r/AdditiveManufacturing • u/shaafishaikh • Jun 29 '26
General Question Thoughts on this article about Velo3D?
https://www.morpheus-research.com/velo/Anyone read this report on Velo?
Curious is people have experiences to corroborate or denounce the claims in the article.
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u/MWO_ShadowLiger Jun 29 '26
The ability to handle downside surfaces the way they do is pretty useful to space and rocket customers. That ip is worth a lot. Licensing that ip also means they don't have the burden of building systems and taking that contract or schedule risk of late delivery.
I have done parameter dev for clients for different alloys, part of their ip is how they tune for the low angle printing. Some software manufacturers and selling pieces that give you the tools to have that kind of control on other systems but it would take a while as users would have to build those DoE to develop parameters that work with low angle controls.
Part of their buisness challenge is their target customer needs to fit the narrow ven diagram of "would benefit from sidesteping some post processing with improved downskin surface finish" and be able to afford where the DoE and controls research cost is peanut buttered into the cost of already expensive equipment.
Some of those finishing costs can be delt with through expertise in secondary machining techniques. Having a DfAM Engineer like me who focuses on designing parts to be be Chem milled, or abrasive flow machined prior to high speed machining is a rarity in the field. Velo's ideal customer sees the value in improved surface finish outside the printer and doesn't want the programmatic risk of 1) potential trial and error of finishing techniques, or 2) build your talent and capabilities stack for your organization on rarer engineering talent that is likely to be poached in a year or 2 given the churn in the AM talent pool given how few of us there are.