Velo3D
Canvas Category Machinery : Additive Manufacturing : 3D Printer
Velo3D empowers companies to manufacture anything. Bringing together an integrated solution of software, hardware, and process-control innovation, Velo3D introduced the first SupportFree capability for 3D metal printing. This enables unlimited design innovation by reducing the need for support structures in metal additive manufacturing. The company’s Sapphire® system is built with a semiconductor mindset on quality assurance, ensuring repeatability and dependability throughout serial manufacturing. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, Velo3D helps companies deliver immediate business impact by making the impossible, possible.
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Bechtel Plant Machinery Inc. Selects Velo3D's Metal Additive Manufacturing Solution To Revolutionize the Supply Chain for the U.S. Navy
Velo3D, Inc. (NYSE: VLD), announced Bechtel Plant Machinery Inc. (BPMI) has selected a fully integrated metal additive manufacturing solution from the company to produce parts for the U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. The Sapphire XC large format printer, calibrated for stainless steel 415, will be operated by ATI (NYSE: ATI) at its new additive manufacturing facility outside Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Earlier this year, BPMI awarded a contract to ATI to support development of highly engineered part solutions for advanced manufacturing methods including metal additive manufacturing. The partners will use the printer to produce parts previously produced through casting, reducing lead times for mission critical parts, and streamlining their supply chain.
AI Optimization: New Opportunities for 3D Printing
AI accomplishes this feat by solving the CFD or FEA equations in a non-traditional way: machine learning examines, and then emulates, the overall physical behavior of a design, not every single math problem that underlies that behavior. This uses far fewer computational resources while achieving an extremely robust evaluation of the design in every applicable environment. Hundreds of thousands of design candidates can be simulated and evaluated in less than a day. Bottom line: Applying AI amplifies the typical 10-20% performance improvements of simulation tools alone—up to 30% and higher. (Of course it follows that real-world testing of finished parts remains an essential task to ensure that all quality and performance metrics are met.)
Velo3D requested PhysicsX to design and simulate a solution. PhysicsX has deep experience in simulation, optimization and designing for tight packages (from considerable work in F1 racing and expertise in data science, machine learning and engineering simulation), plus proprietary simulation-validated tools that can automatically iterate on designs using machine learning/AI-based simulations. The PhysicsX approach involves creating a robust loop between the CFD, generative geometry creation tools and an AI controller to train a geometric deep learning surrogate. The surrogate’s speed, producing high-quality CFD results in under a second, is then exploited with a super-fast geometrical generative method in another machine learning loop, which deeply optimizes the design towards whichever multiple objectives the engineer decides are important. The fidelity of the deep learning tools and robust workflow enables a highly accurate solution for final validation of the results against the validated CFD model.
Accelerating AM with AI-Driven Design
3Din30: How Its Made – the Evolution of Tooling
Velo3D proves distributed manufacturing on a global scale
While conventional manufacturing technology has delivered in-country products on a global basis for decades – it has often involved dedicated, high-cost production assets and personnel that lack flexibility. Supply chain issues with procurement, as well as production lag times inherent to technologies like casting, can further add to costs and delayed delivery of conventionally manufactured products.
“We now have the confidence, whether it’s two weeks from now or two years from now, to print that same print file at any of these suppliers in the future,” said Zach Walton, director of technical business development at Velo3D. “With the Digital Product Definition, spelled out in API20S as a collection of data required to reproduce the additively manufactured component, unchanged from the 2021 project, this demonstrated the ability to not have to requalify or redevelop – which is a big win for the O&G as well as other industries trying to deploy distributed manufacturing.” These results are an important benchmark in demonstrating that distributed manufacturing using advanced metal laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) technology is achievable in the real world.
Velo3D Gives Us a Backstage Tour of its New Facilities in Germany
End to End 3D Printing with Velo3D CEO Benny Buller
3Din30: What's Fueling Launcher's Race to Space?
The additive manufacturing industry could learn a lot from from computer chip manufacturers. Read all about how in this @DesignNews article from Velo3D Founder and CEO @BennyBuller3D. https://t.co/k8xf2vXQdK#AdditiveManufacturing #ChipManufacturing #DFAM
— Velo3D (@VELO3DMetal) March 11, 2022
Additive Manufacturing Poised to Make a Value Impact on Oil & Gas Supply Chain
An end-to-end metal AM system allows OEMs to quickly manufacture mission-critical parts for O&G operators without extensive redesigns. Such a fully integrated solution consists of print preparation software that applies a generalized set of recipes based on the design’s native CAD file, a printer that executes the print file, and quality assurance software that ensures the health of the tool and monitors the build, layer-by-layer.
Additionally, the American Petroleum Institute has now published API20S, the first-ever O&G-industry sanctioned specification for metal AM. This spells out processes, testing, documentation and traceability, among other requirements, for manufacturers of metal AM components being used in O&G facilities of all types.
How startups can hit it big by thinking small
I estimated what the size of the market might be for seemingly impossible parts and calculated that the potential reward was worth the risk. Someone needed to undertake this quest. And even though it embarasses me now to think about how naive some of my original assumptions were, I decided that person should be me. So I launched Velo3D, aimed at using 3D printing to make the parts that innovative companies need to create the future.
We realized that we didn’t have to solve the entire problem. Instead, we could succeed with a much smaller focus by identifying the most valuable, specific problems to solve for customers and tackling those.
Suddenly our entire mindset changed. We were no longer looking for a solution to make any shape possible. We were looking for a way to create one specific type of turbopump. It sounds less exciting, I know. But it was the best thing we could have done.
Velo3D Raises $28 Million in Series D Funding Round, Paving the Way for Product Expansion
Digital manufacturing innovator Velo3D announced today that it has raised $28 million in a Series D funding round. New investors Piva and TNSC joined the round, along with existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Playground, and Khosla Ventures. This brings Velo3D’s total funding to $138 million. Velo3D plans to use the new capital to expand its product portfolio to include more machine options, compatible alloys, and enhanced software and hardware capabilities. The company anticipates that the injection of fresh capital will help them reach sustainable profitability by mid-2022.