Arcam AB fka AMAVF

[Tom Joad]

Noise, certification of parts, Avio orders, GKN, and certification.

There's way too much noise on Yahoo discussion boards and they don't allow links. Links are our footnotes, our references, in wwwland. Yes, jumping to conclusions isn't appreciated, and especially, making conclusions without reading carefully. Ok, now to questions.

Does anyone know a link to a list of certified parts?

I'm not sure what you mean by the Avio orders. Do you have a link for the Avio report?

Back to EBM AM.

Thanks to Charlie Colton for the link dated 23 February, 2016. See bottom of page 5 (of 35).

GKN report

"Entering into a strategic partnership with Arcam AB to develop and industrialize one of the most promising new additive manufacturing (AM) processes to meet the needs of the
expanding future aerospace market. Production orders were received for AM parts flying on production aircraft." -GKN

That's a promising statement, certainly better than saying that they are now in the process of testing several AM methods to choose the best method. Moreover, Arcam is the only AM company mentioned in the report.

I still believe the moat is the microstructure, the speed over traditional methods, the economics (25% savings over traditional methods cited by I forgot who for now), and strength superior to strength in material obtained from traditional methods. That sounds like everything but we have to ask, in comparison to what. I just said traditional methods except for the microstructure. There's the real moat so far.

I have not read of evidence of the Widmanstätten pattern in microstructure (like or actual is hard to tell from the reports) being produced by any AM method except Arcam's EBM. I don't think I would be too far off base to say that it's akin to making a 3d solid, say a castle wall, from bricks using a herringbone pattern in each layer, and adjacent layers offset. I'll take that any day over layers of brick laid in the common way when faced with approaching cannon balls.

Finally, certification. Lives are at stake so I believe it's helpful to look at aerospace certification as similar to drug trials. Lots of experiments are required to prove that a part is worthy of being included in an airworthy structure. Although that takes a lot of time and money, once a part is approved, a competitive moat has been created.