Carbon offers technology at a fast 'Clip'

In the land of Best Practices, 3D printing — or additive manufacturing — is taking off. Using this technology to turn out finished goods — not just prototypes — is happening right now.

Carbon Inc., a 5-year-old Silicon Valley company, touts its 3D printing technology as a breakthrough way to make 3D parts much quicker than before: print speeds of minutes instead of hours and use of engineering-grade materials with a high level of detail resolution and surface finish.

You may have heard about Carbon's high-visibility collaboration with Adidas to make Futurecraft 4D, an athletic shoe with a 3D printed midsole. Additive manufacturing comes to the masses.

Carbon machines also have found a home in medical devices and the dental market, quickly churning out one-off dentures and other custom products.

Now Carbon is moving into the world of injection molding and urethane casting.

The CEO of Carbon of Redwood City, Calif., is Joseph DeSimone, who co-founded Carbon in 2013. A polymer chemist and longtime professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, DeSimone took leave to become CEO.

The company has an interesting business model. Carbon does not sell machines outright to anybody. Instead, customers lease machines on a subscription model. Why? Customers can get into additive manufacturing for a reasonable price, and they don't have to worry about the machine becoming outdated in a few years. Best Practices calls that the "Curse of the Smartphone."

The subscription model allows Carbon to go in and give real-time software updates to the machines. Carbon also constantly works to develop resin formulations, and as people in the plastics industry know, new material development is where the real action is today.

Carbon uses the term "production partners" — a good way to quickly describe this model where customers don't own a Carbon machine, but they buy printing material from Carbon.

Best Practices knows that the rhetoric around additive manufacturing can get overheated. No, it's not going to replace injection molding for mass production. But for shorter runs or making quick design changes, additive manufacturing has a bright future.

How does Carbon's fast printing work? The innovation is something called Clip, which stands for Continuous Liquid Interface Production. Carbon officials say Clip can churn out parts from engineering-grade materials that have exceptional resolution and surface finish.

Standard 3D printing builds up a part layer by layer, a time-consuming process. Carbon said its continuous-process technology has a print speed that makes durable products in minutes.

The company's Digital Light Synthesis technology, driven by Carbon's Clip process, harnesses digital light and oxygen permeable optics to rapidly produce objects from a pool of liquid resin. The curing is done in a precisely controlled way.

As it moves into the plastics processing segment, Carbon interviewed officials of four injection molders that are subscribers.

They are Resolution Medical Inc., a medical device manufacturer in Minneapolis; TruVenture Composites LLC, which owns Nicolet Plastics LLC in Mountain, Wis.; Bright Plastics Inc. of Greensboro, N.C.; and Diversified Plastics Inc. of Minneapolis.

Their comments give an interesting insight into the pressures that plastics processors are facing today and their attitudes toward 3D manufacturing.

Carbon found that plastics processors want speed, design flexibility and specialization.

"The demand for faster turnarounds will have a major impact on all manufacturers when you look at how quickly products are coming out," said Tony Cavalco, president and CEO of TruVenture Composites, speaking about Nicolet Plastics. He said Carbon's technology will speed up design and allow for faster changes.

"We will utilize our part design expertise to help the customer determine the optimal design," Cavalco said. That could mean a design that doesn't require tooling or can't be injection molded, or a design optimized for molding, with the first production runs on Carbon equipment to do a proof of concept, he said.

Nicolet plans to add instruction in additive manufacturing to its Nicolet University program.

"From a business perspective, consumers are just so attuned to things being quicker, no one wants to wait for this product lifecycle," said Joe Vest, vice president at Bright Plastics.

The molding executives also talked about high tooling costs and the difficulty of plastics manufacturers to address small to midsized production runs. And strung-out tooling times make it hard to shorten product life cycles and quickly adapt to customer demand. Additive manufacturing is one solution.

"We need to be faster in supporting customer requirements on schedule," Diversified CEO Kevin Hogan said. "We also see more demand for customization and personalization, and have been looking for technologies that allow us to support our customers in that way."

Of course, molds aren't needed with 3D printing.

"The ability to rapidly produce quality parts without tooling lead times was something that I found attractive," Cavalco said.

Hogan said Diversified didn't want another "prototyping machine." Carbon equipment eliminated the need for tooling to begin producing a customer project.

"If we can support a customer's low-volume opportunities, we can then position ourselves as [the] first to support them in high-volume opportunities," he said.

Jon Ewert, Resolution Medical's vice president of operations, said Carbon equipment speeds up the design and testing process, and provides a "solution where you don't have the capital cost up front but you have the finished level of quality that's needed for human-use products."

Carbon officials say that the subscription model makes the process "future-proof" since the company regularly upgrades software.

Vest, of Bright Plastics, said that flexibility is important.

"Technology is changing so fast that if I spend $80,000 on a piece of production equipment to do additive manufacturing, in 18 months, I'm going to discover it is outdated," Vest said.

Also, the fact that Carbon is fully in control of the resin — instead of resin developed by a third party — means it can develop new resins, he said.

Fast additive manufacturing technology fits into each company's strategy. For Nicolet Plastics, that means focusing on short runs.

"The real advantage of Carbon is replacing the small to medium quantities of part manufacturing from injection molding with producing those parts on the Carbon equipment," Cavalco said.

Bright Plastics' Vest said some customers have parts that are never going to transition to high volume. They would be in the sweet spot where we can make a part that will function perfectly and never have to invest in tooling, he said.

Ewert, of Resolution Medical, can see Carbon being the way to make volumes of 20,000-25,000 units.

Perhaps most interesting are the molder comments about their future plans for additive manufacturing. Resolution Medical has a dedicated area that can house 18 3D printers and form a separate business unit. That seems pretty aggressive, but Ewert said the demand is there.

"Customers [already] want to convert, to add different geometries and unique features to current components," Ewert said. "Mold changes are too expensive, but Carbon gives them the opportunity to do this with zero investment."

Vest said Bright Plastics plans to have, in three years, a business that uses Carbon technology for full production, running 24 hours a day. He said Bright Plastics will reach out to designers at its customers and encourage them to rethink part design.

"I want them to consider if it makes sense to print a part, if you can print it as one part instead of molding many, and other specific things that you couldn't traditionally do with injection molding," Vest said.

Hogan said Diversified Plastics will make Carbon printers "a very integral part of our 2019 marketing plan."

"We are physically establishing a branded area outside our current facility where Carbon's printers will be housed," he said.

Clearly, injection molders need to keep a close eye on additive manufacturing.