottlenecks to reach the end result.”
More businesses must adapt to the changing market conditions as innovation accelerates. Additive manufacturing will be driven by the increasing demand for customization, speed, cost effectiveness, and sustainability.
Lönne explained that it will take time to learn how to design components and learn the benefits, but there will be a massive impact on supply chains.
“The cool thing with additive manufacturing is it is mainly capital expenditure, so it negates the different expense of parts from different countries problem,” he said.
“The production costs are more or less the same wherever the printer is in the world, which I imagine would be a huge deal for the more remote countries in increasing competitiveness and keeping manufacturing onshore.”
For now, Markforged’s focus is on providing real value, real products with customer applications and lowering total cost of ownership.
“It’s difficult to understand how we will stay with subtractive manufacturing when you see the power of additive manufacturing, but there is a lot of work still to be done,” Lönne said.
“The inherent benefits of 3D printing is the sort of freedom that you get to design parts without having preconception in your mind. A lot of the leading designers today probably received their training and education before additive manufacture became popular. If you come out of university now and you’ve been soaked in additive manufacturing, I think you’re going to expect to do different geometries and expect the parts of the future to look different.”
Swinburne University’s Aerostructures Innovation Research (AIR) Hub is one of the leaders of this innovation push at both the education and industry level. AIR Hub Director Adriano Di Pietro stated that Markforged was doing a great job in getting the latest technology into the hands and minds of educators, students and industry.
“We want to have this technology for graduate engineers with these skills in mind, because we see it as an application skill set challenge,” Di Pietro said.
“Additive manufacturing (AM) is playing a very significant role, particularly driving innovation in aerospace. We’re hearing aircraft manufacturers, maintenance repair overhaul organisations and all sides of industry show interest in AM.
We’ve seen advisory circulars coming from our regulators specifically around AM. We know that Australia is playing a leading role in defence field applications and we’re actually playing a leading role in maintenance repair overhaul organisations as well.”