Chapter 417 Revolution in Metal Processing Methods, the Next Research and Development Focus
Chapter 417 Revolution in metal processing methods, the next research and development focus
According to the current form of heat source, metal 3D printing can be divided into laser (single-mode) SLM, laser (multi-mode) LENS, electron beam (powder) EBM, electron beam (filament) EBFF and arc WAAM.
Xinghai Group uses self-developed laser technology, currently mainly adopts SLM and LENS technology, and the materials are all in powder form.
Judging from the current equipment model, parts of 1000mm*800mm*600mm can be manufactured. If you want to increase the size of the parts, it is not difficult to increase the length of the guide rail. However, the accuracy will be affected to a certain extent.
For a long time, the development of global metal 3D printing does not seem to have achieved the expected revolutionary development. Take Velo3D, a representative company of metal 3D additives in the world, as an example.
There are three main factors.
First, the structure of the material is poor, and it has not reached the level of forgings.
Perhaps some properties of the components have reached the level of forgings with the same composition, but the material structure is still not up to the mark.
At present, Xinghai Group has solved this key problem.
Second, manufacturing efficiency issues.
Generally speaking, the manufacturing efficiency of SLM technology is 5-20 cubic centimeters per hour. If it is LENS (poor material organization), it can reach 10-80 cubic centimeters, or even 300 cubic centimeters.
Taking the manufacture of steel as an example, the density of steel is 7.85 grams per cubic centimeter.
In other words, the hourly manufacturing efficiency of metal 3D additives, SLM technology is about 40-160 grams, while LENS is 80-2400 grams, continuous manufacturing 24 hours a day, up to more than 50 kilograms.
In the case of titanium and aluminum alloys, the weight per unit of production is lower due to the lower density.
The higher the manufacturing efficiency, the correspondingly the lower the forming accuracy.
Therefore, this technology is only suitable for the manufacture of structural parts with very high complexity and small batches.
For traditional mechanical manufacturing (such as turning, milling, planing, grinding and drilling), the manufacturing cost of parts increases exponentially with the increase in complexity, and is related to the batch size of manufacturing. When the batch size is less than 3000 pieces, the cost is very high.
However, the complexity of parts has little impact on the cost of additive manufacturing. The additive manufacturing process is almost not affected by the complexity of parts, and its cost is mainly determined by the time required to manufacture the parts.
Therefore, additive manufacturing has a significant competitive advantage for single-piece small batch production and parts with high geometric complexity.
Today, Xinghai Group has made great progress in SLM and LENS technology, and the efficiency of a single gun is 3 times to 5 times faster than that of the top equipment of the same industry.
The reasons for this are mainly due to the advantages of faster emptying of the equipment, scanning speed, multi-channel powder feeding, multiple laser beams, and faster melting efficiency.
Moreover, Xinghai Group's equipment can be equipped with multiple guns for simultaneous operation, and can be equipped with up to 3 spray guns.
Adding more guns means adding more axes and occupying space. This is not the most important thing, but the algorithm problem of synchronous operation needs to be solved.
Therefore, the use of 3-gun equipment can be 5-15 times faster than the top equipment of the same industry.
If you calculate the processing price, the difference is very large.
Before 2022, in the absence of specially designed parts, additive manufacturing production costs will be very high, and industrial additive manufacturing systems are also expensive and some production speeds are very slow.
The total cost of additive manufacturing systems and equipment capable of producing metal parts currently ranges from about $500,000 to over $1 million.
If calculated on the basis of 80% of the annual operating time, the metal 3D printing system operates about 7,000 hours per year.
For high-tech equipment, a two-year return on investment (ROI) is a reasonable average for cost calculations, which means that, depending on the value of the equipment, the hourly cost of operating the equipment (also known as the depreciation cost of the equipment) is It ranges from $37 to $90 an hour.
The cost of electricity, energy consumption and inert gas argon is not very high, about 10 yuan per hour, which is extremely low compared to the depreciation cost of the equipment.
If a stainless steel 304 structural part is processed, the weight is 1 kg, and the powder material cost is 500 yuan.
According to the international metal 3D additive equipment, if the operating cost of the equipment is 400 yuan per hour.
The highest precision is required, the slowest processing time is about 25 hours, and the cost is = 25*400+500+25*10=10750 yuan!
The required precision is average, the processing time is about 5 hours, and the cost is = 5*400+500+5*10=2550 yuan.
For the equipment of Xinghai Group, if the price of the equipment is the same as that of the raw materials, the processing time may only take 5 hours, or even half an hour at the fastest, the cost is 800-3050 yuan, and the precision is higher.
But no matter how cheap it is, the cost is still higher than traditional manufacturing.
Third, surface roughness and subsequent processing issues.
After all, 3D additive equipment is a way of surfacing materials, and the surface roughness must be worse than that of precision machining.
The general surface roughness is Ra5-50!
Generally speaking, the roughness of the hole wall drilled by the radial drilling machine is about Ra12.5, and the texture can be felt by touching it by hand.
The better ones can be processed to Ra6.3, which is almost the same as rough milling and rough turning.
If it is Ra25-50, it is very rough like the flame cutting surface.
If follow-up processing is also used, it is meaningless to use 3D additive equipment.
However, if Xinghai Group's equipment adopts LENS, it can reach Ra6.3 when the production efficiency is 200-1000 cubic centimeters per hour. If the requirements are not high, there is no need for further processing.
If SLM is used, the surface roughness Ra can reach 0.8 when the manufacturing efficiency per hour is 50-100 cubic centimeters!
The situation of semi-finish milling and semi-rough turning is gone, and in most cases, no further processing is required.
Based on the above three advantages, Xinghai Group's metal 3D additive technology can be said to be black technology, which is much higher than the world's top level, and can be widely used.
Some urgently needed small-batch products can be produced using metal 3D additive technology.
All that is needed is 3D map data.
Of course, this 3D software must have 3D slice function.
The so-called slicing, this is because the metal 3D additive production process is superimposed layer by layer.
Xinghai Group's AD software has newly added functions, which can support 3D models to print and shape, and has all the functions of additive manufacturing slicing software.
Moreover, in the lightweight design filling module, lattice hollow patterns such as grid, inner hexagon, cube, zigzag, cross, and spiral icosahedron are added, and the number of elements of the selected lattice can be displayed in real time according to the settings , such as angle, node, volume, porosity, etc., the lattice pattern and parameters can be adjusted independently, no additional design is required, and the design is faster.
That is to say, if someone else steals Xinghai Group's metal 3D equipment, if the AD software does not add Xinghai Group's 3D slicing function system, it will be very troublesome to use.
Software and equipment are matched to each other.
It can be said that the manufacturing capacity of Xinghai Group has risen to a big level and produced revolutionary changes.
In the future, as long as it is made of metal materials, no matter how complicated the design is, as long as it is within the size and manufacturing range of the equipment, it can be manufactured.
Since June last year, we have first developed special steel materials for core components such as bearings and screw rods, and then transferred to the research and development of metal 3D additive equipment after servo motors, numerical control systems, etc.
More than a year, really fast, also because of Xinghai Group's strong research and development capabilities and manufacturing capabilities.
Every time there is a new research and development project that needs to process a certain part, it must be produced first. As long as there are drawings and raw materials are ready, it can usually be processed within two or three days, or even within one or two hours. The efficiency is very fast. .
Excluding R&D costs, the manufacturing cost of Xinghai Group's metal 3D additive equipment is not high, and it is estimated that two to three hundred thousand units will do.
The raw material powder is also produced and processed by ourselves. If it is stainless steel powder, it does not need five or six hundred yuan per kilogram, and 150 yuan per kilogram is enough.
In other words, the actual cost of processing one kilogram of stainless steel parts is only two to three hundred yuan.
If it can be manufactured in large quantities, the cost will be reduced, and after the research and development costs are evenly distributed to each device, the overall cost will not be very high.
Other manufacturers cost 2,500-10,000 yuan to process one kilogram of stainless steel, and the actual processing price will double to more than 5,000 yuan. This price is not affordable for ordinary companies.
Expensive processing prices and slow processing efficiency also hinder the development of metal 3D additive technology.
Of course, even if Xinghai Group's metal 3D additive equipment is superior, it cannot replace the traditional machining industry. It is only valuable when processing products with complex structures.
On July 4th, Mu Yang came to the metal 3D additive laboratory after finishing processing the documents at the beginning of the month.
In front of a metal 3D additive equipment, in the glass partition, three laser guns are moving rapidly without interference, and a few golden laser lines are sprayed out from the gun head.
If you are familiar with metal 3D additive equipment, you will find that Xinghai Group's equipment has no sparks in the processing process.
Mu Yang walked in to observe, and several employees next to the equipment greeted him after seeing him.
"Chairman, hello!"
"Well, what is processed inside?"
An employee replied respectfully: "Li Gang said that the baby carriages made on the market are not very good. They must be too heavy or too light and not strong enough, so we designed a baby carriage with a high-strength titanium alloy for the frame and wheels. Manufacture, the strength is enough, and then customize some materials to make an electric stroller that can hold two children, and give it to the chairman.”
"Oh, I'm interested, thank you." Mu Yang nodded and smiled, "The strollers on the market are indeed not very good."
"Hey, I'm afraid you don't like the chairman, and the manufacturing cost is not low."
"It's okay, you can also get more useful products for aviation. Take the drawings from the motor project department to optimize, and use 3D printing for some structures to see how much weight can be reduced. We also manufacture this equipment to reduce the weight of the structure, and we can only keep trying Only by making different products will you find problems.” Muyang does not prevent employees from messing around with these things, as long as it is meaningful, it is fine to get the job done.
Mu Yang observed for a while, the project manager saw him, came over to report the situation to him, and asked him some technical questions.
"How is the processing of C919 going?" Mu Yang asked, he hadn't paid attention to C919 for a while.
"Parts with a size of no more than 1 meter can be processed this month. If the size is too large, we are currently assembling a piece of equipment with a processing range of 5 meters long, 4 meters wide and 3 meters high. It is estimated that it will be fine to debug at the end of the month. , If you want to process the remaining parts, it is estimated that it will be the end of August."
The project manager brought Mu Yang to a larger piece of equipment, where several employees were assembling and debugging.
"Chairman, we are responsible for the task of C919. How much is the quotation for titanium alloy processing?" The R&D project manager needs to know the quotation situation, know whether the things they have developed are worth money, and more importantly, know the cost plus cost and know the details. Optimize, reduce cost and increase efficiency.
"The first one doesn't need money, just make a contribution to the country, and we also hope that the C919 can be mass-produced;
If C919 is mass-produced in the future, even if we want to contribute to the country, we still need to make money. The processing price of titanium alloy is 3,000 yuan per kilogram, aluminum alloy is 2,000 yuan, and austenitic stainless steel is 1,000 yuan. The quotation department will do a detailed calculation, and you will also count the data and processing costs here. "
Mu Yang just made a rough calculation, the processing of aluminum alloy and titanium alloy is more difficult, and the density is too small, it is not worthwhile to charge by weight.
The market price of titanium alloy metal 3D additive processing, the higher the precision, the more expensive it is, but it should not be too expensive.
Moreover, there are no substitutes for metal 3D additives. It is too expensive and no customers are willing to OEM, preferring to use traditional processing methods.
If it cannot be processed, then change the structural design.
Therefore, Mu Yang does not intend to follow the market price, but directly according to the situation of his own company, as long as he can make money.
Only when it is "cheap", customers are willing to abandon traditional processing methods and switch to metal 3D additive manufacturing for efficiency.
For example, according to the C919, the total weight of the empty machine is about 42.1 tons, and the weight of the metal structure accounts for 25%-30%, of which aluminum alloy and titanium alloy are estimated to account for 15%-20%, and the weight of aluminum alloy and titanium alloy that must be manufactured by metal additives There are about 3-5 tons.
According to Xinghai Group's quotation for metal 3D additive processing to Shanghai Aircraft Company, the cost of metal 3D additive processing for this aircraft will need to be 7.5 million to 12.5 million yuan.
The quotation of C919 is 90 million US dollars, which is equivalent to more than 600 million. Compared with the selling price, nearly 10 million is not too much, but it is not too little. The main reason is that the production efficiency is fast.
Only three or five pieces of equipment are needed. If there is no fault in the production, the manufacturing task can be completed within one month, and after optimizing the design, the weight can be reduced by more than 10%.
If traditional manufacturing methods are used, it may not be possible to get it done within half a year.
Using the metal 3D additive manufacturing method can greatly shorten the production cycle, and the processing fee of tens of millions of yuan is not a problem at all.
As long as the Xinghai Group is willing to lower the processing price, the market size will be very large. As long as the production capacity is sufficient, it can easily win an order of 10 billion dollars a year just by doing contract processing.
That's right, more than 10 billion US dollars!
According to Mu Yang's quotation to Shangfei Company, it is equivalent to the processing volume of 40,000 tons of metal materials!
Only 500-1000 metal additive 3D equipment and thousands of employees are needed.
Of course, this is just Mu Yang's ideal estimate, or in other words, he underestimated the market, anyway, there is a lot to gain.
If he does this, most of the companies in the world engaged in metal 3D additive equipment will go bankrupt.
Sell equipment?
In the early stage, it was impossible. If the price is too expensive, no customers are willing to buy it, and the customers who buy it must be colleagues who bought it and disassembled it for research.
Each piece of equipment can produce an output value of 10 million U.S. dollars, and Mu Yang is not happy to sell it cheaply. Moreover, when others have this type of equipment, their processing capabilities have undergone a qualitative improvement. This type of equipment is just like a lithography machine. , it is best to monopolize it yourself.
Thinking of this, Mu Yang went back to the office and asked the strategy department to investigate further.
At the same time, the company has successfully developed metal 3D additive equipment, and can turn to the next research and development focus: top CNC machine tools!
Industrial mother machine, it's time to do it.
Moreover, with the successful development of servo motors and encoders, it is time to research industrial robots.
This chapter is a bit hard-core. If you find any data errors, please bring them up, and the old farmer will correct them immediately.
There is a factory inspection work today, there are many things, and the update is delayed