MarkForged was back at the recent SOLIDWORKS World 2016, two years after it caused a minor sensation when the company first printed 3D carbon fiber parts. It won the TenLinks Best of Show award then, and we were recently invited to tour its new facilities in Cambridge, Mass., home of Harvard, MIT and the latest CAD sensation, Onshape.
MarkForged Founder and CEO, Greg Mark, whose name appears on all of the company’s printers (he won’t say how many), greets us in the company’s large conference room. He remembers that it was only two years ago when he started MarkForged in his garage. Literally. It was less than ten years after getting a master’s degree from MIT. An initial round of funding ($1.1 million) let the company move out of the garage. And unlike most tech startups, the company is not losing money.
“We make money on every printer we sell,” said Mark. And sales are good. “Four hundred percent growth year over year for the last two years,” he added.
“We were always a technology company,” said Mark. But he admitted that, as CEO, he has to turn his attention to the markets, and marketing.
The 3D printing market is worth $4 billion, he stated. That may seem like a lot, but the CNC machining market is 20 times the size. CNC machining operations are something like $75 billion.
Clearly, Mark does not see his company trapped within the bubble of 3D printing. His machines may look and work like 3D printers, but what comes out of them is different. Printing composite parts that are as strong as metal yet lightweight are their claim to fame. Industrial-strength material 3D printers cannot be had for anywhere near the base price of a MarkForged machine ($5,500). Not when they can make parts the strength of metal.
Making His Mark
What made the original Mark One printer so interesting to engineers is that it could print parts with continuous strands of carbon fiber. “Parts have the strength of aluminum,” Mark has been fond of saying. Sure enough, a part made in a Mark One machine is super stiff—surprising to anyone who handles the typically soft plastics that emerge from most 3D printing machines.Mark won’t say how exactly how his machine is able to lay continuous carbon fiber, citing secret patent-pending technology. No one else can print in continuous fiber, Mark claims.
Continuous fiber parts can involve much labor and make quite a mess. 3D printers have had a go of trying to insert carbon fiber, but the best they had been able to do is chop up the fibers and force the resulting mix through the print heads. They are still prone to clogging, said Mark. He went on to explain that MarkForged is still the only one that is able to make parts with long continuous fiber. Also, short fibers add little strength.
Mark Two
MarkForged’s latest model, the Mark Two, starts at $5,499. A key improvement is that it can lay carbon fiber in volumes that are 15 times smaller than the Mark One. This not only allows it to make smaller parts stronger, but bigger parts can be stiffer near edges and corners. It is also 40 percent faster.
Higher priced models of the MarkForged machines add the ability to print with more materials, such as Kevlar and a fiberglass suitable for high temperatures. The Professional version goes for $8,799 and the top-of-the-line Enterprise version goes for $13,499. A full list of features can be found on the company’s price list.
IoT
All MarkForged printers are connected devices. They are able to detect potential problems before they happen, which is what happened with a recent sensor problem. When a few machines started showing up faulty, mapping them revealed that they were all in humid or tropical climates. MarkForged was able to use this data to replace the part that was creating the problem. All models offer cloud storage, and top two models can be used in local storage mode, where all your CAD models are kept on your computer.
Not Just Hardware
The MarkForged machines are unique for their two print heads. One is fairly normal for 3D printing, extruding nylon. The other is unique to MarkForged machines. It spins out material far stronger, such as carbon fiber, Kevlar or fiberglass.
But with each machine also comes MarkForged’s homegrown software, Eiger, which is just as vital to the company’s success as its hardware, if not more so. It runs on a browser, meaning you can use it on any computer or mobile device, and it controls how the fibers are laid. If you have studied composites, you know that the direction of the fiber is what creates the strength in a part. The manufacturing process can vary with the size and complexity of the part. It might be a totally manual process with a bike frame, or it could be highly automated, using millions of set-ups with robotic arms and multi-axes machines that lay fiber strands one at time, as seen below in the making of a rail gantry. The result can be a part with hundreds of layers. Some engineering thought has to go into each and every layer. Until now.Eiger boldly assumes the role of the engineer and makes a valiant attempt at supposing the number and location of the layers as well as the fiber direction.
“The software does a fairly good job at it,” Mark claims. “For 80 percent of parts, Eiger’s attempt is good enough.”
Eiger works by considering the moment of inertia of the cross section of the part. Since areas furthest off the neutral axis contribute most to stiffness in bending, that is where Eiger positions the fiber layers.
If you know your way around composites, the software lets you finesse the carbon fiber directions for each layer in the whole part, or in sections. While this is not a true and robust composite analysis software, the automation of what could be a tedious and laborious process is going to be quite tempting, especially to design engineers not versed in specialized simulation programs.
It can all add up to a big-time savings. A carbon fiber printer eliminates elaborate setups, trained production technicians, most of the clean-up and the queue.
Like a Microwave—with a Twist
With Mark Two, it’s a same-day strong part, said Mark.
3D printers are like your microwave, not your restaurant. You know what you want, push a few buttons and the machine signals you when your meal is done. You don’t have to search for a restaurant, get dressed up and drive to it, wait for a table, read the menu, order your food, wait some more and then finally get what you ordered. Okay, you have to buy a microwave, but it’ll pay for itself after a few meals. Having a MarkForged printer is like having a microwave that can not only have your food ready without all the fuss, but can also add a favorite ingredient.