Shape-shifting manufacturing machines

Fyous has outlined in a new whitepaper how this new category of manufacturing addresses the tooling bottlenecks that hinder both traditional injection moulding and industrial-scale 3D printing. This new approach resolves the long-standing challenges of affordable mass customisation, facilitating truly agile, high-speed manufacturing.

Featuring tens of thousands of precisely controlled pins that reconfigure to create temporary tools in minutes, polymorphic machines can function as injection moulds, forming tools and work-holding fixtures. By eliminating the need for fixed tooling, which often takes months to deliver and accounts for up to 98% of part costs at low to medium production volumes, these machines support rapid prototyping and more economical production of bespoke products.

Joshua Shires, CEO of Fyous, states: “Polymorphic manufacturing is a fundamental change in production capability that delivers the agility of additive manufacturing with the quality, scalability and throughput associated with high-volume processes. This foundational shift in manufacturing technology represents the dawn of a new manufacturing category, making it possible to produce high volumes of unique, one-of-a-kind items as quickly and profitably as traditional mass-produced batch processes.”

Ben Morgan, Interim CEO of the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), comments: “Following our first experience with polymorphic manufacturing for our workholding project, the far-reaching potential of this technology became clear. It offers a practical new route to fast, flexible manufacturing, and we’re excited to explore how it can be applied across a wide range of industries”

According to Fyous Polymorphic manufacturing is poised to revolutionise various sectors, with several manufacturers already exploring its potential:

• Dental aligner manufacturers could completely eliminate the single-use 3D-printed moulds associated with every aligner they produce. This could save millions of kilograms of plastic waste and as much as £1 billion in production costs annually.
• Innovative footwear manufacturers can use Fyous’s technology to produce custom shoe lasts. Polymorphic processes eliminate the milling stage required to produce lasts, which often wastes more than half of the material, and reduce plastic waste to less than 7.8%.
• In aerospace, the rapid tooling reconfiguration offered by this technology supports frequent design changes and significant cost reductions in low-volume production runs. Aerospace manufacturers can create and enhance aircraft parts without waiting weeks and spending tens of thousands of pounds on new tooling they might only use once.
• In healthcare, polymorphic technology enables the rapid, cost-effective production of patient-specific medical devices while contributing to sustainability gains.

To download Fyous’s whitepaper, Polymorphic Manufacturing: The Critical Factor for Mass Customisation, visit:

www.fyous.com/technology