Category Archives: reTransmit

cool things I’ve learned from others directly or found online which hopefully relate to the core topics of the blog

3D Printing Q&A with American Standard’s VP of Design

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American Standard 3D printed faucets

Last year American Standard announced the availability of a line of metal 3D printed faucets. Not only was American Standard using cutting edge technology to fabricate a mostly consumer-level product, but they did so with beautiful results. Of all the 3D printed products I’ve come across, none showcased the future potential of additive manufacturing to the degree American Standard did with these offerings.

Leading the effort was Vice President of Design and friend, Jean-Jacques L’Henaff. Fortunately for me, Jean-Jacques and I had been colleagues at Intelligent Product Solutions, so I had an opportunity to go to the source for some questions I had about the development of these faucets.

Below is my Q&A with Jean-Jacques, which I hope is of interest to those of you closely following the rise of 3D printing.

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CSJ: Before we get into the details of the American Standard DXV project, can you briefly share your background and your prior experiences using additive manufacturing – 3D printing – technology?

JJL: I am a trained Industrial Designer with a background that spans from private aircraft interiors to consumer electronics. I have been using 3D printing – SLA and SLS mostly – for twenty years, but only for prototyping purposes.

CSJ: You mentioned in a previous exchange that one of the challenges from a traditional industrial design perspective was to “design something one could not make“. For both the industrial designers and makers out there, could you elaborate on your comment?

JJL: When you design an object that will be produced using 3D printing, you are designing without the conventional constrains of manufacturing: draft angles, deep cavities, consistent wall thicknesses, etc. When we started this project, we tried to push as far as we could to find the limits of this new technology – and we did find some! The constrains inherent to DMLS in particular are real, but, still, the level of freedom offered to the designers has no precedent.

CSJ: In comparison to your team’s typical development methodology, did the industrial design process itself change, and if so, in what way?

JJL: We tried not to imitate the approach we follow when designing a conventional faucet using gravity or die casting. Our third design – Shadowbrook – was the most interesting: we first designed the water, then went back to create the faucet.

CSJ: Aside from the obvious need to finish especially complex geometries, would you say fabricating production parts using an additive manufacturing process generally requires more or less labor than traditionally manufactured product? In other words, if one of your traditionally manufactured faucets were transitioned to a metal additive process, would it inherently require more finishing?

JJL: Not necessarily – it mostly depends on how you design it and the intended final finish. A conventional faucet requires polishing – by hand or robot – then plating, which is a multi-stage process. Our 3D printed faucets require breaking the support structures, grinding their traces out, and sand blasting. We decided to go one step further and have an artisan hand finish each of them by giving them what we call a “butler finish.” It mimics the silverware finish left by decades of having the butler shine them… This part takes much longer than our conventional process! But we are investigating various chemical finishes than would eliminate these steps.

CSJ: Did your team encounter any difficulties ensuring tight tolerance areas (e.g. sealing geometry, screw threads, etc.) met American Standard’s requirements?

JJL: All functional surfaces are machined after the printing and cleaning process. Some areas indeed have threads or create seals, and 3D printing today can not achieve the level of tolerance and surface finish required.

CSJ: Can you provide some technical details regarding:

a. which 3D software(s) was used to generate the final industrial design intent?

Pro-E

b. whether or not a haptic interface was utilized?

No

c. whether or not any additional software was used to manipulate or repair a mesh, and if so, which software?

None

d. whether other kinds of analysis software besides the computational fluid dynamic solver were used (e.g. an FEA application)?

No

e. whether or not textures were incorporated directly into the 3D data or were part of the post-fab process (perhaps specified in a CMF document), or both?

The only textures are applied by hand as the last step of our process, just before assembly. They are left to the discretion of the artisan. This is rather unusual for us, but the price of these products made us look at the finishes in a different light. At this level of luxury, one can expect a bespoke aspect to the product.

f. what 3D printing options and fabrication processes were considered and why the team decided on the tools which were used?

DMLS was a logical choice for this type of products.

CSJ: The press release states Selective Laser Sintering is being used; however, because “SLS” is used interchangeably with DLM and EBM, to clarify, did the team use a sintering machine and then fire the part to remove the binder and infiltrate, or did the team use a laser- or electron-beam melting process to create a completely solid part?

JJL: We used a DMLS process – more specifically an EOS printer – and decided to print directly in a stainless steel alloy called Inconel.

CSJ: How did the team evaluate the output of the CFD application? Were intermediary prototypes fabricated, a CG visualization tool used, or some other method/tool incorporated to aid in the user experience evaluation?

JJL: The team rendered the products during the design process, but the real test came when we prototyped each version. They were all printed in Somos using an SLA printer.

CSJ: In reference to the 32% decrease in water usage, was improved water usage a design goal or a happy accident, and could you explain how this improvement was determined?

JJL: This applies to the Shadowbrook: since we are not using an aerator, the amount of water flowing out of the faucet was really linked to the effect we were trying to achieve. it simply resulted in a lower water consumption.

CSJ: What surprised you during this unique project development effort?

JJL: The main surprise was to discover how early we are still in the development of this technology. Our journey was not an easy one, and we are still working out a lot of details.

CSJ: What disappointed you or didn’t meet your expectations of the technology?

JJL: There are some geometry limitations due to the heat generated during the manufacturing process.

CSJ: If you had to do this again, what if anything would you do differently?

JJL: We had to follow a path of discovery/trial and error – I would not do it in any other way.

CSJ: In general, how has the interior design community responded to these cutting edge products?

JJL: The response has been far beyond our wildest expectations. From a press and social media coverage, but also and most importantly from a commercial point of view. These products are very unique and cutting edge, and the market has been responding very strongly.

CSJ: Lastly, can we expect to see additional designs of this nature from American Standard?

JJL: Indeed!

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My sincerest thanks to Jean-Jacques for taking time out of his schedule to answer my questions and allowing me to share that information with the public.

How Real Is Real?

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Wired is carrying an interesting article on a service that uses Photoshop to composite photos to create an illusion of freedom and happiness for prisoners and their loved ones; in effect, to create a kind of virtual reality from elements of reality. Check this comparison shot out:

prisonvirtuality

Now remember this post from shortly after I joined the Second Life virtual community? Back then I said “who’s to say what’s valid and what isn’t?” Look at the image below of two SL residents meeting virtually in cyberspace and explain to me how it’s arguably any less real than the composite above:

SL reality

I’d say there are a few people who have never been in an online virtual world who might prefer to have a say in what’s valid and wouldn’t put up an argument. This reminds me of the scene from “Blade Runner” where Roy asks Leon: “Did you get your precious photos?”

{Top image source: Friends Beyond the Wall ; Bottom image Copyright © 2005 Erelas Night}

The New Trust

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I just caught a blog entry over on Nussbaum’s blog about AttentionTrust.org which struck a chord with some of the things I’ve had on my mind the past year or so. I’ll just post the comment (with links cleaned up) which I submitted to that blog:

Interesting. I’ll have to take a closer look at this and try to grok what this means. Over the {past} year or so, Reputation Systems (and reputation management) have been increasingly on my mind (example: this blog entry of mine regarding several aspects of it).

Furthermore, to me it’s another sign of convergence. On the one side we have RW-based attempts to manage virtual equity (reputation, “Attention”, whatever); on the other side we have VW-based attempts to bring RW legitimacy to bear on that same equity (example).

I have to thoroughly read what AttentionTrust is about; a first pass of their site isn’t fully registering with me (my synapses aren’t firing properly this morning; perhaps I need some coffee). It seems related to reputation… somehow. Nussbaum boils it down to “devices that will allow people to capture what is being recorded about them and how it is being used” and then managing that somehow. It’s the managing part I’m not getting yet, so I’ll go back to it later when I have more time to give it the attention it deserves (pun intended).

Pictures At 77

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John Wischhusen's swimming lamps

Core77 has posted an online gallery of photos from the current London Design Week. I’m partial to this John Wischhusen articulated lamp. Cool. The only problem is that the descriptive text under the images sucks. Many of the images don’t have text directly related to what you see – whole blocks of images can carry the same generic comment. Boo.

{Image Copyright © 2005 Core77, Inc.}

RW/VW Convergence Maps

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SL3D compared to Google3D

I see Jerry P (aka SNOOPYbrown Zamboni) has an entry up on the SL Future Salon (about bloody time, dude). He’s relaying news of Second Life resident Cadroe Murphy’s latest virtual world-to-real world endeavors.

In a nutshell (and I hope I get this correct – hopefully Cadroe will comment if I don’t), Cadroe has programmed a satellite to “fly” over the virtual landscape of Second Life and, meter by meter, collect height data (B&W images are often used to represent geographic data of this sort; peaks are white and valleys are black). This data is probably collected in an onboard code array (aka satellite’s hard drive), and then emailed out to him in real life when the satellite is finished with a sim (a segment of the landmass; there is one real life server at Linden Lab for every “sim” in SL). With each sim’s height data, he can combine them to reflect the sim layout in SL and then create a full 3D representation of the virtual world in a 3D app – such as 3DStudio Max or Maya or Terragen. And now he’s released his SpinMass Grid Chart application for people to play with and use for their own purposes – including I guess doing something like creating a GoogleMap hack. Neat.

What I’d like to see next from Cadroe is some 3D spatial carving. Data collection might not be all that bad, but the algorithm for combining it all might be tough (“carving” was used in the film “Minority Report” to create the consumer hologram f/x). But he’d have an advantage over Google: while they’re sending out trucks with lasers, he can make a ground-level satellite to record data horizontally at different angles. I’d say he has the advantage. Anyway, cool stuff all around.

{Image Copyright © 2005 Accelerating.org}