Month: February 2020

Nieka Brings Metal 3D Printing In-House with Inconel 625

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Several Crucibles over extreme heat in Nieka Systems

Utilizing Inconel 625 for Rapid and Repeated Temperature Cycling

Nieka creates sample preparation equipment that enables their customers in the mining and cement production industries. They needed to find a more viable and affordable solution to get away from the high costs and long lead times of outsourcing metal parts. Given the complexity of machining in Inconel, 3D printing was the ideal solution for their requirements.

By coupling the Metal X system with Inconel 625, Nieka was able to reduce their lead time from four weeks to four days and roughly save $108,000 CAD (~$80,000 USD) within a year.

Learn more about their application and why they chose to partner with Markforged.
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Haddington Scales Up Robot Arms Production with 3D Printing

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A multi-jointed robotic arm made with 3d printed components

3D Printed 7-Axis Robotic Arm

Haddington Dynamics, an engineering startup who develops and manufactures a 7-axis robotic arm for such customers as NASA, GoogleX and Toshiba, spent years trying laser cutters and inexpensive desktop printers to build a robot without success.

When they discovered Markforged 3D printing, it allowed them to achieve just what they were seeking — engineering-quality parts for their robots. They were so impressed that they built their business around 3D printing and created a print farm of carbon fiber printers to keep up with demand.

From end-use parts to custom end effectors, read on to see how they reduced part counts from 800 to less than 100 to save time and money.

The Breakdown:

The Challenge:

Robotic arms need to be cost-effective and stiff enough to maintain 50-micron precision in the arm’s movements.

The Solution:

A fleet of several Markforged printers allowed the team to develop durable custom gripper fingers for customers.

The Results:

Haddington Dynamics reduced part count from 800 to under 70 and can assemble Dexter robots within a day.

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Video: Lean Machine Adopts a Design for Additive Approach to Solve Problems in the Shop

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Lean Machine, Canadian-based metal fabrication company, specializes in custom machining primarily for the commercial transportation and mining sector.

It quickly became apparent that producing tooling out of heavy duty steel was not a scalable option for the company, so they turned to Markforged 3D printing solutions. Since adding this capability, they’ve printed sheet metal bending dies using non-marring carbon fiber material as well as metal grippers for their robotic arms just to name a few.

See how Lean Machine has used metal and carbon fiber 3D printing to transform its production:

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