When Apple announced the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Series 11, they mentioned that the cases were 3D printed. As are the USB-C ports in the iPhone Air. But they never really explained the detail behind it until now. It turns out that it’s some damn cool engineering. Crucially it also saves energy, material and creates better products. Here’s what stood out to me:
100% recycled aerospace-grade titanium powder
Apple isn’t using virgin metal. They’re using reclaimed titanium from industrial waste streams. For instance scrap from the aerospace industry. That means raw material isn’t being mined. Titanium mining can be energy intensive but also creates waste by products and can lead to environmental damage such as deforestation. The reclaimed material Apple is using is atomised into a fine powder. No need to mine.
A shift away from reductive to additive manufacturing
Usually products like this would be milled from a solid block of metal with machining removing materials to create mechanical features. But Apple’s new process works by adding material layer by layer with a laser printing technique. It leads to a 50% reduction in material usage vs subtractive machining. Meaning Apple can make two watches from the same amount of material that would have previously create just one watch.
Excess powder is recovered through rough and fine depowdering
Material that is surplus to requirement gets shaken off, recaptured and can be reused to make another watch case. It leads to very little waste. So much so that Apple estimates that in the next year alone, they’ll use 400 tones less material.
3D printing improves durability and performance
Apple can create products with far more precision with 3D printing. So much so that they’re able to print micro textures to the inside of cosmetic parts to improve fit, finish and bonding of adhesives. For instance it reduces the gaps where the plastic antenna bands of the Apple Watch meet the metal casing. That further improves water and dust resistance.
It sounds like Apple has been putting in serious R&D time into this project. And hopefully we’ll see this approach extend to other products in time. The watch seems like a sensible starting point. It’s a product that ships in significant volume but at scales that are a more appropriate test bed for such a big shift.
What excited me more though is that this might unlock form factors and product designs that wouldn’t otherwise exist.
You can bet that when the time comes, Apple will be keen to signal how 3D printing has unlocked new designs that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. Kudos to the teams at Apple that made this happen!
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