So quick agenda for the day, we’ll go through an introduction, who Endeavor 3D is, why we use Multi Jet Fusion, what it is, how that process is used, and the full life cycle of production for us.

Who is Endeavor 3D?

So quick introduction, Endeavor 3D is a contract manufacturer based just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. We have a 65,000 square foot facility facility that we have transformed into an additive-focused kind of center of excellence. We are a digital manufacturing partner with HP. We offer all of their services on the polymer side as well as the metal side.

So what is Multi Jet Fusion?

Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) is an end-to-end platform from the printer itself that makes your parts through to the software on the back end. HP has several softwares that integrate into their platform that seamlessly help us through our production process. The part is uploaded digitally to the printer and then moved through to production.

A quick overview of the process itself, simplified in a 4-step process:

You have powder that is deposited onto a print bed and then 2 different agents that are deposited onto that powder.

You have a fusing and a detailing agent. The fusing agent is what actually cures your part and forms that ultimate plastic part. Then energy is delivered. So heat is applied to the build, that part is cured, it’s solidified, and then it goes through a repeat of that process. The new powder is deposited over the top, the bed is dropped down in the z, parts are printed at the top of that, and then you rinse and repeat several thousand times and ultimately your part is pulled or extracted from that powder.

So let’s talk materials.

At Endeavor 3D, we offer kind of a wide range of their materials. We have nylon 12 (PA 12 ), nylon 12 white, PA 11, and TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane). You can see here the build volume is relatively large, for an additive system. It’s about 15 inches by 15 inches by 12 inches in the Z or 381 by 284 by 381 millimeters. If we look at these materials, the nylon 12 (PA 12) and the nylon 12 white are kind of workhorse materials.

Those are your standard nylon plastics. They can go for a wide range of applications from housings to more structural components. They are all biocompatible, UL 94, and relatively strong isotropic parts are produced on that. The reusable nylon 11 (PA 11) is our sustainable material, sourced from our partners at Arkema, and it is, again, biocompatible and reusable.

We also have the thermoplastic TPU for your rubber leg. That’s a Shore A 88, and it gives you the ability to produce rubber-like parts, outside of the rigid nylons that we are producing.

For the full color system, it’s a relatively new material launched, about a year and a half ago from HP. What this does is it opens up the full range of colors on the platform. Historically, on the platform, your parts are darkish gray, which gives you the ability to have darker color parts like black, dark blues, and dark reds. However, with the addition of the nylon 12 white, it opens up that range to neon colors, yellows, pinks, greens, and anything else that you can think of to produce.

Endeavor 3D Services

Available services with us at Endeavor include the full life cycle for production. We offer design and engineering services, reverse engineering, and 3D scanning of your parts. So if you need a CAD file created, we will produce that. We have metal 3D printing and sintering as well and polymer 3D printing as we’ve talked about. We also have post-processing full color dyeing, vapor smoothing, and media removal. Anything that you need for a part surface finish, we can assist you with.

Our quality assurance lab is pretty extensive. It’s something we pride ourselves on at Endeavor: a commitment to quality. With that, we have about 25 pieces of equipment today and we’re expanding that pretty rapidly. So tensile testing, the powder testing on the front end, or any post-quality assurance you need on your part. We also provide fulfillment and packaging on the back end. So if you need support there, either shipping direct, or any other packaging solutions, we can help you provide that.

So let’s talk about why 3D printing. We’re going to talk about 4 aspects here and where we use 3D printing today for our customers. The first is a bridge to tooling. It’s one of our most common where we’re doing low-to-mid volume runs as a customer ramps through development. End of life and spare parts, that’s another large market for us.

So say you’re in production today with an injection molding component or you have a legacy component that you need additional parts for. What we do is we will help qualify that on an additive platform for the end of life of that production program or production part. The next is high-volume production. That’s full scale, from start to finish qualified production on an additive platform. Typically, that comes in the form of DfAM. We will help you redesign your part, get it scaled for the platform, get those cost savers or the kind of economy of scale using additive by adding certain components or redesigning it for the MJF process. And then lastly, which is very common as well, which is just prototyping for the platform.

Product Lifecycle

We’ll look at this curve here and we’ll talk through each step. So prototyping, everyone’s familiar with on an additive platform It’s been used for for 30 years. If you need quick part production. You can run anything through our system and so that’s the beauty of the MJF system being a powder bed technology. Your design constraints aren’t as limited as other platforms. We’re not using a support material.

It’s not a liquid resin process, so you’re not having to remove that or design certain features. You can take your injection mold design, put it into our platform, and produce a prototype in one day.

The next is bridge production, as I mentioned. There are hundreds of examples including the Z clip here from HP. In this example, they needed rapid development on a brand new product to market. So speed was the key. So rather than waiting 6 weeks for a tool they started the process with additive while they were ramping up. During this process, they were getting customer feedback and understanding that process and were able to produce several 100 units very quickly, get to market, get that test feedback, and make design revisions without having to pay for changes on a tool or wait for those parts to be shipped back to them.

There are several applications now for additive where full production has seen life through several platforms. Specifically in automotive, we are starting to see the rise of EVs and lower volume runs. Connectors, interior trim pieces, and any part in a car where you’re running 1,000 parts per day have moved to an additive platform. We see it in aerospace and consumer goods. There are endless applications as we start to qualify materials. They are getting stronger, the materials are getting cheaper, and the printing process is getting faster. It used to be where you could run a couple of 100 parts a week. Now we’re running at rates in the 1,000 per week on certain components.

Then as we talked about end-of-life parts, a great example is a legacy part. We have a partner in Douglasville, Georgia where we’re located, that had legacy parts without CAD data. They brought us that part. It’s a housing part for a light fixture. So we took the physical component, scanned it, and rather than going back and retooling to be able to service their customers for this part that was about 15 years old, we converted that to digital CAD and we ran them on demand as needed for that customer.

So we’re producing 10 to 15 a week just to service their spare parts or their end-of-life inventory.

And then lastly, we’ll talk about jigs, fixtures, and tooling. It’s also pretty common. In any kind of manufacturing aid, additive is a great feature because you can design custom features or custom parts for specific manufacturing processes that are dialed for that system. So if you have a handle or a stop on a line and you need that to be more ergonomic for your user or the worker in your factory, we can design those pieces for each individual. They are more custom, which speeds up the process and ensures the manufacturing line is efficient.