Studio System™

Metal 3D printing reduces lead times and costs - allowing for rapid iteration and refinement of the die design. Furthermore, lower tooling costs and lead times makes low volume custom extrusion dies economically feasible.

Unique chess piece designs can easily be 3D printed without the long lead times and costs associated with tooling. The Studio System’s high resolution print head produces small parts with fine features and surface finish.

This burner tip was originally cast in the 1950s, and the tooling has since been lost for it. When a customer needed a replacement, the quote for new tooling was in the tens of thousands of dollars.

With the Studio System, the company was able to recreate the part with properties similar to the original cast part, with no tooling cost or long lead times for the customer.

Golf clubs, especially putters, are typically cast or machined. With the Studio System, manufacturers can achieve excellent material properties without tooling or expensive CNC machining.

The Studio System allows for customization of parts like putters, so each player can have a design that is best suited to them. And when those designs go into mass production, they can be manufactured via binder jetting.

Due to its complex geometry, these parts would typically be cast followed by extensive secondary machining. With the Studio System, the nozzle can be 3D printed without the lead times and setup costs of casting, enabling one-off and small batch orders.

Their complex vanes make impellers expensive and difficult to manufacture. When a custom impeller is needed metal 3D printing accelerates design optimization and product development by dramatically reducing lead time and cost.

Sheet metal tools are used for a broad range of fabrication operations, including stamping, bending, countersinking and embossing.

3D printing with the Studio System reduces tool fabrication costs, shortens production run lead time, and enables rapid iteration and refinement of the sheet metal designs and associated tooling.

3D printing the mold inserts shortens production run lead time and allows rapid iteration and refinement of zipper designs. Using a high resolution printhead allows for smaller parts with finer features, requiring less post processing.

Generative design and 3D printing allows for the fabrication of innovative designs impossible with casting (the traditional production method for skateboard trucks).

The Studio System can print that previously impossible geometry, resulting in trucks that are more aesthetically pleasing, stronger, and lighter.

After exploring a number of alternative manufacturing methods to produce the parts needed to keep crucial machinery up and running, Master Drilling chose 3D printing. The switch to 3D printing cut their lead time for replacement parts from about three months for off-shore castings, to just three weeks printing on-site, thereby reducing downtime for the earth drilling equipment.

3D printing the hard steel insert to near-net shape eliminates 95% of the required CNC machining and associated tool wear.

Because cooling accounts for 95% of the mold cycle time, the ability to incorporate conformal cooling channels into the mold can reduce mold cycle time and increase throughput.

The complex geometry of end effectors requires extensive CNC machining, resulting in long lead times that occupy valuable CNC capacity. Using metal 3D printing allows for on-demand manufacturing of custom end effectors while lowering part cost and lead time.

This fixture pushes a thread checker into a part on a manufacturing line. As a wear item, it needs to stand up to repeated use, and must be easily produced to keep the manufacturing line up.

The fixture must be regularly replaced as it wears out. Printing the part with the Studio System eliminates CNC lead time and frees up the machine shop for more critical work.

This support is designed to carry a heavy load and withstand punishment. Engineers working on a bot used on a Discovery Channel program BattleBots had less than a month to produce a custom structural element on robotic arm. Using the Studio system, they were able to print a bracket capable of resisting bending and lateral motion while providing the stiffness, strength, weldability and fire resistance required.

These chuck jaws closely match the geometry of the part being machined - making them complex to machine. Printing them using the Studio System eliminates CNC lead time and frees up the machine shop for more critical work.

Small, detailed parts like these end effectors typically require expensive CNC machining and have long lead times. Using the Studio System’s high resolution (250μm) printhead allows manufacturers to print small parts with fine features which would be difficult to machine

Fixture like this require custom geometry for each application, as well as superior wear resistance. The faster these parts are manufactured, the quicker a company can get get manufacturing lines running.

Printing these parts with the Studio System eliminates CNC lead time and frees up the machine shop for more critical work.

This heat exchanger enables a much higher heat transfer rate than a traditionally manufactured part. Featuring thin external fins and a complex, internal helical cooling channel, this exchanger would not be manufacturable as one component via CNC machining.

The Studio System allows for the complex geometry of the heat exchanger to easily be printed as a single component.

This 3D printed atomizer features complex internal channels and oblong shaped holes, which could not be manufactured with traditional methods. With the Studio System, the engineers were able to radically redesign their conventional atomizers for significantly better performance.

Unique jewelry pieces can be 3D printed without the design lock-in, long lead times and costs associated with tooling. The Studio System’s high resolution print head produces small parts with fine features and surface finish.

In some cases, replacement parts are no longer available, either off the shelf or from the OEM. Fabricating custom gears via hobbing and broaching is often prohibitively expensive, but metal 3D printing allows for the fabrication of legacy parts at much lower cost.

This part converges three flow paths into one via internal channels. These channels would be impossible to machine, and instead would need to be drilled as straight holes and plugged.

Printing on the Studio System allows these channels to be designed for their function rather than their manufacturing method. This part can be produced in just a few days with very little hands on work.

Typically CNC machined from aluminum alloy, pistons can be time consuming and difficult to rapidly prototype and test - often taking months or even years to move from design to production.

With the Studio System, various piston designs can be easily prototyped and tested—speeding up product development timelines, reducing time to market, and introducing new opportunities for optimization, including generative design—all while avoiding CNC backlog and lead times.

This part would typically be cast, followed by secondary machining operations - resulting in long lead times and high costs.

By printing on the Studio System, the long lead time associated with casting can be avoided, and the cost to machine from scratch is greatly reduced - allowing the manufacturer to produce the part in-house and enabling cost-effective rapid design iteration and pilot runs.

The guitar tailpiece is typically cast from aluminum, and can be fairly expensive to customize for short manufacturing runs.

Printing in steel allows design freedom and part customization while eliminating tooling costs. Steel tailpieces also exhibit more pleasing resonance and sustain characteristics for some genres and playing styles.

Unique jewelry pieces can be 3D printed without the design lock-in, long lead times and costs associated with tooling. The Studio System’s high resolution print head produces small parts with fine features and surface finish.