“We’re talking about a new enabling technology being applied to an industry that’s been around since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution,” explains Michael Fuller, CEO atConflux, a company using additive manufacturing to disrupt the $16.6 billion heat exchanger market.
According to Fuller, heat exchangers have been “on a divergent innovation curve for some time.” In the past fifteen years, microtube-based technology, “basically a hypodermic needle multiplied out by many tens of thousands” with very thin walls and assembled into large arrays to construct “very powerful heat transfer devices.” But the microtube method does have limitations, specifically the necessity for straight lines and the difficulty of automating the assembly process – resulting in high costs. In aerospace and motorsport, where cost sensitivity can be lower, “they are the benchmark.”
当一阵阵“f1绑定风格ary conditions for charge air cooler” against micro tube technology, Conflux’s AM-backed solution held its ground; in fact, each tech “hit the maximum heat transfer that’s possible.” The results? “About 100% of effectiveness, which means the outlet of the hot air is about the same temperature of the inlet of the coolant,” a better result would be “a physical impossibility.” While effectiveness was optimal for both the Conflux AM and the microtube tech, the former required “30% less restriction to the flow or pressure drop on both fluid domains.” Furthermore, Conflux’s heat exchanger was 30% lighter when no coolant was in the device, 40% lighter when filled, and achieved a 15% reduction in volume. These impressive stats also come with “reasonable intel to believe that we’re definitely now at a cost comparable position.”
从本质上讲，热量需要进入系统。“您有三只凳子。其中一个被传热，另一个是压降，第三个是体重。”富勒说。令人失望的是，但预计“ AM不允许我们打破物理规则”。任何给定的传热量都需要已知的表面积。表面积越大，压降越大，“这给流动提供了更多的限制。”AM允许“三维表面几何形状，并试图提取每个平方单位面积的传热”。
And with such gains, possibly it’s reasonable to agree with Fuller’s proclamation, “we’re absolutely in the business of energy efficiency.”
The road to additive manufacturing
富勒（Fuller）在赛车运动中具有坚实的背景，包括一级方程式赛车，世界拉力赛锦标赛和勒芒（Le Mans） - “这是超级神奇的。”他曾与福特世界拉力集团（Ford World Rally）团队，宝马，CYTEC合作，并在梅赛德斯F1（Mercedes F1）结束了他的职业生涯阶段。
微波，青霉素和玉米片 - 一些最革命性的科学或技术突破来自偶然的事故。就富勒而言，事故远非象征意义。一条骨折的腿和脚踝使他无法旅行，“我被困了十个星期，然后设计了一个特定的热交换器。”在高级赛车运动中工作提供了早期的添加剂制造业和“在我的职业生涯中解决大量传热问题”。雷电竞充值有了一个想法的细菌，他“深入研究了如何创业”。
灯泡的时刻是“围绕着的基本机会”。热交换器的性能是“很大程度上取决于几何形状”。虽然增材制造雷电竞充值确实使您增加了设计自由，但仍然存在局限性，但是这些是“较新的局限性..所以有新的机会”。Fuller创造的设计带来了挑战，如何构建以及如何建模 - 正如首席执行官所说的那样：“找出我们是否可以构建一些这些结构，以及我所拥有的一些设计是非常关键的。在3D中对它们进行建模是另一件事也没有真正完成。”
Grand designs are one thing, but what about bringing them to market? A business model is critical.
“We’ve actually done so far we’ve done everything we said we would, just not when we said we would,” says Fuller dryly. Conflux has a three-phase plan, first, “prove out the technology.” To support the costs of hiring a team to do such product development, Conflux launched with a service business model – straightforward enough.
就像第一阶段正在进行中,出现了demic – putting a stop to the business travel required to generate customers from North America, Europe, and Asia. “We weren’t able to get face to face with customers, which made it very difficult to continue that service business model. As it turns out, people buy from people.”
Faced with travel restrictions, Conflux pivoted or instead made “an accelerated run towards phase two of the business, which is more configurable products.” This took Conflux to aSeries A funding round，于2021年10月宣布。结果是一系列产品系列在Formnext 2021期间进行了启动 - 整个2022年的推出更广泛。
How did AM Ventures get involved?
In 2016,AM Ventures在早期阶段就寻求该公司，“当时，我们还不够成熟，无法连续鸭子来筹集种子资本。”十二个月后，在引导公司并采用足够的“基本技术”来证明潜力之后，Conflux于2017年7月与AM Ventures结束了一轮播种。
对于Fuller，必须在房间里拥有“耐心的智能资金”。“我们需要投资者了解比我们更好的挑战。”AM Ventures不仅提供这笔聪明的钱，而且还可以在随后的资金回合中以其他风险投资公司可能与之抗争的方式在董事会级别交流。
“降低能耗和提高效率将是对抗气候变化的关键，” AM Ventures高级合伙人Philip Schultheiss表示支持Conflux。“迈克尔和他的团队设计了下一代的热交换器，利用加法制造来应对这项具有挑战性的任务。雷电竞充值他们关于传热的独特知识，并与他们的伟大团队精神结合使用，使我们相信Conflux将是我们投资组合的绝佳补充。”
客户倾向于有两个“成分”，这是对添加剂制造和传热问题的好奇心。雷电竞充值As customer conversations have progressed from R&D to procurement, the focus of the discussion has shifted, for higher volume orders “They don’t mind the standard shape, just having the inlets and the outlets where they want them as long as the performance is there and the price is right.”
这些客户来自全球，通常属于六个行业黄斑之一 - 航空航天（包括太空），国防，汽车（一般，高端和赛车），工业，微电动和能源。鉴于某些客户的身材，任何对各个部门都有兴趣的人都会熟悉这些名称。
The industrialization of additive manufacturing
Conflux uses laser powder bed fusion to 3D print metal. “The other technologies aren’t actually suitable for the sort of heat exchangers that we create,” he says.
A considerable amount of R&D has gone into making the Conflux designs work, “You can’t build with a standard machine. It’s not plug-and-play,” explains Fuller, “We develop parameters for every design that we create.” Fuller says his team of scientists and engineers means, “our ability to solve the proper technical problems is second to none.”
但是确实仍然存在一个严重的挑战 - 累加制造系统的当前价格主导了任何成本的讨论。雷电竞充值Conflux通过技术专长获得了吞吐量的增长，但Fuller认为机器价格是“阻止[AM]生产的工业化的主要因素”。Market forces may yet solve this challenge, “Chinese machine manufacturers will be coming in with much lower price points and if they can get their quality right, which I’m sure they will over time, then this will box the noses of the Germans and the Brits into producing machines cheaper and selling machines cheaper,” forecasts Fuller. And what is Fuller’s take on the seemingly perennial topic of industrialization? Higher productivity and lower systems costs are critical if industrialization is to occur.
What’s next?
What’s next for Conflux? Fullers says, “We’ve gone from application development, commercial laboratory type business, where we do a lot of services and design and prototyping and in low volume series production to increasing our production capacity. We’ll get a new production-oriented platform in the EOS M300.” Audits for AS 9100 certification are approaching, adding to the current ISO 9001 certification. Plus a product digitization roadmap is advancing.
“Looking ahead, we see that Conflux’ heat exchangers will be widely adopted in general industry, aerospace and automotive, wherever highest performance and excellent efficiency is required,” says AM Ventures’ Philip Schultheiss.
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特色图片显示3D打印热交换器。通过Conflux的照片。
