In this series, we’ve looked at how we came to be deluded and how binder jet technology could grow. We’ve explored the players in the industry and where binder jet is likely to win. But now we need to point out a problem. For many companies, binder jet is now an interesting option. If it sees significant investment, then it can make cost-effective parts in the 100,000s or more.

Meanwhile, without these significant investments, we’ll continue to gradually grow through libraries of parts being deployed better at many firms. As many move into manufacturing applications, people are targeting working with very large firms. The problem with that is that they have the wherewithal to invest in making binder jet cheap, but will, in my opinion, not share the fruits of their labor in a very advantageous way.

What if the Moonshot Shoots You?

3D apple model with internal lattice to reduce weight.

Chinese firms are rolling out binder jet parts in electronics, pointing to a potential supremacy emerging there. Companies such as Zoltrix and BJ Tech seem to be doing well with HP equipment, while local suppliers such as  EASYMFG, Guangdong Fenghua Zhuoli Technology, more succinctly known as FHLZ (which always makes me laugh for some reason — ‘Good Afternoon, Fhulz, this is Joris speaking’), and 3DPTEK seemingly are doing OK. We also mustn’t forget that Roland DG has a ceramics binder jet joint venture in China, Cerawei. It appears that many parts are being manufactured in China, and the industry’s center of gravity is shifting there.

The hope in electronics is for a manufacturing moonshot, that companies like Apple or Samsung will use binder jet to make a wearable, watch case, or other component. This could happen, after all, Apple can do pretty much anything it wants. But there would have to be significant process investment to achieve the numbers that these kinds of firms are used to. Some large firms have also reportedly been burned through engagements with Desktop Metal, so that could delay adoption. If we look at components currently being made with binder jet in the electronics market, there are often very specific geometric concerns that make these parts worthwhile. Volumes are also typically much lower than those of devices we know and love, which are made in mass production. So niche devices are more likely.

A part would have to not be makable in MIM (metal injection molding) for it to be viable in binder jet. However, a lot of the parts that one can binder jet, one can MIM, and usually it is low volume that drives the use of binder jet over MIM. And electronics hit the MIM volumes quite quickly. But imagine a case with intricate channels that could enhance antenna reception or make it easier to add more antennas to the device. Something like that could make sense. Lightening usually doesn’t make sense, as it would be easier to use a lighter metal.

Additionally, many devices require heft to feel expensive. However, if we consider a health tracker ring or something similar, a specific geometry optimized for adding specific components could make sense. The Apple Newton is generally considered to be Apple’s worst flop, but it still sold 200,000 devices. A volume usually suited more to MIM or powder metallurgy than binder jet. The Apple Watch still sells in the order of 20 million or so units. And at that volume, they’d need a darn good reason to try binder jet.

Functional Integration

Now, if we could add a horn antenna to an Apple case and dramatically improve reception or eliminate an antenna or two, that would be enough for them to really push this forward. If a structure could become more thin-walled or accommodate a bigger battery, it may make sense too, but they’d probably try to push harder on the battery science/cost per unit over getting involved with a new process. It’s not helpful to think of Apple as a company. Think of it as a country. If we compare it to countries, Apple’s revenue is around the GDP of Romania, the Czech Republic, and Egypt, while its net income is around the GDP of Panama, Tanzania, or Uruguay. Apple’s market cap is one fiftieth of the total market cap of all the listed companies in the world. Apple also has around $48 billion in cash or equivalent reserves. As I’ve mentioned before, this company can do pretty much anything it wants, including having its space program. It’s not helpful to think of it as a company or ask if it could do something. Instead, ask, Why would Apple do something with 3D printing? Only because it has to. At that scale, there are only forced moves, only moves you must make, and each of them forces industries to adapt and bend to your will. You can do a jumping jack, but you probably couldn’t do a billion jumping jacks because even if you did one a second, it would take you 31 years to do them. At Apple’s scale, moving the needle financially and maintaining reliability at their required volume requires an entirely different approach than in most production and planning scenarios. 99.9% may seem very accurate (especially for us), but if you made 99.9% of all iPhones correctly this year, you’d have a pile of 230,000 broken iPhones. If you mess up a 20-gram component for iPhone, you’d have 4,600 kilos of scrap to deal with.

Apple bought LiquidMetal at one point to gain access to a casting process for amorphous metals that made hard, wear-resistant, elastic metals possible at a reasonable cost. It may now use the process for a possible folding iPhone hinge. That is the kind of thing that moves Apple. So could they use binder jet? Sure. Could they industrialize it? Sure. They could also give everyone on the planet $4, bring back Zeppelins, and make Jurassic Park real. But, honestly, if they were going to use binder jet, do you think they’ll buy a lot of machines from us? I don’t think so, they’ll just make their own.

When it was making Unibody MacBooks in 2008, Apple bought tens of thousands of milling machines from the likes of Fanuc, Brother, and DMG. It then placed them at Catcher, Jabil, and others. The machines were accompanied by lasers to cut some holes, other mills to drill or cut specific ports, CNC machines to cut away other parts, and polishing equipment to make an automated line that made a case out of extruded aluminum in three hours. A sea of CNC, with machines of all sizes and complexities spread out for football fields, working in concert.

On the lower cost side, VMCs and Drill Tap Machining Centers are pretty standard and not too complex. They’re well understood, yet Apple still has several suppliers. They also had several services using the machines. Apple’s unibody production move led to a worldwide shortage in CNC equipment, and the company became the world’s largest operator, indirectly, of CNC equipment. Now, let’s be honest, do you see this happening in binder jet? The world ran out of CNC machines. Now, imagine if you were Apple, how would you do this? You’re clearly not betting the farm on one supplier, one device, or one company. So, can you find two or three firms out there in binder jet on whose shoulders you can distribute this burden? Yeah, no.

I only see five options that I think are likely. You go to several suppliers that you already trust and you tell them to make the machine you need. Alternatively, you go to Jabil and Hon Hai, tell them you want the parts in spec in X quantities, and see if they can sort it out. You can find people who buy binder jet firms and customize them to your liking. Or you develop the key technology in-house, “Liquid Metal binder jetting,” and build a machine for it. Then give the plans to two companies and have them make thousands of them. If you license the relevant technology and patents from someone, and have others build a specific line around it. Alternatively, you could create an open-source machine design and give it to many manufacturers, buying up the total production of those who succeed in making it well. Whichever scenario, in this case, they simply won’t buy 1000 of your binder jet machines. Because if they do, they’ll be locked into your print heads, software, firmware, binder material, and tool pathing forever. If you go bankrupt, they may not be able to make the part in the same way again. The hinge on the new iPhone may break. With the three or more spindle drill vendors, if one goes bankrupt, they can find another or order more from the other two. There’s no lock-in. Apple is never going to lock itself in; there’s just too much riding on the firm’s success. It’s a country, not a company. Currently, with additive manufacturing, they’ll always lock themselves into that machine’s way of building parts. So instead, it’s going to create a completely controlled capacity along with its current partners. Or maybe Anzu is like a personal shopper of some sort. But, generally, we’d find out soon because we’d expect someone close to the relevant parties to be shopping for some Nano Dimension and/or Desktop Metal Assets. Electronics, therefore, could be a rather double-edged sword for our market. Any company big enough to industrialize it on its own, for that application, will internalize those benefits and not feed the general additive ecosystem.

Luxury Libraries

Within the current paradigm, and without excessive new investment in the technology, combining part libraries with centralized hubs for printing in the country is a natural market for binder jet. This, rather than a “Big Bang” approach, could lead to sustainable growth. Here you’d be rolling out key processes together with industrial firms and improving them gradually.

The end goal is to collectively reach a point where parts libraries can be printed reliably, inexpensively, and globally. This would play to the inherent advantages of binder jet while preventing any single company from dominating the technology. The key lies in producing many different single parts well and at low cost. Low individual CAPEX (compared to LPBF) makes it feasible to run a site that serves an entire country with a parts library. At the same time, labor costs per part are low, and batch-based processes can be optimized. For Guinness, one center in Nigeria could supply a large share of technical parts for a lot of its machines at sites across the region. The same setup could be replicated worldwide, printing the same parts in the same way for all countries where the company operates. Yes, qualifying the parts initially will be a pain, and there is a lot of brewing equipment from various vendors. But Guinness is aiming for standardization and will have similar parts across its operations.

The number of SKUs is finite. With 1,000 parts, you could cover the vast majority of their critical replacement needs — those that work with your process and are profitable for them. The number of small, essential parts across its process is finite, and once you have dialed in all of them, production will be relatively repeatable. At the same time, thousands of parts could be made worldwide if there were an urgent need for a lot of parts at once. Libraries of low-cost small technical parts, therefore, could be the way forward for binder jet.

Luxury goods, medical, electronics, and casting seem like they could be growth areas as well. But, for now, we can only cater to so much in the way of volume and repeatability. Significant investment would increase volumes and may dramatically lower the cost per part. However, companies large enough to fully industrialize binder jet for millions of parts are unlikely to share the fruits of their labor. So this is unlikely to be a way to sustain our industry. The key way forward towards further industrialization, with increased yields and lower parts, seems to be through diligent research or the path towards MRO libraries. Working with militaries, energy companies, and global industrial firms could increase capabilities without inviting Foxconn into the chicken coop. These investments wouldn’t make sense in a peaceful, well-functioning globalized world. But, a world fraught with war, uncertainty, tariffs, disruptions, strikes, unrest, and lack of cooperation, in such a world, having local parts libraries is a capital idea.

The worse the world gets, the more sense it will make to produce spare, small, and inexpensive technical parts both centrally and locally. The more tariffs there are, the more this approach will make sense, and the growth in machine-on-machine warfare also grows this technology. The more division and strife, the more binder jet, specifically makes sense.