3DEO takes a layered approach to medical manufacturing

There are many misconceptions about additive manufacturing (AM), even as the technology becomes more widely known. Particularly in its earlier days, AM generated a lot of hype, with people proclaiming it could create anything, it would render other manufacturing technologies obsolete, and other grand statements. Much of that has turned out to be untrue, but it’s easy to see where the excitement came from – industry news headlines were full of the first 3D-printed spinal implants, aircraft components, and other attention-grabbing milestones.

In reality, AM is not a push-button technology capable of churning out part after identical part with little to no effort. It’s actually quite fussy, requiring careful, skilled design, highly specific parameters, and often laborious post-processing. It’s prone to imperfections and inconsistencies, and industrial – particularly metal – AM requires a great deal of knowledge and skill to execute. It also tends to be slower and more expensive than other manufacturing methods, making it less attractive for high-volume production.

Disadvantages such as these present challenges – but challenges present potential, and there will always be inventive minds working to develop creative solutions. In 2016, Matt Petros and Payman Torabi founded 3DEO, a company aimed at addressing some of metal AM’s most common pain points. 3DEO’s patented Intelligent Layering technology combines 3D printing with CNC milling for an automated, highly precise process enabling the kind of speed and repeatability often missing in metal AM. The company not only believes high-volume production is possible with AM, it’s achieving it.

Advancing further into medical manufacturing

Petros stepped aside as the company’s CEO in August 2024 and was replaced by Scott Dennis, co-founder and former CEO of D&K Engineering, a product realization company that became part of Ascential Medical & Life Sciences in 2023. Dennis’ history with these companies involved developing several 3D printing technologies, and he had been following 3DEO’s trajectory as a partner in a venture fund investing in the company.

3DEO’s first customers were in the aerospace sector but were quickly followed by medical clients, and the company is expanding its reach into the medical manufacturing industry. Dennis’ arrival is timely – he received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Oklahoma in mechanical and biomedical engineering, and master’s degree from Stanford University in product design. His work with D&K Engineering was, he says, “90% medical and life science based” by the time Ascential acquired it. He sees a lot of potential for Intelligent Layering in medical manufacturing.

“Medical manufacturing applications have an acute need for repeatable, robust production solutions,” he says. “Because they’re regulated, and because their products go into applications that are highly critical, medical device companies have to take risk management much more seriously than almost any other industry, with the exception perhaps of aerospace. So the fact that 3DEO is designed from the ground up to be an end-to-end production solution caters well to that industry.”

3DEO views itself as a partner to its clients, working closely with them from the earliest stages of development to production at scale. In 2022 the company unveiled its digital end-to-end platform, the Manufacturing Cloud, based on proprietary software managing the entire process from design to finished product. Alongside this introduction, 3DEO announced it would begin incorporating design for additive manufacturing (DfAM), which involves tailoring a product design to optimize it specifically for AM production. This reduces the potential for errors and cuts back on material consumption and part weight, while the Manufacturing Cloud offers traceability and security.

“There’s a common data backbone to every machine and process in the factory, and that connects everything so we’re controlling quality, repeatability, and the things customers care about,” Dennis says. “Particularly in the medical device space, when you have a regulated product, you have to be able to show that control mechanism through the whole factory.”

3DEO specializes in small, complex components, making it well-suited to medical applications such as surgical devices. Dennis envisions the company branching out into additional applications in the future, building upon a strong and growth footprint in applications requiring high performance thermal management. 3DEO recently added copper to its material offerings, joining 17-4PH and 316L stainless steels and opening up new potential for products such as diagnostic equipment and procedural devices incorporating lasers, which require strict temperature control. The company is already working on semiconductor applications requiring thermal control, so expanding those to the medical space is the next step.

Understanding AM’s limitations

Regulation isn’t the only challenge facing medical manufacturing in this era of advanced technology. Metal AM is inherently difficult, and many classically trained mechanical engineers who graduated college before its rise now must learn a new, highly complex technology. Despite how well AM lends itself to medical applications, many medical device manufacturers aren’t fully equipped to implement it. Not only is the process itself tricky, understanding where to apply AM is its own challenge, Dennis says.

“That’s one of the near-term challenges that perhaps doesn’t immediately meet the eye,” he says. “The problem is often just in educating product design teams on when and how to implement [the technology]. Many designers simply avoid additive because they don’t fully understand the implementation nuances, or it’s just new to them.

“I think a lot of medical device original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) struggle to fully unlock a technology that can be really powerful in their applications,” he continues. “This is the main reason we’re also a design partner for our clients. That’s one of the other differences about what we’re doing at 3DEO; it’s not just about producing the parts or subsystems, but we can also serve as an extension of our customers’ engineering team at whatever level they want.”

The hype about AM completely obsoleting conventional manufacturing technologies is just as misleading as the idea that it’s easy to use and can produce absolutely anything. In reality, AM can be an excellent option for many applications, but as Dennis says, knowing how and when to use it – and when not to use it – is critical. There will always be scenarios in which machining or molding are stronger options, as well as scenarios when the technologies work together and complement each other. AM is known for its ability to produce near-net-shape objects that then require machining to achieve optimal surface finish or refine tolerances. 3DEO, despite making large strides in taking AM to the level of high-volume production, doesn’t shy away from the fact that manufacturing is often largely a hybrid meld of various technologies.

“We’re going to be pragmatic and practical, and at the end of the day, our customers don’t care about which technologies are used...they just want their part or the solution to work effectively and reliably.”

Anticipating future breakthroughs

Dennis sees several factors playing into 3DEO’s future, including the continued use of automation and the introduction of additional materials. He also predicts the company will keep expanding into the medical space. In June 2024, 3DEO won the grand prize in the Medical/Dental Category for metal AM components at the PowderMet2024 & AMPM2024 show. The company’s 6mm and 8mm bone and marrow harvesters were developed in partnership with a leading medical device manufacturer and drew attention for achieving complex geometry while meeting stringent medical standards.

Parts requiring complex, unconventional geometries are where AM shines, and that capability can potentially lead to new solutions for customers with difficult medical manufacturing challenges, especially involving thermal management, which 3DEO hopes to address with the addition of copper to its portfolio.

“There are occasions where additive can be a marginal improvement compared to traditional fabrication methods, and there are occasions where it can provide a breakthrough solution,” Dennis says. “We’re primarily focused on applications where that breakthrough performance can be achieved by integrating additive technology.”

3DEO
https://www.3deo.co

About the author: Clare Scott is associate editor for Today’s Medical Developments magazine. She can be reached at CScott@gie.net or 216.393.0314.