After the economy tanked during the Great Recession, Bryan Crutchfield was more than ready for a change. “I’ve been in the Detroit area for my entire career and spent roughly 20 years of that with a Tier 1 automotive supplier,” he said. “So even though I love the industry, I’d ridden it right to the bottom by then and wanted to do something else. That’s when a recruiter approached me looking for someone with operational and sales experience to fill a position in the additive manufacturing industry. It sounded good to me.”
That opportunity landed him at 3D-printing product and service provider Materialise NV, where Crutchfield now serves as the vice president and general manager for the company’s North American headquarters in Plymouth, Mich. He also sits on the board of Leuven, Belgium-based RapidFit NV, a Materialise company specializing in automotive tooling design and manufacturing, and Link3D Inc. of Lafayette, Colo., developers of Materialise’s SaaS-based CO-AM software.
“With the acquisition of Link3D, Materialise brings to market a neutral AM platform that not only supports our technology, but also that of third-party developers and, at some time perhaps, even our competitors’ software solutions,” Crutchfield said.
Bryan Crutchfield, Advisor, SME AM Technical Community Leadership Committee, Vice President & General Manager, Materialise North America
He suggested the AM industry has long needed a harmonized workflow that encompasses all aspects of the 3D-printing process. This begins with what Crutchfield refers to as content creation—the importation and potential cleanup of a CAD file, for example, or using point-cloud data from a 3D scanner to construct a viable model of a part or part feature. Supports, meshes, and lattice structures might then be added, the part nested with others that use the same material, and the build file sent to the 3D printer for processing. After leaving the build chamber, parts enter what many call the “dirty little secret” phase of additive manufacturing—postprocessing—which depending on the technology, includes CNC machining, vapor polishing, heat treatment, and other operations.
Whatever the process and however many steps are needed, though, each should be part of a harmonized workflow that links all of the software and equipment required to 3D print a component. “Our CO-AM platform accomplishes all this and more,” Crutchfield noted.
COVID has helped create the platform. During the pandemic (and even before), Materialise worked on a problem that eventually plagues any company that develops software: the proliferation of multiple, standalone products suffering from limited interoperability. Materialise “refactored” its software, connecting each module with a series of application programming interfaces (APIs) to create comprehensive workflows that it now offers to the industry.
“Additive once belonged only to service bureaus and prototyping-only applications,” Crutchfield explained. “Those barriers have slowly melted away as AM has moved into traditional manufacturing, where it assumes its well-deserved role as just one more tool, albeit an important one.
“But this movement is going to require an even higher level of interoperability,” he continued. “We and other providers will need to provide seamless connectivity to ERP systems, for example, as well as the MES platforms used in CNC machine shops and plastic injection molding houses. Each of these systems should talk to one another in a smart, digital way.”
As Crutchfield is quick to point out, this is not some attempt to rule the 3D-printing software universe. Just the opposite. He and the Materialise team, all the way up to founder Fried Vancraen, believe that closed systems are a path to stagnation. “The world’s going digital, and because of that, manufacturing workflows—additive or otherwise—must be digital in nature, and also automated as much as possible,” Crutchfield said. “But you need to have an open architecture and an open mindset to do that. What’s more, you must be humble enough to realize that you don’t always have the best mousetrap.”
Enabling customers to use best-in-class technology through a brand agnostic and open software platform only drives the industry forward, Crutchfield added. Unfortunately, getting to this point has taken longer than he and others at Materialise expected. Vancraen calls it “the slow revolution,” and as someone who’s been in AM since its earliest days, he should know.
Crutchfield agrees. Though he’s equally eager to see 3D printing assume its rightful position as “just one more tool” on the production floor, he’s resigned to the fact that this will take time. “Anyplace it offers a unique solution, that’s where it will continue to provide its greatest value.”
Speaking of production floors, Crutchfield’s years with Materialise have brought him full circle. Where his initial role with the company was the support of a factory they’d opened to 3D print components for the medical industry, automakers are now among Materialise’s largest customers. Ford Motor Co., for instance, has deployed “fairly large teams” to understand where and how AM will bring the value Crutchfield just mentioned. In fact, he recently sat alongside Ellen Lee, the leader of one such Ford team, on SME’s Additive Manufacturing Advisory Council.
“I think a lot of folks look at automotive companies as these stodgy, set-in-their-ways manufacturers, but I can tell you from personal experience that some of them—Ford included—have extensive experience within AM,” he said. “They’re pouring resources into proofs of concept. They’re building out workflows, determining the rules of engagement, and laying the foundations for future growth. And along the way, they’re finding all kinds of small wins.”
One area of particular interest to automakers is service parts. Crutchfield explained that, as with the aircraft and defense industries, manufacturers are required by law to assure spares availability for a set number of years. The challenge here is they either A) need to maintain minimum inventory for parts they might never sell or B) assure that the tooling necessary to make these legacy parts is available when requested.
Most in the AM community will immediately recognize that 3D printing is a perfect way out of this quandary, a fact that automakers have also come to realize. The question then becomes how to leverage this capability most effectively. Said Crutchfield, “No manufacturer wants to break into a production line to make a handful of spares, so what better solution than to 3D print them?”
But because the approval process for any vehicle component is quite lengthy, some automakers are now evaluating dual qualification—one for the high-volume, conventionally produced parts and another for 3D-printed spares. This approach eliminates the inventory and tooling concerns mentioned earlier while making it possible to “print on demand,” quite possibly on a localized, point-of-need basis.
“If automakers or any other manufacturing sector can produce spares in an additive manner and still meet form, fit, and function requirements,” Crutchfield said, “it’s definitely a win-win for all concerned.”
Some might wonder, “What’s taking so long? Service bureaus began 3D-printing parts before many of today’s mechanical engineers and product designers were born. Why hasn’t 3D printing become as mainstream as conventional manufacturing technologies?” But that’s not a fair criticism, Crutchfield cautioned, noting that CNC machine tools have been in use for more than 60 years and yet are still seeing significant, ongoing improvements.
Similar analogies exist for plastic-injection molding machines, stamping, and forming presses, as well as metal casting equipment. The latter has enjoyed far greater productivity thanks to AM—remember, one of the first commercial uses for stereolithography in the early ’90s was making 3D-printed patterns used in investment casting. In addition, many sand-casting shops are now using a form of binder jetting to produce molds and cores from digital models. “Compared to traditional manufacturing technologies, AM is barely out of its toddler years,” Crutchfield said.
Whatever the relative maturity, efficient additive manufacturing requires a robust workflow, he reiterated, adding that the lack of which has made 3D printing more cumbersome and therefore slowed its adoption to some extent. Achieving this, however, means that everyone must work together, from the material providers to the equipment manufacturers.
“There aren’t any interoperability standards yet, and all of the 3D printers pretty much march to the beat of their own drum in terms of data formats and communication protocols,” he said. “As such, people must often rely on brute force to get hardware and software to work together.”
A similar statement applies to feedstocks—even though they might have the same chemical characteristics and powder morphology, titanium from one supplier is different from titanium from another supplier, a factor that directly influences 3D-printing processes.
“This is what I mean by AM still being in its infancy, in that there are so many challenges yet to conquer,” Crutchfield concluded. “But with every high-value application or unique engineering challenge solved by additive, it gains new ground. OEMs invest more into research and development, the industry makes additional efforts at standardization, and there’s greater market pressure to reduce operating costs.
“We’ve seen this trend over the past five years or so, and I expect it will only intensify going forward. I like to think of it as a virtuous cycle that will continuously strengthen AM’s place in the manufacturing industry.”
