Arcam

AMAVF hit a 52 week high today
No specific news- AMAFV short term price fluctuations are even more mysterious than is usual in the stock market.

Direct-SE 2016-04-12 14:05 translated

STOCKHOLM (AFX) The market for additive manufacturing, also known as 3D-printing, for metal products is growing by 50 percent annually.

That image gave CEO Magnus René at the industry conference Inside 3D Printing, where he served as the keynote speaker, in New York on Monday.

“It is an adaptation to reality as we see it. It is not a forecast, but rather a compilation of how we perceive the market sentiment,” he said to the news agency Direkt about his views on evolution.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-metal-d.html#jCp

the faculty studying additive metal manufacture at Carnegie Mellon University has gone from 1 to “over 20” faculty in 4 years.
This is a well respected engineering institution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4fVpVulwKM

The technology of EBM is in the very early stage of industrialization. A note for those who have not looked at 3DP (additive manufacturing) . Laser Sintering is done by several companies. Electron beam is only done by Arcam, whose tech is protected by trade secrets and very strong patents.

If it’s 3DP and it’s in titanium ,it is done by EBM .If it is done by EBM, Arcam is doing it.

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Hi Mauser,

I have followed Arcam off and on for years, and love the company and what it does. However I have a hard time investing in it as its earnings remain minuscule in relation to its stock price. I know that there is a lot of hope for the future but I’ve been hearing that for three, or maybe four, years now. If you are invested in it, how do you deal with that? Just wondering.

Saul

http://quotes.wsj.com/SE/XSTO/ARCM/financials

Arcam P/E high but way less than Amazon and Arcam is far more likely to to grow earnings by as factor of 10 times than is Amazon

http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Tearsheets/Financials…

unlike many early stage companies it is making money despite the fact that the technology is in it’s infancy.

But the main I reasons I own Arcam are that

  1. I have read most of the patents . They are very tight. Similar in a way to ISRG in that they cover the basics. In this case any particle beam steered by magnetic field.
  2. I have read some of the research papers. The technology is usually accessible to anyone with some background in physics
    3)The EU has sunk many millions of dollars of free research into EBM .Research that only directly benefits Arcam. Here I have to make an assumption- that those directing research funds , and those doing the research see a big payoff. Other entities like universities , aerospace companies, and Oak Ridge are also doing free to Arcam research.

EBM is in the early stages of industrialization. at this point if you bought an Arcam machine it would take you 6 to 2 months to learn how to get a finished product . IOW as much art as science. This is rapidly changing. It is probably still in a pre early adaptors stage.

Arcam will always be niche player. But the niche is very large. Metal 3DP has nothing to do with plastic 3DP. Unlike plastics all of the present methods for producing complex metal parts are tricky and expensive. But with EBM, complexity is free.

And soon EBM will be able to alter the physical properties of the metal, different from area to area in the finished piece A good example of this done by hand is the old Japanese Samurai sword. The cutting edge is harder than the main part of the sword blade. Being hard means it can hold a sharper edge,but also is far more brittle. The rest of the blade is softer , thus allowing a bit of bending without the whole blade shattering.

I never thought Arcam was a Saul type stock.
Assuming all goes well it will be a long time before the P/E gets cheap. I am already over-weighted but will buy more when the inevitable bear market recession comes along. Because that is the only likely time for ANMAVF to get “cheap”

Just a point re laser 3DP Mostly it is complementary to EBM. Both have pros and cons.

Lasers have some inherent disadvantages- the photon beam is steered mechanically by mirrors.The faster you try to move them the more momentum interferes with you. Like the valves in a ICE responding to camshaft movement
Mirrors can only take limited temperatures before they start to melt. In the case of titanium the melting temperature is too high for mirrors.
Laser smelting is also a good growth field but the industry is dominated by EOS and it is not a public company.

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One more note about patents-

Recent Arcam patents use the words “ENERGY BEAM” rather than electron beam meaning they apply to laser based (photon beam) systems too. These patents do not deal with electromagnetic fields which can’t be used to steer non charged photons.
These seem to me to be less important than the early patents but I have not read them closely

The electrons in an Arcam machine are speedy little critters, traveling at more than 1/3 the speed of light inside the vacuum . So despite their tiny mass they produce significant kinetic energy on impact with the powder bed. That KE is transformed into heat, melting the metal.

I believe that one of the speculations about “energy beam” was the possibility of a single machine including both an electron beam and a laser where the former provided the fast build and the later provided improved surface treatment.

Mauser,

Thanks for the information about ARCAM. I have been following the 3D printing field from a distance (well, I did own DDD at one time, much to my chagrin), and ARCAM is the most intriguing of the bunch.

But, one quibble:

Mirrors can only take limited temperatures before they start to melt. In the case of titanium the melting temperature is too high for mirrors.

The temperature imputed to a material by a laser depends entirely on how much of the light is absorbed by the material. Mirrors, by definition, reflect the photons, and are less affected by heat from the beam. In particular, you can design mirrors with nearly 100% reflectivity for the wavelength of the laser, and that wavelength will in turn be optimized to be maximally absorbed by the target material.

I don’t think melting mirrors is a serious problem, especially since the mirrors can be kept a safe distance from the hot spot created by the beam impacting the source material.

Tiptree, Fool One guide, physicist, no position in ARCAM

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Tiptree, I think the real issue with the mirrors is that they are inherently mechanical and thus limited in speed … at least in the potential for increasing speed over current levels.

Titanium has a high melting point of 3135°F (1725°C). This melting point is approximately 400°F (220°C) above the melting point of steel and approximately 2000°F (1100°C) above that of aluminum.

.Laser sintering for most metals has to be done in controlled atmosphere low nitrogen low oxygen chamber. The chamber is very hot

http://www.totalmateria.com/Article122.htm

laser mirror reflecting material

http://www.eoc-inc.com/co2_laser_optics_mirrors.htm
these seem to have lower melting temperatures than titanium.

http://www.reynardcorp.com/optical-component-markets/lasers…

Of course you can place the mirrors that direct the laser further away from the hot melt pool but the energy decreases as the square of the distance.from the powder bed.
Laser are already slow compared to EBM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRE-PzI6uZA
eos printer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering
diagram laser printer

At this time titanium alloys are the main powder base material used in EBM. While laser based 3DP of titanium is theoretically possible, it does not seem to be used much. With TiAl as far as I can tell , parts made lasers are non competitive to parts made EBM

.Laser sintering for most metals has to be done in controlled atmosphere low nitrogen low oxygen chamber.(to prevent chemical reactions between molten metal and the chamber atmosphere) The chamber is very hot … Unless they are outside the chamber, temps of the mirrors depend on the ambient chamber temperatures as well as the energy absorbed via inefficient light reflection …

An advantage with some metals is the vacuum of the EBM chamber. Less contamination.

I am convinced (for perhaps no better reason than intuition) that the rate of improvement in the considerably more immature EBM field will be faster than the rate of laser technology development. And most EBM research will be paid for by somebody else.

In any case lasers will wind up as the AM choice for some materials and purposes, EBM as the AM choice for other metals and purposes. Since the metal market today is 99% conventional methodology there is plenty of room for both.

At a decent price I would buy some EOS too but it is not for sale. Unlike Arcam and EOS most the laser based metal 3DP companies are not making money ,and I have no strong reason to believe today’s losers will ever make much money.

mauser,
strictly a low grade amateur physicist.

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" mauser, a strictly low grade amateur physicist "

For a low grade physicist you are pretty good mauser. your history of knowledgable posts has been noticable for some time IMO.

Frank,
A low knowledge but interested in the physical world, solar system and universe, observer. : )

possibly few on this forum are interested in additive manufacturing (AM) of metals but one last post on the future.

Which sounds very exciting to me.
Because most of this isn’t pie in the sky stuff, the basic research in many cases has already been done.

http://www.engineering.com/3DPrinting/3DPrintingArticles/Art…

quotes mostly from a CM prof not a stock speculator or wall street analyst.

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It does sound interesting. I hope his reference to Arcan was an spelling error and meant to say ARCAM.
Ant