Democratizing Advanced Engineering Solutions from Industrial to Medical Applications

Interview with Moritz Valentino Huber of Hyperganic

Hyperganic was founded in 2016 offering computational design tools for programmers and custom solutions such as their Ultrasim Lattice Design application with BASF.

Our interview with Director of Engineering, Moritz Valentino Huber covers the latest developments he will be presenting at CDFAM Berlin including HyDesign, a cloud native engineering design tool, that is focussed mainly around the generation of space filling algorithms, such as advanced TPMS and Latticing.

Could you start by telling us about your role at Hyperganic and outline the main themes you intend to present at the CDFAM Symposium in Berlin?

Hi all, my name is Moritz Valentino Huber, a half italian, half german mechanical engineer living in Munich. I’m currently the Director of Engineering at Hyperganic, a trailblazer in the advanced manufacturing sector, particularly in 3D printing, with operations in Munich and Singapore.

My professional journey, now spanning over eight years, is deeply intertwined with the evolutionary strides in additive manufacturing.

My foray into additive manufacturing began at the Fraunhofer Institute IGCV, diving into the complexities of multi-material Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion (LBPF) printing. This pivotal chapter not only fostered my expertise in 3D printing technologies but also set the stage for my future contributions to the field.

During my tenure at ArianeGroup, I contributed to a large initiative called Space4.0, aimed at revolutionizing space part manufacturing through digitalization and industrialization. I was pioneering the integration of Metal LBPF printers with Ethernet for real-time monitoring of build chambers, marking a significant leap towards a more digitized and efficient manufacturing landscape.

My master’s thesis, focusing on predictive maintenance for Metal LBPF machines, leveraged machine learning algorithms and statistical data models to enhance the reliability and quality assurance of metal 3D printing processes, further cementing my expertise in the domain.

Now, leading the engineering services division at Hyperganic, I leverage my experience and innovative mindset to spearhead the development of software solutions that address key industry and sustainability challenges. These include lightweighting, thermal management, meta-materials, and the customization of consumer goods, contributing to the field’s advancement and the broader goals of sustainable manufacturing.

About Hyperganic

At Hyperganic, we harness the power of bespoke engineering solutions to enhance the capabilities of advanced products. Our expertise spans across industries, from aerospace to automotive, demonstrating the transformative impact of Hyperganic’s approach to product development through design tailored for Additive Manufacturing (AM).

We provide a dual offering of sophisticated software and comprehensive engineering services. Among our software solutions is HyDesign, an engineering design tool specifically crafted for advanced latticing. This software integrates validated materials from BASF Forward AM, ensuring high-quality and innovative design outcomes.

Hyperganic at CDFAM

The topic of the talk is going to be centered around mainly two things:

(1) Exciting engineering applications in the space of thermal management and light-weighting.

(2) our freshly launched web-native design product HyDesign.

Both sides of Hyperganics business are relying on Hyperganic Core, our core technology we developed in house over the past years.

Essentially, for the applications that we are building in our solutions business, we are leveraging the technology on a computer code level, which gives us the ultimate freedom in designing, simulating and optimizing parts by design parameters.

On the other hand of the spectrum we have as mentioned HyDesign, an accessible, cloud native design tool, that is enabling technically everyone to leverage our great technology and design awesome stuff.

Hyperganic’s Design Services

Could you detail how Hyperganic engaged with clients to achieve the projects that will be presented at CDFAM? What range of design services does Hyperganic offer to support clients through development projects?

Hyperganic’s services and solutions team essentially helps engineers and creators out there, to solve difficult challenges they are facing in the space of advanced manufacturing.

Typically in the high value industry verticals people have challenging problems to solve, where software, as we all know, can be the essential ingredient to elevate the respective product development.

Let’s take light-weighting for example: Picture an engineer that is getting into the lightweight construction of 3d printed parts. Many engineers therefore explore space filling geometries like beam lattices, stochastic infills like Voronoi cells or TPMS like our beloved Gyroids.

Similarly, in the thermal management field, people are turning to 3d printing to create more compact and equally more efficient heat exchangers. In that case many aim to leverage TPMS structures to optimize the effective heat transfer surface area, that separates two fluids.

This is where the difficulty starts for many engineers, since these complex topologies can nowadays relatively easily be created, however it is actually fairly hard to simulate these, or even optimize these.

Using our core technology, we are enabling our customers exactly in these situations, by either taking over parts of their work, where clients struggle, like the design of highly complex and functional structures, or the multiphysics simulation of the aforementioned structures, or even developing apps that allow our clients to run integrated optimisation loops optimizing the principal design parameters of their devices.

A simplistic example would be the parametric adjustment of functional grading as well as design parameters of TPMS based on the results of a CFD simulation. Here the physical velocity magnitude is lowered by grading a TPMS. The starting point is a 5x5x5 mm cell size that eventually arrives at a cell size of 5x5x25

Another area that is worth mentioning is mass customisation and consumer goods, especially in the medical and orthopedic space.

Here we are mostly involved with setting up end to end design workflows that produce geometries based on, for example a scan, and have these printed and set to the consumer. Or alternatively we encode entire workflows into easy to use apps, that are used by clinicians all around the world helping to improve the life of their patients by providing them with better or more performant products.

An example here would be a customer of ours that uses our technology to generate custom insoles. One of his patients who had a terrible accident in the Himalaya Mountains, where he lost his toes, is now able to walk again. Obviously I don’t want to take away from the incredible knowledge our customer has, but still we were able to improve the lives of both our customer, and more so that of our customers’ clients.

HyDesign’s Capabilities and Applications

With the recent market launch of HyDesign, a cloud-native SaaS lattice design product, what initial capabilities can users anticipate?

HyDesign is an accessible cloud native engineering design tool, that is focussed mainly around the generation of space filling algorithms, such as advanced TPMS and Latticing.

Effectively the value proposition is very simple: It’s a design tool for everyone that is looking for a fast and effortless way of modifying geometries for advanced manufacturing. We want to enable people to benefit from the advanced latticing and TPMS features, such as the ability to merge and blend multiple TPMS patterns to create novel structures, that might have different and exciting properties that the standard patterns do not have.

For the sake of consumer good/ polymer applications, basic conformal latticing is implemented as a default, generating visually pleasing lattices automatically. To stay in the range of consumer goods a little further, we also provide the user with skinning and embossing functionality, opening up a realm of soft polymer lattice/ foam replacement products.

What applications do you foresee for HyDesign, and which key markets do you expect will most benefit from its capabilities?

Initially I would estimate that our users will use it especially for soft polymer lattice applications in the fields of consumer goods, medical, and orthopedics. That is due to mainly two reasons: (1) the feature-set matches almost perfectly what one would need and (2) we provide validated polymer metamaterials by our close partner BASF Forward AM as a starting point for users aiming to get started in the field of latticing.

Collaboration with BASF and Development Insights

Could you describe how the collaboration with BASF, especially with the integration of material data into Hyperganic’s latticing tool, has influenced the development of HyDesign?

Hyperganic and BASF Forward AM have partnered up in 2022, with the joint mission to foster alternatives to classical foamed polymers. Foams are good for a variety of applications ranging from energy absorption, like cushioning and protective gear to medical applications, like insoles and orthotics. However, there are also certain distinct disadvantages when using foams, like recyclability or possibilities for customization.

Lattices (in particular) soft polymer lattices give designers the choice to design objects that incorporate the benefits of traditional foams, while being recyclable and offer high potential for customisation.

As part of this joint mission, BASF Forward AM and Hyperganic partnered up to make Latticing more accessible. BASF Forward AM provides the material know-how, while Hyperganic the know-how to develop accessible SaaS tools. The first product launched was the Ultrasim 3d Lattice Engine, powered by Hyperganic, enabling users to design lattice parts very quickly, with lattices that are validated for LBPF processability (MJF and SLS).

What specific enhancements from this collaboration have been integrated into the software?

The Ultrasim 3d Lattice Engine was originally designed to be a very simplistic tool, offering solely basic lattice and TPMS functionality, with the main aim to provide value by enabling users to get started with lattices very easily.

Generally, the tool is very well perceived, with an install base in the multiple 100ds, but listening to our user-base, we learned, that people are looking for more than just a starting point to get into lattice designs.

We heard you! We therefore made HyDesign more accessible, much more capable and give people generally more flexibility in their design process.

Future Functionalities in HyDesign

Looking beyond the initial release, what additional functionalities are planned for HyDesign’s roadmap?

We are not looking to stay in the realm of simple design tools only.

For us HyDesign is a starting point towards our multi-physics optimisation tool. We are on a great track towards that, but still take the necessary time when implementing new things into the product.

Currently on a technological level we are already leveraging our immersed boundary structural solver, enabling us to simulate linear elastic stress strain and thermal conduction in topologies of arbitrary complexity.

Further, our CFD kernel based on the Lattice Bolzmann Method enables us to simulate coupled multiphase flows through highly complex topologies already, with more exciting features yet to be finalized. All of these exciting things, like more advanced design capabilities, physics engine integrations and optimisations are on the roadmap and will be added to HyDesign in the near future.

How are the anticipated future enhancements of HyDesign designed to address the advancing requirements of industrial designers and engineers across various applications?

Well, here the answer is quite simple. We are lucky to have a large base of supporters and users out there that are, or were using some of our products, so in order to make sure we are doing the right thing we are just listening to them. If they like it they will buy it, if they don’t probably not.

Data Requirements and Software Integration

What specific types of data are required to create and optimize designs within HyDesign? Additionally, could you discuss how HyDesign is expected to integrate with other software tools, providing examples of data connectivity and integrations?

The data required can range from no data to a simple file input if you wish to modify a part designed in traditional CAD. Typically, people import 3d-files such as STLs and go from there.

Our most preferred option for file interoperability would obviously be 3mf, which we largely support in HyDesign already.

However the level of volumetric complexity of parts that users can create using our tools is effectively limitless, so we are constantly trying to find the best way to exchange data in a lightweight and simple user friendly fashion. For some cases that works by exporting manufacturing formats like CLI or PNG Stacks directly, however for some other subsequent softwares, sometimes we are still forced to export decimated STL or 3mf (surface) files.

Key Takeaways for CDFAM Attendees

What key messages do you intend for attendees to receive from your CDFAM presentation? How do you see these insights enhancing the understanding and value of adopting computational design?

The key message is that we are working on software to make the hard things simpler, so that you don’t need a Phd in structural analysis, or in computational fluid dynamics to design more efficient, elegant and functional parts.

Lastly, I am excited to speak with a bunch of like minded people about the things we all like about this industry, which admittedly is still in its infancy. At Hyperganic we are trying to make an impact to the industry by means of software and engineering applications.

Advancing the industry never works alone, so presumably the more people hear about the things we do, the more we are able to establish computational design thinking.

Personal Goals for CDFAM Participation

Finally, what outcomes do you personally hope to gain from your participation in CDFAM? Are there particular learnings, connections, or opportunities you aim to explore during the event?

My catchphrase is the law of the instrument: >>If you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail.<<

To me, advanced manufacturing as well as computational or generative design tools are the key to unlocking new exciting applications and finding elegant solutions to existing problems in various industries. Analogously to the phrase, by limiting yourself to existing tools and approaches you will only go so far. In contrast, connecting with the people at events like CDFAM is definitely a source of inspiration and a great source of possible collaborations or partnerships.