Products
to help you automate and scale
our Vision
At Tier 1 we believe that automation is key to accelerating the use of industrial-scale AM. Whilst printers get more efficient and the range of materials increase, inefficiencies in the remaining manufacturing processes slow us down and make additive more difficult to realize. How many hours are spent manually correcting STL files, orienting and designing supports, or iterating through the print-measure-CAD correct cycle? How many concept products don’t progress because of the challenges in finishing and inspecting your unique additive products? How often does the success of your manufacturing process depend on which engineer performed which process?
At Tier 1 we are committed to delivering software products that address these challenges and truly deliver on AM’s promise of being able to print any product with exceptional results. We are not there yet but this is our vision of the future.
Contact us if you want to build that future together – we’re looking for partners who share in our vision.
Watch this space for news of product releases.
Services
to give you confidence and speed
Design for Additive
We can support all you additive product development needs, from product design using the latest generative design tools like Ntopology, to organizational DFAM training to help you realize the full design potential of additive
Full process validation
Let us help you create a process validation strategy that produces exceptional yield and is robust to the most rigorous scrutiny
Procurement Support/
Due Dilligence
If you're investing in additive hardware, software or processes, we can provide expert independent support to help you make the best decision
superior Print results
We are specialists in designing process parameter sets that produce products with superior material and surface roughness
Process Design
We can accelerate your journey to achieving a robust and scalable end-to-end process at industry-leading manufacturing costs
Risk Management
As you design or upgrade your additive processes, we can provide independent support to ensure you have identified and are controlling all your process risks
Design for Additive
Design for Additive Manufacturing (DFAM) is the #1 challenge for our customers. Yes, additive can create transformational functionality in your products, but the design needs to be optimized for your specific manufacturing process.
At Tier 1, we collaborate with product development and manufacturing teams to ensure products achieve their full potential, integrate efficiently into the downstream processes, and satisfy your business quality and cost requirements.
We also offer design services using nTopology, one of the latest generative design tools, to help you create exceptional additive products. Generative design allows you to create uniquely additive products with features such as lightweighting, structural optimization, and variable textures, all of which can be incorporated into your design for free when printing on additive platforms.
Procurement Support/
Due Diligence
Choosing the right hardware, software and materials for your process is a big decision. At Tier 1 our independent experts can support your decisions by capturing your user requirement specification (URS) and then mapping them to the performance of your candidate systems. Once you’ve selected your preferred vendors and configurations, we can help build your process validation documentation, starting with a system requirements specification (SRS) that is aligned to your URS.
We can also help if you’re purchasing or investing in an existing additive capability. We provide independent due diligence support so you can fully understand your investment risk and potential.
Superior Print Results
Achieving the right CQAs (critical quality attributes) for your additive product is hard! Your final product is a product of the entire manufacturing process rather than just the additive step, and it often takes considerable skill to achieve a product with the optimum material properties and surface finish.
At Tier 1, we can help you derive a process that gives you material that meets conventional standards and maximizes your process yield.
We specialize in creating advanced processes for metal that will transform your expectations for what you can achieve with the technology.
Validation
Any process that seeks to make functional parts needs a validation strategy and, whilst it can be easy to get a part out of a printer that looks right, proving that it meets specification having passed through your entire manufacturing process is challenging. Get your validation strategy wrong and you risk product quality issues that can damage your brand and business. Additive processes are new and continually evolving, which presents some unique challenges.
- How do you identify all your process critical variables?
- How do you prove that your material meets its specification irrespective of all sources of variation in the process?
- How do you account for additive-specific challenges like material anisotropy and variations in raw materials?
At Tier 1, we have world leaders in creating end-to-end validation strategies that are robust to scrutiny from the most rigorous regulatory authorities. Our smart validations are also designed to be leverageable by multiple products and to minimize processes verification costs.
Process Design
Printing is just one step in the process. Product manufacture starts at material selection and continues through printing, part recovery, cleaning, and often thermal processing. A quality control strategy needs to be designed and implemented to verify process performance at each step. How these supporting process steps are implemented and validated can be key to your process yield and cost.
Contact us if you’d like to leverage our expertise in:
- Supporting digital infrastructure and integration
- Additive build file preparation
- Material selection
- Powder removal, recovery, and reuse
- Surface modification technologies
- Heat treatment methods and cycles
- Quality control inspection techniques
Risk Management
Understanding your process and product risks is essential for designing a robust and scalable process. In Additive, it’s one thing to produce a sample product that meets specification, but what happens when you’re making thousands of parts a month using a team of operators? Do you or your vendors understand what critical process variables may change and how your process will respond?
At Tier 1, we have experts in assessing the end-to-end process design, identifying possible sources of variation, and understanding the controls in place.
Contact us if you want some independent support as you implement new processes, change existing ones or want to challenge your existing logic.