You'll still be able to use your current Ultra. There are people still using AW7, 6, 5, 4, 3 etc.
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Kuo: New Apple Watch Ultra to Launch This Year With 3D-Printed Parts
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You'll still be able to use your current Ultra. There are people still using AW7, 6, 5, 4, 3 etc.
Agree. They act like apple is magically going to do something different now that they saved a few bucks on each device. The chips in the watch have been pretty meh lately and battery life still isn't great (especially compared to other high-end fitness devices).
"It took so much courage for us to switch to this new process, but we think you are going to love it"- Apple at the unveiling of the first 3d printed device.
The second gen Ultra won’t be an incremental upgrade. Trust me. Apple will add something that’s worth the upgrade. Timmeh is no dummy. I’ll be buying one for sure. Why not? YOLO.
If MAHLE can 3D print a piston for Porsche I am sure a 3D printed watch part will be fine.
Tim: "Meet the new Ultra. Same as the old Ultra."
That's actually where industry seems to be heading, long-term. Given the current finicky state of home 3D printing, I suspect that will be a long ways off. But given Apple's obsession with controlling the whole enchilada, I can't envision them going that route.
I am sure the PLA version of the Ultra will be far better than the titanium version.
Tim Penny-Pincher Apple strikes two times in one week!
Next up: Apple Vision Pro will be constructed using swim goggle lenses
Next up: Apple Vision Pro will be constructed using swim goggle lenses
Unfortunately I'm no chemist or material scientist, so I don't have a clear answer for you. But my understanding was by tweaking your composition, each layer would polymerize in a way. You'd have metal matrix composites, suppose >95% of an aluminum alloy with 5% of ceramics or carbons added. This would exhibit some better, some worse properties than that aluminum alloy on its own. There's something about the chemistry of materials being in a melt pool state which you don't achieve in traditional machining.
The watch body my former company had printed was in tantalum, which averaged $3k/kg. You could certainly print in Ti64, we printed quite a few things with it. On your point 3, printing smaller parts can be difficult, average layer resolution was 30-40 micron. When it comes to the Apple Watch Ultra specifically, I think Apple would mainly print the body and nothing else inside. If you look at a teardown of it you'll see it's not as economic to print the metal components inside. I can send some photos of different things if anyone DMs me, or if it seems appropriate in a comment here.
Did you ever read the book Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson?
In the book, everyone had access to "the feed" basic 3D printing that printed out food and basic items, but of course, if you had money and wealth, the quality of what was printed out was much better and you could print out nicer stuff.
Been a while since I read it, but it's a fascinating book.
NOW 3D PRINT MY PIZZA BOX TIM!
In other words, made of plastic 😏
The second-generation Apple Watch Ultra will launch later this year and feature 3D-printed mechanical parts, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
In a post published on Medium earlier today, Kuo said that his latest survey of Apple's supply chain indicates that "Apple is actively adopting 3D printing technology." Specifically, "some of the titanium mechanical parts of the 2H23 new Apple Watch Ultra will be made by 3D printing."
The components could include the Digital Crown, Side Button, and Action Button, as these are the only mechanical parts of the Apple Watch Ultra. These titanium parts are currently CNC machined.
The change has the potential to improve production time and reduce costs. If shipments from suppliers go well, Kuo believes more Apple products will adopt 3D printing technology in the future.
Until now, only Bloomberg's Mark Gurman had said that Apple would release a second-generation Apple Watch Ultra alongside the Apple Watch Series 9 models later this year. Thus, Kuo's latest report seems to add further credibility to the belief that the Apple Watch Ultra will follow the same annual update cycle as the standard Apple Watch series.
Article Link: Kuo: New Apple Watch Ultra to Launch This Year With 3D-Printed Parts
That's never going to happen, and not at all the reason they would adopt 3D printing. The Ultra is the watch in their lineup least suited for having anything user replaceable - it's marketed as a diving watch. You can't have a rugged watch that is supposed to be used as a dive computer have user replaceable 3D printed parts.
You will not be able to tell it is 3D printed.
Interestingly, I just watched a documentary yesterday about a manufacturer that found 3d printed metal was inferior quality and introduced imperfections that weekend the end product. I forget what it was about but it was subs or aircraft where imperfections could be catastrophic, I think it was Boeing. They had to stop using the process for important parts and only use 3d printing for non essential components.
Can’t wait until I can print me out some Bill Gates chicken tumor nuggets. 😋
2040: Apple will sell us an Apple Watch Ultra made out of plastic and paper, and charges us $10000.
Regardless of what cost saving measures Apple is going on, brace another price increase because investors want 900% return of their investment.
Regardless of what cost saving measures Apple is going on, brace another price increase because investors want 900% return of their investment.
I found a couple of articles comparing 3D-printed Ti6Al4V with conventionally-produced Ti6Al4V. One looked at tensile strength, yield point, elongation, and necking, and found the 3D-printed material had ~20% higher strength and yield point, and was much more resistant to elongation (Karolina Karolewska, Bogdan Ligaj; Comparison analysis of titanium alloy Ti6Al4V produced by metallurgical and 3D printing method. AIP Conference Proceedings 21 February 2019; 2077 (1): 020025. ); and the other looked at Young's modulus and found the conventional material was ~5% stiffer (Alkentar, R., File, M., & Mankovits, T. (2023). Use of compression test to determine the Young's modulus of the titanium alloy Ti6Al4V manufactured via direct metal laser sintering, International Review of Applied Sciences and Engineering, 14(2), 256-262.)
So it can go either way. But note that the 3D-printed objects tested in these papers are one-off laboratory samples that were likely prepared with great care and expertise. The properties of commercial 3D-printed parts could be significantly different (i.e., worse), depending on how much quality control is needed to obtain consistently good results.
So it can go either way. But note that the 3D-printed objects tested in these papers are one-off laboratory samples that were likely prepared with great care and expertise. The properties of commercial 3D-printed parts could be significantly different (i.e., worse), depending on how much quality control is needed to obtain consistently good results.
Really looking forward to getting the Ultra this year. Hopefully this doesn’t affect durability.
Should help Apple to reduce costs. Wonder what parts for other products will be using 3D printing.
Largest case in the Apple Watch range. It caters to the rotund perfectly well.
What I don't understand is:
1. It takes them 12 hours to make a piston. Obviously watch parts will take less time, but depositing all of those layers is going to be time consuming.
2. With the pistons they're talking about almost 1 off parts. How do you make millions of watch parts? That many large printing machines seems like they would fill the factory ...