Impossible Objects is Disrupting 3D Printing With a New Process | AMUG 2023 w/ Vision Miner
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- čas přidán 24. 04. 2023
- Today we’re here with Steve Hoover from Impossible Objects checking out their revolutionary CBAM 3D Printing technology that can create parts faster than traditional methods. PEEK, NYLON 12 combined with carbon fiber or glass fiber can be 3D printed with high-speed inkjet printing methods to create high performance composite parts. This technology is insane in an age where PEEK, ULTEM and other high performance thermoplastics require advanced industrial machines in order to pull off acceptable results.
The AMUG conference is one of the biggest additive manufacturing expos in the world and is a premiere event to catch the latest trends and see what current and future innovations are hitting the market. As always we are bringing you guys our top picks from the show. The kind of companies and innovators that are making great strides and pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Join Rob as he presents the most eye-catching products from AMUG conference 2023!
At Vision Miner, we specialize in Functional 3D printing, especially high-performance plastics like PEEK, ULTEM, PPSU, PPS, CFPA, and more. We also have extensive experience with 3D scanners, and a whole array of solutions available for purchase. If you're interested in using functional 3D printing and materials in your business, feel free to reach out, and we can help you make the right choice for your application.
Call 833-774-6863 or email contact@visionminer.com, and we're here to help!
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Would have been interesting to hear what the material strength is when it comes to compression, tension, shear, etc and how it compares to other materials.
yest, its compressd. using hudraulic piszton.
@@uiopuiop3472 he wasn't inquiring about the manufacturing process, he's asking about the finished material properties.
so compression in this context means like a sand castle is build with compressable sand that will fail when pulled e.g. tensile stress.
He is a seller, he won't willingly speak about the bad points of his product. That kinda defeats his purpose of being at the convention.
@@Helveteshit Yeah. That’s kinda what I subtly alluding to. You know they’d put that info front and center if it were favorable.
That's actually pretty good. Obviously not the peak of production technology - it's not gonna work for everything, but it's another new process of making stuff. You now have more options. It is bound to be excellent for making lots of parts better cheaper and faster than what we have so far. I only hope they don't make it proprietary and prohibitively expensive.
Your only hope is the opposite of what motivates them.
@@QiwiPear Not true. Stratasys fdm printers use proprietary hardware and chipped filament. You could only buy material from them. Their business is losing sales and you don't hear about them any more because people that do additive manufacturing for profit would rather use something that actually makes money. The more options that people are given, the better the competition. The fairer printer manufacturers and ones that use open source have historically done better. e.g Prusa.
@@Stoddlez I simply set the bar low when it comes to this stuff, they're all smiley and confident and then I probably never hear of it again because of their greed
@@QiwiPear You're right about that. It's so sad. I just want to print great things but it's usually too restrictive to be used at all.
@@QiwiPear Then their motivation is the opposite of the need of the market.
How strong is it actually though. The lack of numbers is really concerning. Also the sheet process makes it seem like tensile strength is only dominant in one plane
I'd also like to see some numbers on this.
I agree the tensile strength sure looks like it will be limited between the layers.
@@ddegn there are no layers after compressed and heated. It melts to a solid part with embedded carbon.
@@chris2790 The plastic binder may not have layers after melting but the embedded carbon remains layered. There is likely a large strength difference in the part depending on the orientation it is tested.
The numbers are printed on the transparent in the background.
@@DerSolinski "high strength" is the most unscientific thing I've heard in a while. tensile strength? sheer strength? bending?
15x faster print? 15x faster than what?
If someone actually had a good product they would not shy away from actually stating the facts. But hiding them behind marketing tactics says everything
Seems more expensive than SLM, which has much stronger parts than any plastic reinforced with carbon fiber (Caveat being conductivity Thermal/Electric.) They are marketing it as additive manufacturing, but you have to sandblast away carbon fiber which is not capable of being recycled directly back onto the process.
for now.
@@user-lx9jm1wo3h randomly having faith in future tech doesn't make that tech feasible 😂
@@MrJoerT poo-pooing on it doesn't make it unfeasible either, so what was your point again? 🤣
It is indeed an additive process. The process is called sheet lamination and this application seems to be combined with material jetting process. In SLM, DED, etc, nearly every single part needs post processing. If we dont consider it additive because of the post processing, nearly every additive application would be considered hybrid. There are a number of different additive methods and they all have their applications. SLM/SLS is extremely expensive. Not sure how much this system costs, but I would venture to guess that SLM is not cheaper. A DED additive system such as Meltio is 250k USD plus more for options. And that is a relatively low priced DED system. A Matsuura Lumex is over $1m as of a few years ago (powder bed fusion machine). Then the costs of the powders ($$) and the safety equipment and handling processes, etc. Then the NDT processes and equipment, etc. The wire EDM to separate the part from the build plate, the milling machine to resurface the build plates. Its no small feat to implement SLM/SLS. So I would say that it is definitely not cheaper than this process. This process however, looks to be SIGNIFICANTLY faster than SLM as well.
@@jbwalker841 crazy good argument. Would 100% agree as a SLS printing professional.
Every day we get a step closer to PEEK performance…
Peek? Whats that mean
Cool idea. I imagine you could parallelize it to do many sheets at once and really speed up the printing time part of the process.
Big 4x8 foot sheet of this...like a full sheet of plywood then panelize all the objects...print em, stack em, bond em, then run em thru a huge sandblaster to separate the parts...
Very cool!!!!
It looks like their top-of-the-line system is already a continuous feed printer. Raw print speed of 10,000cm^3/hour, or closer to 3000 when you account for the packing density of your parts. I'm sure it costs more than my yearly income, but damn.
@@Rathmun I think the heating and pressing would be the bottle-neck.
@@sNpeR1080 Maybe. I expect that in a large industrial setting you'd have fixtures that just consist of a pair of plates held together with bolts to apply pressure, and then send them through a conveyor oven. Or maybe the top plate is just weighted and slides on smooth rods so it applies the same pressure despite thermal expansion. That might end up back on the printer being the bottleneck.
@sNpeR1080 make it like a domino's pizza oven. In goes sheets. Out comes parts. Interesting idea.
I'd be curious about the layer adhesion strength since the fibers are only oriented in 2 dimensions. Plus, if they are bonded in a press, they might have inherent vertical strain in the objects depending on the pressures used.
Exactly… everything about this sounds like existing processes, but worse
Since the sheets aren’t woven, during the melting stage the fibres might get pressed and mixed between layers. If the plastic is molten whilst being pressed then it shouldn’t really create any stress within the material.
There may be all sorts of inherit issues, but they will be on a diffferent level compared to traditional printing. So whatever flaws you find it will have already been in a class of its own
All high performance composites are manufactured under pressure. This seems to be top notch. Carbon/PEEK is about as good as it gets. Layer strength will be very high thanks to the PEEK. Carbon/epoxies has 10MPa in between the layers an this should be higher.
I've worked with Roboze's Carbon Peek FDM and witnessed the major difference in XY vs Z strength. Hard to educate customers & find applications that only have forces acting in the "correct" direction.
The best thing I've seen in years. This is great.
Use cases are clearly limited but there are some that will definitely benefit from this. The blades look really great for example.
i don't know how well it scales with bigger objects, but being able to make production parts without a mold is crazy. although i guess its a moot point since you can also 3d print the molds
Limited? 😂😂😂😂🤦♂🤦♂
@@julianreverse actually extremely limited. The list of disadvantages is long
@@Gromic2k Such as?
@@paulwal222 You have to print the same thing over and over again to make a single thing, in molding for example you just have one mold that can create multiples of the same thing almost instantly. Also alot of waste product from sand blasting literal carbon fiber.
This is awesome. The ability to do most of the work at room temp is astounding.
astounding? i print at about 210 C, that's astounding too, oh an my freezer is pretty cold, also astounding :D
yeah, great. Replace 210°C printing with strong chemicals and the need to sandblast every part. What a gain
Sounds less hassle than resin honestly.
@@rustyshackleford3053 Yeah it sounds like, but if you look closely, you realise that it's much much much more complicated. It even involves the dangerous chemicals part
Wouldn't part geometry be limited to what you can sandblast? Much more restricted than what e.g. FDM can make.
@6:24 The trademarked name is "Impossible Objects", but that looked like something that could be CNC easily.
no... take another look at that lol.
Yeah, you can't have infill for example (no access to blast), but that's true of laser sintering too. But sandblasting sounds trickier than air blasting powder away.
On the other hand your support material in laser sintering often needs some pretty aggressive removal techniques compared to sandblasting.
On balance I'd say this was interesting tech and uniquely placed for certain applications.
As long you have completed channel, internal cavities shouldn't be an issue.
The stuff rips apart like sandpaper while being fluffy like cotton candy.
So there isn't really the need for high power sandblasting.
The interesting part I see here is the ability to influence density to a degree inside the part.
This can have benefits for strengths and provide dampening properties.
The big issue with this process is waste, it is seems that the excess material isn't recoverable.
@@DerSolinski if the carbon is dried enough I imagine it could be used as a form of "milled" cf?
If this needs to be pressed, unsupported voids are likely not possible, the issue would not be getting the waste material out but getting the necessary pressure to laminate the layers to spec
Oh my creative brain is racing with this tech!
Fantastic, great vid and connection!
This is suprisingly simple. Ingenious. Inkjets can easily pump out those sheets in fractions of seconds, quick vacuum, stack it up, press it, sandblast it and there you go. This seems pretty much like using standard processes for pumping out highly customized and high tech prototypes or even productive parts.
Unbelievably cool, what a unique process!
I'm so glad you guys threw it on the table. Love to hear that "ting" of peek. That's the sound of a strong part.
What's great about this method is that it's relatively low tech. I'm sure their proprietary machine currently costs a million dollars, but I think this process could be done in a way that is affordable on a home machine.
yeah, just a sheet with a steady thickness that could be bought and massproduced. known ink-jet technology, vacuum, preassure and temperature. It needs a lot of space to achieve a good building volume and could probably be compareable to fdm speed but better material specs and scaleability at the cost of reduced geometry.
Just compare that to SLS where you need absurd controll to even get an even layer thickness...
really great! opens up new possibilities for most fields
This is pretty cool but seems rather complex and expensive, we will see how this process developes further.
More complex is only a problem when you can get the same performance out of other manufacturing processes.
I'm curious about parts with internal cavities, how does that get sandblasted, or is that not a good use case for this?
that may be but you could also scale up to make pieces faster than just a printer which has to do the entire process itself. imagine having a 100 of these inkjet style printers, you could bang out objects in minutes, not hours for each
i just now noticed in the video... "solid parts"
@@mysterymayhem7020 Exactly. I kind of wantto try this low tech with a normal printer and some special metallic ink or something. Stack them up and sinter the part in an oven.
"Complex and expensive"? Bro it's an inkjet, an oven and a hydraulic press.This should have a DIY version in 3 to 4 years.
Nice video ,thank you for sharing :)
Really cool application of SLS technology with the carbon fiber sheets in-between for super strong parts. Looks promising
absolutely fantastic! thank you algorithm ;)
This is super cool. Thanks for this!
This is AWESOME!
Love it.
For someone that works in the nonwoven industry space and loves additive manufacturing, this synergy of the two excites me greatly!
Woah, this is amazing!!!
What a logo! Props to whoever designed that logo!
I wonder about layer height/z-axis resolution. How much control does the compressing process have? Putting the thing in a press has me concerned about distortion or cave-ins
Pretty cool. Thanks!
Amazing.
More info needed on the heat/compress part - what pressure. temperature?
Excellent
the presenter is a good one. he really sells you on the product and knows what to talk about
So a snake oil salesman in other words.
@@LeonBelmont1000 how is he a "snake oil" salesman if he selling something legitimate?
@@YEE941 These types of presentations do a poor job at dispelling the skepticism because they are aimed at only showing the results in a positive light. It's been done for "innovative" car engines that claim higher potential efficiency, GPU's submerged in mineral oil to reduce heat generation. These innovations have yet to make any substantial difference for the consumers, they are marginal at best.
Excellent very very smart looking into it from military applications👍
No bullshit, all product! This guy is the real deal.
the thing is how to sandblast inside long tubes, or places where you want to pump air, or liquid, how do you get rid of the mesh in that case ??
Interesting tech and a great showcase
Definitely a niche technology but composites have so many use cases and more ways to integrate fibers in parts are better, I think. This is a way to do this I didn't think of so far. Cool new approach.
I wouldn't say that. The molten solder example is extremely impressive - for a one-off that can survive extreme heat and caustic chemicals, there's nothing like it.
I wonder if it'd be possible to press the layers in a warped state? Like with that drone blade - if you could make some kind of mandrel or two part die set that would create the blade twist/shape while the matrix phase was fused? The idea would be that the fibers would be molded along the blade instead of being sliced in the "STL" layers.
Can't imagine why not, good idea, they already have alignment pins so just making the top and bottom in the shapes you needed should be feasible. Definitely opens up some options to orient the fibers as you want and making them nonlinear instead of parallel to the stack.
I believe they show something like that on previous shows.
Why not just fucking form it with carbon sheets. Its faster and easier when you have your negative.
@@peepopalaber Maybe if you had something like that and it was part of a larger component that wasn't flat? This would be faster than laying up CF, bagging it, etc, I think. Maybe not.
This is possible with the tech and there are potential use cases for this in select industries beyond the obvious.
The compressure makes the material heat up.. I'm wondering how do you calculate compression forces and deformations ?
Ultra Quality tools!
Oh yeah, this will save us from self-annihilation, great job!
'Saw them at Rapid last week. This is the real deal -- no prototypes or inaccurate FDM tchotchkes. The carbon fiber they produce is strong and ship able that day. Now I hope they are making bigger machines to produce bigger product. If you have heavy metal parts and are looking at a way to replace them -- this is the way to get started.
Interesting for some things but its tricky to sand blast the inside of hollow parts.
WOW. Just. WOW.
Super cool love the passion
So the sheets need to be heated and compressed at the same time? What temp and what pressure do they need? Any parts that start to get big will need a pretty hefty machine to do that sort of processing....
Have you considered adding a laser cutter to the work flow, to cut out internal shapes on each sheet, before forming the part? Then internal features wouldn't need to be sand blasted.
That goes against the compression process. I bet that's extra important.
Maybe would be usefull before the printing, cutting out the outline to reduce the waste?
Oh cool, makes sense that this can be used for PCB reflow/wave-solder carriers!
I wonder if this could be done with metal powders in an inert environment to create carbon fiber metallic parts.
How accurate can registration marks be in stacked fabric sheets for alignment with a material moving likes it's felt.
I look forward to the future of this tech
I love spaceflight and I'm very interested in it.
this way of manufacturing seems to be rather simple and robust, lightweight and actually not dependend on gravity. and if your only other source for spare parts is back on earth, 3D-printing makes a lot of sense, and producing the parts light and durable will be important too.
FDM/FFM printing is also not dependent on gravity though. Plus this would likely introduce tiny particles into the spacecraft which is a big red flag.
@@jaydenwiener4899 you are right, the video mentioned 15mm carbon fibers. that could produce interesting shorts on PCBs
on a planet however (like mars), that shouldn't be a problem (because of gravity).
I'm not really sur about sandblasting carbon fibers in space environement tho. Between the sand and the cabon flying everywhere (air filters and your lungs)
@@robertheinrich2994 I had originally thought about mentioning how it would have a place on space colonies, yet I find it difficult since the area would likely have limited breathable air If these fibers/sand got into the air, then they could very well be a massive hazard for any sensitive equipment or human lungs.
If the system was moved outside or in a specialized unit to entirely prevent the possibility of contamination, it then suddenly requires a whole unit to be built, and a number of precautions any time a single part is printed. In theory, it has a place in space. I believe it would just be better to utilize other technologies until we have a larger base to properly manufacture things on, but by that point we may have vastly superior options.
@@jaydenwiener4899 yes, this technology is quite special and yes, I can see that the carbon fibers might cause a problem. but I actually thought about a situation where the settlement on another planet wouldn't be that restricted.
the most problematic part might be, that they sandblast the remaining fibers away. but it must be contained in some way or that hall where they showed the system would be hazardous.
besides, printers that operate with metal powders (lasersintering etc) have the problem, that the metal powders aren't that lungfriendly aswell.
so there might be a question, when can you run the setup outside. or does it need all the shielding from outside?
for example, the first spaceX starships are considered expendable and will not go back to earth. so maybe cut the tank open and set the printer up inside?
very different and very cool.....
How do you sandblast inside long veins or holes ?
I could definitely see this being used for larger objects such as car body panels
I guarantee it would be over 100k per door panel. This is ungodly expensive. Just the carbon fiber sheet price would be shocking. Build up a 48” x 48” x 10” block to make a rounded door panel and it’ll be wild. Cool tech but it was designed by a manufacturing businessman it seems
Nice,
Q: How do you dispose of the carbon fiber dust after sand blasting responsibly?
Do you recommend adding some polymer binding powder and melt it as a block or other?
using the suprerior recicling industy of hungary. it can be
this is the OG 3d print too we came full circle
what about the tolerances? can you provide numbers. and the price for manufacturing ?
We're in the opposite wave we were 50 years ago. New materials are developing faster than we can utilize them.
Awesome! Cool!
In terms of material waste, Feels like its going back to machining a block of stock, except its sliced thin then "glue" back together. Can this still be classified as additive? Or both?
i wonder if it could be possible to make a high throughput production line because its inkjet and you could make it so the press and heater are in a rotating conveyor and since its always a block at some height its all the same thing but completely different parts the most difficult thing would be the sandblasts, but it possibly could evolve to a chemical submersion
The real question is hw long does it take to finish the part in the heated press process? Hours? Days? Minutes?
Brilliant. The waste debris/residues, could you recycling it?
what do you do with the used sheets? since you are jetting away the material off the sheet it seems like its still subtractive manufacturing with extra steps? Seems cool and i don't know enough about carbon fiber to know if this process is more optimal than whatever we are doing currently but calling this additive manufacturing seems to be a misnomer.
Got to tour their Chicago facility in like 2017, 2018-ish. It's good tech for some applications, but the surface finish leaves a lot to be desired, it's got a very poor buy-to-fly ratio and the waste chaff is not trivial to deal with, and I'm still not sure how scalable it all really is.
this is cool!
Do you do graphene (as opposed to graphite) impregnated polymers ?
"Indiana Jones digging out your dinosaur" that stings😭
Interesting, reminds me of PCB stackups. With machines involved in PCB maunfacturing you might be able to align the sheets in the stackup accurately enough for god parts toelrance. Still, PCBs have a hell of a tolerance in z-direction, due to different copper and fiber filling degrees. We might see the same here.
I imagine you could press not to a pressure but to a specific height for the number of layers in your design. That would at least hold the overall Z level pretty accurately. May have some variance between layers though?
So the carbon fibres are only aligned along the plane of the printer sheets, which means that perpendicular to these sheets only the resin is holding it together.
Would this work making molds, or are their better methods? Or are molds obsolete? I'm not up on the current manufacturing tech.
So full density parts with 2D carbon fiber reinforcement? Nice! when can I order parts from a 3D printing house like Shapeways?
What if you have a part that needs to be hollow? Imagine a hollow cube with a ball inside. How do you sandblast away the material from the inside?
That is really cool.
Very cool tech, and not farfetched to imagine this scaling up in speed of printing enormously by applying existing technology from large scale high volume printing operations. I could also see combining this with laser cutting, water jetting, or even a cnc sand blasting nozzle to cut sheets completely or partially before adhesion to make voids and channels feasible.
Yes game changer for designers
can use aluminium or stainless steel poder instead of peek or nylon?
This is like SLA but for fdm. Amazing!
Amazing
Since you can't sandblast the inside of an object much, you're pretty limited by this technique to creating open-faced parts, rather than parts with a large cavity and a small opening.
Well i dont think that carbon fiber that is left on inside of the part would pose some threat to integrity of printed part. And if yes, you can still fill the inside.
It would be interesting if they intregrated a laser cutter and air blast to remove internal cavities and pretty much anything that isn’t needed (maybe just keep some locating features or something) so that the amount of sandblasting needed is reduced and you can have internal features. That fabric looked pretty thin, enough that a laser could cut a few layers.
Neat idea.
I wonder if this could replace Aluminum casting?
2:49 “it’s like Indiana Jones digging out your dinosaur”
🤔
Ok, My humble self see a flaw in that system. If you have sheet after sheet, and then you compress it, how can you establish the real designed size after compression?
@2:34 - "everywhere you didn't have polymer, you simply sandblast away" -- I don't get that part -- *how do you remove the naked carbon fiber which does not have the polymer? It's still carbon fiber and thus very strong, right?* ❓
Anybody think this may have wider dimensional tolerances?
I wonder if sandblasting creates a more variable final dimension.
Great idea that would fill many niche applications. Curious to know if the material that is sand blasted away can be recovered/re-used.
Also, like other FDM processes, you have the opportunity to embed threaded inserts or bearings as you stack layers, but because it is pressed and heated, the parts would become an exact fit.
You'd have to somehow reform that chopped material that was blasted away into a mat, so I doubt it.
@@amorton94 Yes, that's what I was thinking (reforming into mat). I wonder if it's viable, or if the fibres are destroyed in the blasting process.
@@amorton94 There's nothing fundamentally different than doing it with cotton fibers from chopped up jeans in 3rd grade to make your own paper. Moot point regardless, if the sheets aren't cheap enough to not bother doing this it won't be financially feasible to use them at all.
If it's carbon being sandblasted away, not sure how important recovery is.
The compression of the sheets seems like a pretty unwieldy variable for tolerances. It’s really cool technology though.
When I’m testing a new method of additive manufacturing based on binder jetting/ any pool of material - I ask how it handles hollow object. Other wise machining is the more reliable and affordable.
Also, it looks very complicated and expensive method to overcome problems that a simple heat treatment can solve.
If the hollow areas are for weight savings rather than functional, they you could just not add polymer to that area and leave the carbon fabric in there. Not as completely weight saving as air, but simpler and you still get benefit.
As opposed to eg powder metal sintering, where the powder weighs as much as the finished metal so leaving powder inside makes so sense.
@@wsshambaugh it is a good solution. But still, my point is that it pretends to be a manufacturing alternative when it doesn’t have further engineering limits or cost per part advantage compared to other AM solutions/machining.
Wow, what a cool process! It’s one of those things that when you see it, your immediate reaction is “well, of course!”.
It’d take some non-trivial development, but this has the look about it of something that could be done in a home shop. If you could come up with a liquid-jetting head, you could attach it to a conventional FDM printer frame. For assembly and baking, hydraulic shop presses are cheap, and ceramic heaters inside metal platens wouldn’t be too challenging. Sand blasters are cheap too. I’d expect that the non-woven CF sheets and powdered plastics are off the shelf items. Really, it seems like the main issue would be to figure out the jetting head and the details of the binder used to hold the loose powder. Definitely non-trivial, but it strikes me as do-able.
You of course couldn’t use it commercially due to protected IP, but you could make some hellaciously strong/light/stiff parts for hobby drones or robots. (Or suspension parts for cars, etc, etc.)
Very cool, I’d like to learn more about the company!
The best ideas are the ones that have been slapping us in the face for years without us realizing it
@@victorkreig6089 The best ideas are patented*
We only got 3d printing in 2009 because the Stratasys patents from the 80s expired. In fact, most development in 3D printing is waiting for Stratasys patents to expire. The vaunted Bambu X1 Carbon is basically a Stratasys 660.
And yeah nah, not a 3d printer frame, but a lightly modified inkjet printer. The toolchain for this would basically be printing the sheets, heating it in an oven, and then shoving that in a harbor freight manual press. Then lightly beadblast it in the garage and you're done. I'd use it for so many fucking things.
@@rustyshackleford3053 Yeah, modding an inkjet printer would be the most obvious solution, but I wonder if the binder material would be think enough to flow through typical microscopic inkjet print head channels. I think there are inkjets designed for thicker fluids, but don’t know about their price or availability.
(Or course, we have no idea what the binder material is, that’s the key to the whole process, and I suspect is highly proprietary :-/)
I'm wondering what the geometry limits might be?
Pretty cool. Self assembling nanotech would make that entire convention a flash in the pan.
Self assembling nanotech would be pretty cool but star trek replicators would make the entire technology a flash in the pan
Self assembling nanotech is fiction.
I'd like to see a video of the sand blasting process
"like indiana jones digging out your dinosaur bone" ........ NAILED IT
Is this superior to a more traditional carbon fiber resin? I would imagine you could print on these sheets with a normal resin instead and do pretty much the same thing.
SO COOL BRO
What are costs? Need competitive ROI
That's different!