Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Next gen 3D metal printing

fabric8labs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–127 of 127 posts

Re: Next gen 3D metal printing

#121

Post by john_minsk »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #119
john_minsk wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very detailed description. Would it be a bad idea for your customers to take your design document and test it in virtual environment and once tests are passed - you would go to production right away?

Not sure on the question. I'm primarily a software guy so I'd prefer to not interact with customers at all so it could be a commission type set up. It's unlikely that I could make as much money from hardware as I do from software so while being a hardware designer sounds like fun it will likely just be in support of my software work. I do ML and water cool my GPUs to get an extra 30% perf out of them but getting wate…

On a second read, I would like to rewrite your workflow as follows:

I would prefer to be able to:

[x] buy a GPU, -> [v] Download SimReady USD of your GPU from nVidia website.

[v] whip up some CAD

[v] import USD of nVidia card into CAD

[v] measure the geometry using CAD

[v] Design cooling element

-> Export CAD to USD

-> Import CAD as SimReady Asset into nVidia Omniverse with tests you need.

-> Once simulation is OK send final CAD to production (or better from GPU simulation into simulation of production on one of the factories or 3d printers)

In this scenario:

- SimReady USD of a GPU must already exist inside nVidia. They could make it available for simulation inside Omniverse. (or build open high level model yourself)

- Thermal simulation app is something that nVidia needs for their business now and in the future. They could share current software with public and let people like you download it, change it and run simulations with your changes (or build open high level model yourself)

I'm wondering how difficult it would be to simulate important effects on your models. Do you think the above process has potential to improve your process or did I miss some important detail of your work?

Re: Next gen 3D metal printing

#122

Post by cjbgkagh »

john_minsk wrote: post #120
cjbgkagh wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure on the question. I'm primarily a software guy so I'd prefer to not interact with customers at all so it could be a commission type set up. It's unlikely that I could make as much money from hardware as I do from software so while being a hardware designer sounds like fun it will likely just be in support of my software work. I do ML and water cool my GPUs to get an extra 30% perf out of them but getting wate…

If I understand correctly: you want to create your own design of a water cooling for your GPU (let's say RTX4090) - test it to make sure it will work in the real world - and once test is successful send your CAD to factory and they can produce and assemble all components? Are you doing it for the whole cooling unit from scratch or just 1 part? (like a fan or some holder)? What is the most common reason you would orde…

The way I see it is that I make the CAD, send the CAD to the part supplier (Fabric8) who automatically check to make sure it’s printable, they then make the parts and post it to me. I would do the assembly myself if needed but would probably try to design things to be minimal / no assembly. The hope would be that this process would be cost effective at scale so if I need more I could just press a button.

I run a on-prem mini cluster which is water cooled but the customers need edge compute which should stay air cooled. I would probably try to make a blower style vapor chamber for nvidia gpus so I can ram air through without dealing with nvidia driver fuckery. NVidia segments the market based on heat sinks, binning and drivers so the enterprises segment has to pay far more. The 4090 blowers made by OEMs are gimped, rare, and expensive and I think intentionally so.

Not only is consumer grade cheaper but it’s way less hassle to get - the Enterprise sales pipeline is a total pain as the costs keep changing and they keep trying to push older overpriced stuff onto me like I wouldn’t notice. And thats even if they think you’re big enough to talk to. Much easier to pull consumer stuff from the market on an as needed basis.

My software supports graceful degradation so I don’t need ‘enterprise’ reliability. I don’t need high speed interconnects either. I need TFLOPS on dense matmuls, run in parallel batches. Consumer GPUs are fine for this, replace the heatsinks with a blower optimized and put in some powerful fans and take off. I could pack more into a single computer and to have a lower amortized cost and a higher density.

If the vapor chamber blower heatsink is too expensive then I might as well just buy more GPU computers and let them run slower.

Re: Next gen 3D metal printing

#123

Post by cjbgkagh »

john_minsk wrote: post #121
cjbgkagh wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure on the question. I'm primarily a software guy so I'd prefer to not interact with customers at all so it could be a commission type set up. It's unlikely that I could make as much money from hardware as I do from software so while being a hardware designer sounds like fun it will likely just be in support of my software work. I do ML and water cool my GPUs to get an extra 30% perf out of them but getting wate…

On a second read, I would like to rewrite your workflow as follows: I would prefer to be able to: [x] buy a GPU, -> [v] Download SimReady USD of your GPU from nVidia website. [v] whip up some CAD [v] import USD of nVidia card into CAD [v] measure the geometry using CAD [v] Design cooling element -> Export CAD to USD -> Import CAD as SimReady Asset into nVidia Omniverse with tests you need. -> Once simulation is OK se…

Oh, with regards to the actual design, I DIY my own computational engineering software, based on implicit modeling which works well for theses sorts of complex geometries. I don’t know about the simulation, I guess I theory i could export the model into a sim. I would base the broad strokes of the design known working reference implementations. I think there is a ton of potential in custom vapor chamber stuff so maybe I’ll play with that but I think it’ll easily become overkill. I think perhaps have the vapor chamber printed and thermal glue skived heatsinks on top. Unlike normal GPU designs I can tolerate much more noise for air pressure.

For me, good enough is good enough I’m not going to be super optimized as the cost tradeoffs for such optimizations don’t work out as favorable at my scale.

Re: Next gen 3D metal printing

#124

Post by cjbgkagh »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #62
dpain wrote: post #55

CTO of Fabric8 here - happy to answer any questions you may have about the technology or company. As you can tell we've got a process that's quite different than other metal AM techniques with some very unique benefits that we're excited to share!

It’s really cool and I wish I had one of these machines. On the assumption that I couldn’t afford such a machine myself for DIY, it would be really cool to have a send-cut-send like service. It seems like the relatively gentle process and I assume predictable results with minimal post processing would lend itself to an high degree of automation. Perhaps a scale out manufacturing set up where the speed of an individua…

Found this video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zM1ux9BU4_c

It appears that Fabric8 do intend on targeting all the way down to low margin mass manufacturing with a high number of low cost machines which they run in house on a manufacturing service basis. They’re targeting 1000+ batches but I assume in time they’ll be able to do the very small batch stuff as well. Perhaps with a strategic partner that’ll deal with the small annoying customers like me. I’m super exited by this technology and am happy that they’re targeting areas that I think will be most impactful for the world of manufacturing, as well as long term profitable for them, and hopefully eventually very accessible for DIYers like myself.

Re: Next gen 3D metal printing

#125

Post by justinclift »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #124
cjbgkagh wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really cool and I wish I had one of these machines. On the assumption that I couldn’t afford such a machine myself for DIY, it would be really cool to have a send-cut-send like service. It seems like the relatively gentle process and I assume predictable results with minimal post processing would lend itself to an high degree of automation. Perhaps a scale out manufacturing set up where the speed of an individua…

Found this video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zM1ux9BU4_c It appears that Fabric8 do intend on targeting all the way down to low margin mass manufacturing with a high number of low cost machines which they run in house on a manufacturing service basis. They’re targeting 1000+ batches but I assume in time they’ll be able to do the very small batch stuff as well. Perhaps with a strategic partner that’ll deal with the…

Good find! @IWinfield (also in this HN thread) is in the video too. :)

Re: Next gen 3D metal printing

#126

Post by cjbgkagh »

justinclift wrote: post #125
cjbgkagh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found this video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zM1ux9BU4_c It appears that Fabric8 do intend on targeting all the way down to low margin mass manufacturing with a high number of low cost machines which they run in house on a manufacturing service basis. They’re targeting 1000+ batches but I assume in time they’ll be able to do the very small batch stuff as well. Perhaps with a strategic partner that’ll deal with the…

Good find! @IWinfield (also in this HN thread) is in the video too. :)

I think most regular people are in the dark on how much the world is set to change by such process improvements as these. Cheap complexity is like internet level world changing, maybe more so. You really can download a car.

Re: Next gen 3D metal printing

#127

Post by kragen »

naasking wrote: post #100
heisenbit wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the graph the process is producing way less CO2 than other additive processes. Being low temperature this intuitively seems a credible claim. Maybe you are concerned about high currents which is true but since voltage is low that does not multiply to much.

It's because that chart is measuring end-to-end energy use. Other metal printing approaches require a lot of energy to make the metal powders, so when you include that the other approaches are a lot worse.

it's an interesting point; you do of course have to add those electrons to the metal atoms in the first place when you're smelting it from ore, unless you're working from a rare native metal deposit, and plausibly you could leach metal ions out of ore and feed them into your 3-d printer. i suspect that the tests they've done so far, however, are using reagent-grade metal salts from sigma-aldrich or similar with much more embodied energy than metallurgical-grade copper or whatever
Post reply on HN