What A Former Moldmaker Has Learned About AM: Leverage Simplicity and Let It Scale

Linear AMS has stopped making molds. The company has sold all its CNC machine tools, the equipment it once used for moldmaking work. Headcount has been reduced by more than half, because moldmaking was the most labor-intensive unit of the company's business. All of this is a significant development for a company that started out as a mold shop —确实，对于一家以线性模具和工程名称开始的公司。从未来的可伸缩性方面，关注其最有利可图的工作以及似乎是其最有前途的业务部门，现在正在使用一个设施执行注射成型的设施，并由另一个可以同时执行金属和聚合物3D打印的设施进行补充。从现在开始，其他公司将制作线性模具。

Yet the company will still fill much the same niche. Linear built a reputation manufacturing mold tooling for the automotive industry, including prototype molds aimed at producing just hundreds or thousands of parts for vehicles still in development. This work came to be characterized by low margins and delayed payment terms, leading company CEO John Tenbusch to turn a different way. Today, he offers automotive-industry customers the chance to skip moldmaking for prototypes as he instead 3D prints the parts using Multi Jet Fusion machines fromHP.

The name "Linear" has been associated with additive manufacturing for years. Indeed, the name has been associated with the brandAdditive Manufacturing(that is, us), because the company then known as Linear Mold & Engineering additively produced the3D aluminum model of our new logo早在2015年，该出版物首先成为一本全尺寸杂志。即使在那时，也已经在2006年以直接的金属激光烧结开始，已经在增材制造中建立了线性。功能使公司超越模具工具成为航空航天等领域的部分制造工作，并导致了一家较大的制造商，一家较大的制造商，较大的制造商，穆格。2018年，Tenbusch和合伙人Lou Young回购了Linear's Business的发霉部分，接受了新独立的线性只能出售金属添加剂制造服务以制造汽车行业工具的规定。

Tenbusch的规定很好，因为有一段时间，它迫使他专注于金属AM的线性专业，包括保形冷却通道在内的霉菌插件（即，遵循模具表面的形式，非转弯冷却通道，以便更快地零件冷却并减少成型周期时间）。新独立Linear AMS(the letters stand for "Additive Manufacturing Services") coupled this capability with moldmaking in a conventional mold shop, plus injection molding in a facility dedicated to this, plus polymer 3D printing via Multi Jet Fusion — the most recent capability added.

但是从某种意义上说，霉菌制造的构成了线性的添加剂制造。他说，制作3D打印的模具插件意味着向霉菌商店出售，“我们会以竞争对手的身份退缩。”对汽车工具的限制将于2020年1月结束，因此这种阻塞并不是一个严重的挑战。尽管如此，它还是揭示了eliminating mold machining to be a way to both greater success and greater simplicity.

Make It Simple

Indeed, what Tenbusch has learned is that additive manufacturingwantssimplicity. “Find the application you know best how to deliver and make it as simple as possible to do it,” he says. On Linear’sEOSmetal additive machines, that meant no more maintaining different choices of material. The machines currently run only MS1 steel, no other choice. It also means no machining whatsoever. Customers get a build plate with the tool still attached. These customers are mold shops, so they know how to square the insert to the dimensions they want.

In this light, here is how the owner of Linear AMS thinks about his capabilities now, and how he sees the set of capabilities that will help carry the company into the future:

•Metal Additive Manufacturing

Metal AM continues at Linear as a means of making conformal-cooled inserts.Metal AM applications will expand beyond this, because the company just added electron beam melting capability in the form of aGE AdditiveArcam机生产金属部分。但金属3D printing for conformal cooling on the EOS machines remains a useful specialty. "The automotive tool and die guys understand it," he says. The capability no longer needs to be explained or sold to them. Potential customers show up with thermal analysis data demonstrating the substantial time savings — say, that conformal cooling channels might remove 40 seconds from a 100-second molding cycle. In one application where Linear made the insert for the problematic details of a bracket for a major automaker, the cooling effect reduced the molding cycle time by 53% — "enough to eliminate a mold set," he says.

• InjectionMolding

In other industries using molding, by contrast, the tooling designers do not necessarily understand conformal cooling. Therefore, Linear uses the capability on its own behalf. Its injection molding facility, staffed by 21 people and running 3 shifts, largely serves non-automotive customers. Molding is commodity work, but Linear is able to use conformal cooling as its secret weapon. Adding its own 3D-printed conformal-cooled inserts to its tools allows this molding facility to deliver lower prices for the same molding work compared to competitors.

•Polymer Additive Manufacturing

Linear invested in HP machines as a mold-free alternative method of providing prototype parts. The HP model 4200 Multi Jet Fusion machines are aimed at "production," he says, but that word means different things in different contexts. Production in the automotive territory where Linear lives represents part quantities far beyond what 3D printing can serve, but the number of pieces needed in a prototype run equates to what might serve as production in much narrower markets.

The advantages he sees in 3D printing over moldmaking are these: "You seem to get paid faster for making parts than you do for making the tooling that makes the parts. Plus, if you need to fix something, it's not three guys working all weekend." If a printed part is unsatisfactory or faulty in some way, the solution instead is simply to change the CAD file, run the print job again and walk away.

过程知识

With the polymer 3D printing, as was the case with metal 3D printing when Linear first adopted this, there is a learning curve. How to nest parts and set printing parameters in Multi Jet Fusion so that a particular build is successful requires experimentation, and — again, like metal — the knowledge that figures into this experimentation and process development is becoming Linear's specialty.

他指出：“利润很好，这是一件好事。正确的构建有时可能需要时间。”

But knowing how to get it right is also a basis for growth, and it is what helps to make Multi Jet Fusion the most scalable part of Linear's business.Any sizable recurring polymer additive manufacturing job could commit at least one machine, maybe more. Tenbusch says the business model resulting from this is therefore simple indeed. Linear doesn’t necessarily have to own the capital. Instead, he says, “We’re able to offer to customers, ‘Buy the machines and let us make the parts.’”