‍Since its advent in the 1990s¹, additive manufacturing (AM) has captivated innovators the world over, promising a future where any design could become reality — regardless of size, geometric complexity, or material. Instead of creativity and design being limited by the necessary constraints of casting, forging, molding, or other more traditional manufacturing methods, AM as a concept offered to provide high performance parts on demand, with fewer infrastructure requirements to boot. There were only a few key challenges in the way, primarily scaling the method for suitable volume throughput. Industry, government, and academia all quickly set about the following decades working to ensure AM could fulfill its promise.

In the following decades, as AM technology continued to progress, manufacturing as a whole was confronted with a new set of challenges — (i) a critical need for improved sustainability and the decarbonization of manufacturing, and (ii) ever more sensitive supply chains contingent on geopolitical instability and imbalance of resource colocation to production^3–5. While it is easy to see these as distinct issues, from a manufacturing perspective, they all stem from the same underlying characteristic — centralized manufacturing.

The modern world is currently reliant on centralized manufacturing models, which are typically based around a hub of co-located manufacturing facilities that are filled with the skilled labor and equipment necessary for massive throughput operating via whatever energy source is available (most often carbon-based). Resources are then dedicated to logistically coordinate which facilities, spread unevenly throughout the world, can get the necessary parts to the customer. If any central hub is rendered inoperable — whether it be due to resource shortages, natural disasters, war, or other geopolitical upheaval — the entire supply chain can suffer, and in many cases, moving resources to the necessary location can become untenable. The issue of both supply chain resiliency and sustainability can then be linked to that one central issue (pun intended). A solution then for the next generation of industry is to turn this concept on its head through distributed manufacturing.

Enter again the powerful potential of AM technology. Production could be distributed globally, spread out among smaller AM manufacturing cells closer to customers and their needs. If one is inoperable for any reason, another node in the network can readily pick up the slack with all operational capability being identical. On top of encouraging a more stable supply chain, the ability to distribute manufacturing would also enable the colocation of product supply to be near necessary resources — both in terms of skilled labor and energy sources. More to the point, collocating AM centers near sustainable energy resources could enable a business-friendly pathway to decarbonize manufacturing while simultaneously improving supply chain resiliency.

Technical Challenges

‍With all the potential that metal AM represents, what technical challenges remain that are blocking such promising development? It ultimately comes down to the need to increase throughput (or volume of production) and part quality — preferably with the improvement of one not sacrificing the other. This results in typically having to balance or tradeoff between the three linked factors of resolution, volume of end part, and part performance⁶. To understand the concept, let’s consider a typical metal AM approach known as “Laser Powder Bed Fusion” (LPBF) as an example.

The stock metal of interest is powderized into micron size particles, a bed of which a set layer thickness is laid out inside the printer. A laser then goes through point-by-point according to the component specification and sinters the metal powder together, fusing them into the 2D slice (layer) for the component. Another layer of powder is then laid out, of which another 2D slice is sintered; layer by layer, the process continues until the finished part is complete. Inherently, LPBF is a point-by-point process. For each 2D layer, a laser must create discrete melt pools along its print path until the layer is complete. The laser size controls the resolution of the print — for a small laser, resolution can be extraordinary (microns or smaller), but requires more points in the process, and therefore more time, for a part of a given size You can print faster, but only if you use a larger laser diameter, thereby losing resolution. Adding more lasers to a system has limitations as well. The addition of more lasers to compensate for speed creates more vapor plumes that must be navigated around during the print, creating an upper practical bound to the number of lasers that can be run in parallel. Thus, the first linkage: Laser- based metal printing has historically had to choose a balance between resolution and speed. In many cases, this has limited the use of LPBF to niche, expensive components, of which low volume is acceptable.

Consider another printing methodology — binder jetting — as an example. In this case, each layer of metal powder is bound together using a liquid adhesive sprayed on the specification area of that 2D slice. At the end, the final component is a volume mixture of both metal and adhesive binder which is then removed in post-processing to sinter the metal particulates together. This process is significantly faster than other methods meaning production throughput could be scaled, but at the cost of part quality. Even properly post-processed binder jetted metal parts will have residual binder impurities within the form, which reduces part performance⁸.

Keeping these issues in mind, the proverbial holy grail in metal AM is to find a way to overcome the tradeoffs of throughput, scale, resolution, and performance which would then open the path for metal AM to truly deliver the future of manufacturing — and enable distributed manufacturing that allows a more sustainable and logistically streamlined way of making products. It was the understanding of these challenges that led Myriad to Seurat Technologies and allowed us to quickly realize the implications of Seurat’s innovations in bringing massively scalable, decentralized, and sustainable metal parts manufacturing into reality.

Technical Breakthrough & Implications

‍Spun out of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Seurat Technologies has made its mission to break down the technical barriers of metal AM and facilitate a way for the approach to become a true successor to traditional manufacturing. Identifying the point-by-point raster-style printing method underlying all exiting laser-based metal AM as the key issue, co-founders James DeMuth (CEO) and Andy Bayramian (CSO) turned to the source of the problem — the laser. They invented a laser manipulation method wherein a single very high-power laser pulse is:

1. Shaped into a homogeneous square field that is then projected forward.
2. A second(blue)laser is then projected and super imposed onto the original laser beam via a mirror. This laser is custom emitted to match the pattern corresponding to that layer’s specifications, which can change layer by layer.
3. The combination of blue and IR light is then filtered so that only those points contain both (blue and IR) pass, ensuring the only the laser points matching the pattern propagate through. The remaining light (in undesired points) is filtered out and dumped.
4. The laser pattern then hits the powder bed and an entire layer is sintered simultaneously.

The final result: an entire 2D area of many, many points can be printed at once, doing for AM what the printing press did for the pen, and decoupling resolution from throughput. Instead of sacrificing resolution for greater throughput, the area of print can be increased or decreased by adjusting laser power accordingly — resolution maintained and throughput increased. Entire layers can be printed with the same micron level resolution. Having demonstrated their approach this year, the technology is almost immediately scalable, and in the next few years is expected to match or exceed current state-of-the-art print volumes and beat all competitors with similar resolution while matching the speed of those printing with less resolution or inferior part quality — a true win/win in either case.

Having already demonstrated their technology and rapidly scaling the method for industry use, Seurat is accelerating AM to deliver on its full potential. Their approach can enable production-level throughput without sacrificing resolution. Performance is maintained as well. Their approach facilitates full melt/full density part performance matching those produced by traditional metal forming methods like investment casting and forging. This unlocks new relevance to sectors like the auto industry which demand high precision and performance in both geometric tolerance and mechanical behavior at high production volumes.

Seurat’s technology and mission embodies Myriad’s vision of the future of distributed manufacturing. Traditional manufacturing processes (forging, casting, etc.) require significant infrastructure both in terms of size and cost, resulting in the need for large square footage facilities. With the modular nature of Seurat’s area printing technology, it is easy to imagine many smaller printing facilities strategically located across the globe. These could be located for logistic convenience, be that for proximity to resources, talent, or the end customer.

Not only would manufacturing be decentralized, but it could contribute to the decarbonization of the planet we all share. This multi-modal manufacturing approach enabled by such a network would also render the industry less sensitive to systemic supply chain disruptions. It is truly amazing what this technology represents and the potential it can unlock.

Market Outlook & Strategic Alignment with Myriad

‍The caliber of Seurat’s technical innovation is easily recognizable as a paradigm shifting breakthrough, and the business case for growth and investment is no different. Metal AM currently represents an over $4 billion-dollar industry (by year 2024) with a 20% CAGR in the out years. However, that is only factoring the AM market. Considering the potential trajectory of the technology, the cost point of their area printing approach could be competitive with investment casting, forging, and even metal injection molding by that time. The investment casting market alone is currently over $130 billion, a market that Seurat will be able to address over time. This represents extraordinary market potential for the company aiming to disrupt a metal forming industry that has remained relatively the same for a hundred or more years, while demonstrating the United States’ leadership in the manufacturing and sustainability markets.

In terms of alignment with Myriad’s own mission and values, Seurat Technologies is an ideal partner. Our mission, particularly underlined in our connected work and advanced manufacturing initiatives, is to invest in business solutions which bridge the gap between digital concept and physical product. Seurat quite literally does just that in a way that has never been seen before: efficient, sustainable, and pragmatic. They enable a digital idea — in the form of almost any complex part design — to be printed and used in our physical world. Not only that, but Seurat’s digitization can facilitate the distributed manufacturing aspects we’ve highlighted in this piece to enable not only product level improvements via performance and productivity, but also deliver global scale change through improved sustainability and supply chain stability. Myriad Venture Partners is proud to invest in Seurat and their mission, and we’re excited to lend our industry experience and tested network to accelerate their technology to market. Together, we can bring to life our mutual vision of improved industry for tomorrow.

References

1. Metal Additive Manufacturing History. AMPOWER METAL AM market report. (2021, March 30). ↵‍
2. Aydin, Ü. 80% weight savings and 5 more advantages why additive manufacturing boosts hydraulic systems. ↵‍
3. Whitlock, A. (2020, May).Transforming Industry: Paths to Industrial Decarbonization in the United States. American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.
4. Thomson Reuters. (2020, November 17). Geopolitical impacts on global supply chains. TR — Business Insight Australia. ↵‍
5. Srai, J.S., Kumar, M.,Graham,G., Phillips, W., Tooze, J., Ford, S.,...& Tiwari, A. (2016). Distributed manufacturing: scope, challenges and opportunities. International Journal of Production Research, 54(23), 6917– 6935.
6. Gao, W., Zhang, Y., Ramanujan, D., Ramani, K., Chen, Y.,Williams, C.B., ... & Zavattieri, P. D. (2015). The status, challenges, and future of additive manufacturing in engineering. Computer-Aided Design, 69, 65–89.
7. Additive Manufacturing solutions & industrial 3D printer by EOS. ↵‍
8. Myers, K., Paterson, A., Iizuka, T.,& Klein, A. (2021).The effect of print speed on surface roughness and density uniformity of parts produced using binder jet 3D printing.
9. How Area Printing Works. Seurat Technologies (2022). ↵