However, the linked article notably did cover what type of titanium was used (X-ray fluorescence (XRF) testing showed T6Al4V), the ferrochrome modification they're doing to improve the titanium for printing, and also some micrometer scale imagery of the finished parts talking about the crop-circle, chain-link fence surface finish result of the printing process.
Press release itself has some cool stuff. Another site linked [2] by them said it's Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB, or LPBF) additive manufacturing.
Notably though, it's a six laser head variety that appears from the movie available to print 60 parts at a time in an array. However, the cleaning video then shows what looks like 4 rows of 30 being rotated for cleaning. Possibly prints 120 since there were gaps between rows in the first printing video. Takes about 20 hours for a run with 900 layers.
With 38 million watches being shipped every year, that means they've got something like 1500-2000 laser sintering machines (60 per run) or 750-1000 (120 per run) running pretty much non-stop to put out that many watches. Suspicion is its maybe something like this printer from Hanbang United 3D Tech [2] since they're talking 50 micron particles and this goes 20μm-120μm.
The entire facility is apparently also solar / wind powered, although it's not clear if they're just doing financial cleverness to buy only on the wind / solar market, or if they've built their own solar / wind farm to support the facility.
Since a lot of this is still apparently happening in Shenzhen, suspicion is that they have probably worked out a deal with Shenzhen Energy Group to buy solar / wind credit energy specifically.
Not a primary customer from the watch perspective necessarily, yet the technology being moved to having large scale production of high quality parts made out of somewhat difficult and recycled materials for something other than 1-off prototyping is cool. Lots of neat engineering that can be done when you can manufacture 20um (or even 50um) features in parts over large bulk scales at rates of 38 million a year.
araes•2mo ago
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/11/mapping-the-future-wi...
However, the linked article notably did cover what type of titanium was used (X-ray fluorescence (XRF) testing showed T6Al4V), the ferrochrome modification they're doing to improve the titanium for printing, and also some micrometer scale imagery of the finished parts talking about the crop-circle, chain-link fence surface finish result of the printing process.
Press release itself has some cool stuff. Another site linked [2] by them said it's Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB, or LPBF) additive manufacturing.
Notably though, it's a six laser head variety that appears from the movie available to print 60 parts at a time in an array. However, the cleaning video then shows what looks like 4 rows of 30 being rotated for cleaning. Possibly prints 120 since there were gaps between rows in the first printing video. Takes about 20 hours for a run with 900 layers.
[2] https://www.metal-am.com/apple-confirms-laser-based-additive...
With 38 million watches being shipped every year, that means they've got something like 1500-2000 laser sintering machines (60 per run) or 750-1000 (120 per run) running pretty much non-stop to put out that many watches. Suspicion is its maybe something like this printer from Hanbang United 3D Tech [2] since they're talking 50 micron particles and this goes 20μm-120μm.
[3] HBD 400, 6 laser LPBF Printer, https://en.hb3dp.com/product/49.html
The entire facility is apparently also solar / wind powered, although it's not clear if they're just doing financial cleverness to buy only on the wind / solar market, or if they've built their own solar / wind farm to support the facility.
Since a lot of this is still apparently happening in Shenzhen, suspicion is that they have probably worked out a deal with Shenzhen Energy Group to buy solar / wind credit energy specifically.
Not a primary customer from the watch perspective necessarily, yet the technology being moved to having large scale production of high quality parts made out of somewhat difficult and recycled materials for something other than 1-off prototyping is cool. Lots of neat engineering that can be done when you can manufacture 20um (or even 50um) features in parts over large bulk scales at rates of 38 million a year.