As a new year dawns upon us with its new COVID variants and lockdowns, it can be a little difficult to look toward the bright side of things. On a positive note, though, Carbon has plans to democratize its multi-zone lattice software starting early 2022. The 3D printing technology company is launching the next generation of its Design Engine software and making licenses available for purchase—i.e., even to designers who aren’t Carbon customers. Users will now be able to create complex lattice 3D models for production on most common 3D printers. The solution will be available as a cloud service with three tiers of access: Standard, Pro and Enterprise.
Generic computer-aided design (CAD) tools have been limited in their design of complex geometries like lattices. Some products can have as many as 140,000 struts, which cannot feasibly be hand-manipulated during the design phase. In early 2021, Carbon released a basic form of the Design Engine for the automation of lattice generation. The software enables users to populate any geometry within a specific lattice in a conformal way (where the structure is oriented in accordance with the form and direction of the part’s surface).
“With traditional lattice technologies, the problem of conformality is actually a big issue,” said Phil DeSimone, Co-founder and Chief Product and Business Development Officer at Carbon. “It’s common to end up with cropped structures or broken struts. Design Engine allows for mapping to the edge surface flawlessly.”
“The launch of Design Engine Pro, which is the next phase of this product, allows people to have precise control over the lattices they want, in specific areas of performance response—allowing for multi-zonal parts while creating smooth transitions between those zones automatically,” asserted DeSimone.
“Each pattern leads to a different mechanical response, even though the actual printing material is the same,” added Hardik Kabaria, Carbon’s Director of Software Engineering. “We also provide guidance to engineers; for example, using Voronoi will give you a foam-like mechanical response, Tetrahedral is good for cushioning, and so on.”
The following video demonstrates how Design Engine integrates different lattice types, cell sizes and strut diameters for tunable performance without tedious manual editing:
Carbon Design Engine has already been employed by global brands for the design of products such as bike saddles and helmets. Latticed parts produced by the software demonstrate characteristics including improved lightweighting, heat dissipation, cushioning and dampening.
Specialized Bicycles is one company that harbored aspirations to upgrade their Romin bike saddle. Uniform softness was being found to cause instability and reduced rider control. After working with Carbon, Specialized ended up with a saddle that distributed pressure to increase comfort while giving the rider better control and energy return.
“The Specialized saddle has seven different compression zones throughout the product,” said DeSimone. “To achieve that traditionally, they’d have to compression mold seven different types of foam together in order to get seven different responses. On a structure that’s less than an inch thick, compression molding seven different types of foams together is very, very difficult.”
While Carbon’s technology has mainly experienced traction in the consumer goods industry, it is expanding to other applications.
“We see usage of lattice structures in medical device with metal printing,” revealed Kabaria. “The idea is to use the structures with any material—whether it’s polymer, elastomer or metal.”
“The major market is actually foam replacement,” disclosed DeSimone. “The polyurethane foam market is a $60 billion global market. Foam is a World War II technology. It’s very limiting from a design perspective in its ability to get multi-zonal responses. There are tremendous applications in aerospace and automotive as well, for seating and impact zones for crash mitigation. Finally, this tool has an opportunity to play a big role in metal printing. One of the best parts about advanced metal printing is complicated structures and the ability to do conformal latticing in shapes. Whether it be for medical implants or aerospace components for lightweighting, it will have a lot of opportunity in that world.”
The Design Engine Standard, which retails at $99 per month per user, creates only single-zone latticed parts. Design Engine Pro is the one to purchase for the multi-zonal lattices—although it comes with a heftier price tag of $799 per month per user. Design Engine Enterprise is essentially Design Engine Pro for team access, with a price point that will vary depending on the size of the team.
To learn more about Carbon Design Engine, visit the website.