HP 3D PRINTING AND FAST RADIUS HELP BASTIAN SOLUTIONS REACH A NEW LEVEL OF INNOVATION
Customer at a glance
Bastian Solutions is a trusted supply chain integration partner that combines the powers of scalable material handling systems, innovative software, and customer automation engineering for complete, unique solutions. They strive to use these tools to help companies across multiple industry segments become better leaders in their industries.
Fast Radius is the leading provider of additive and on-demand manufacturing solutions—from application discovery, to product design and testing, to production-grade manufacturing and global fulfillment. They bring the future of manufacturing and supply chains to their clients by creating entirely new products uniquely enabled by additive manufacturing and by providing global supply chain solutions leveraging their Virtual Warehouse.
THE CHALLENGE
About 2 years ago, Bastian Solutions was in the early stages of developing a new materials handling system called the Bastian Solutions Shuttle System, an advanced, customizable electrical robot arm and shuttle combo that autonomously picks and moves a range of differently sized and weighted products.
Creating a new disruptive materials handler like the Bastian Solutions Shuttle System, required Bastian to use a disruptive method—additive manufacturing. But without on-site 3D printing capabilities, Bastian Solutions sought out a partner who could help make their vision a reality.
INDUSTRY
Industrial
SECTOR
Machinery and equipment
MATERIAL
HP 3D High Reusability
(HR)1 PA 12 GB
SOLUTION
Fast Radius, with technology partners like HP 3D Printing and Carbon, enabled Bastian to make a truly innovative advanced materials handling robot. Nearly 50% of the build-of-materials (BOM) was made using additive manufacturing in Fast Radius’ Chicago factory.
With Fast Radius and the HP Jet Fusion 4200 3D Printing Solution, Bastian benefitted from:
-
Rapid manufacturing of custom parts. By using 3D printing for critical parts, Bastian Solutions can quickly scale the robot arm for its customers’ requirements, and the customer can receive the additive parts in days instead of weeks or months.
- New product capabilities. The design freedom of HP 3D Printing allows Bastian to create geometries that they could not create using other technologies and also resulted in a more lightweight machine with a multi-faceted gripper.
- Production time and cost savings. With Fast Radius’ manufacturing platform, Bastian Solutions was able to design, produce, and test more than 1,000 prototypes in less than 20 months; cut 2 years off the development cycle; and save $100,000 in production costs.
“HP gave us the opportunity to bring additive to an industrial level, and it’s worked very well,” said Hans Leidenfrost, Lead Design Engineer at Bastian Solutions. “We’re even replacing formerly metal parts with the glass bead material (HP 3D HR PA 12 GB).”
1) HP Jet Fusion 3D Printing Solutions using HP 3D High Reusability PA 12 Glass Beads provide up to 70% powder reusability ratio, producing functional parts batch after batch. For testing, material is aged in real printing conditions and powder is tracked by generations (worst case for reusability). Parts are then made from each generation and tested for mechanical properties and accuracy.
