November 18, 2025
UPDATE
Mapping the longer term with 3D‑printed titanium Apple Watch instances
It began with a pie-in-the-sky thought: What if 3D printing — traditionally used to create prototypes — may very well be leveraged to provide hundreds of thousands of similar enclosures to Apple’s precise design requirements, with high-quality recycled metallic?
“It wasn’t simply an thought — it was an concept that wished to change into a actuality,” says Kate Bergeron, Apple’s vice chairman of Product Design. “As soon as we requested the query, we instantly began testing it. We needed to show, with steady prototyping, course of optimization, and an amazing quantity of information gathering, that this expertise was able to assembly the excessive commonplace of high quality we demand.”
This yr, all Apple Watch Extremely 3 and titanium Apple Watch Collection 11 instances are 3D-printed with 100% recycled aerospace-grade titanium powder, an achievement not beforehand thought-about potential at scale. Each crew at Apple rallied behind a shared ambition. The polished mirror end on Collection 11 needed to be pristine. Extremely 3 needed to preserve its sturdiness and light-weight type to satisfy the calls for of on a regular basis adventurers. They each additionally needed to be higher for the planet with out compromising efficiency, and use the identical or better-quality supplies.
“At Apple, each crew holds surroundings as a core worth,” says Sarah Chandler, Apple’s vice chairman of Surroundings and Provide Chain Innovation. “We knew 3D-printing was a expertise with a lot potential for materials effectivity, which is crucial for attending to Apple 2030.”
Apple 2030 is the corporate’s formidable purpose to be carbon impartial throughout its complete footprint by the tip of this decade, which incorporates the manufacturing provide chain and lifelong use of its merchandise. Already, all the electrical energy used to fabricate Apple Watch comes from renewable vitality sources like wind and photo voltaic.
Utilizing the additive means of 3D printing, layer after layer will get printed till an object is as near the ultimate form wanted as potential. Traditionally, machining solid components is subtractive, requiring massive parts of fabric to be shaved off. This shift allows Extremely 3 and titanium instances of Collection 11 to make use of simply half the uncooked materials in comparison with their earlier generations.
“A 50 % drop is a large achievement — you’re getting two watches out of the identical quantity of fabric used for one,” Chandler explains. “If you begin mapping that again, the financial savings to the planet are large.”
In complete, Apple estimates greater than 400 metric tons of uncooked titanium will probably be saved this yr alone due to this new course of.
Over the previous decade, Apple has been experimenting with 3D printing whereas the business itself was beginning to take off. In hospital labs, medical doctors had been utilizing the primary 3D-printed prosthetics and synthetic organs, and even past Earth’s ambiance, astronauts found the velocity and ease of 3D-printing important instruments whereas aboard the Worldwide Area Station.
“We’ve watched this expertise mature for a very long time and seen its prototypes change into extra consultant of our designs,” says Dr. J Manjunathaiah, Apple’s senior director of Manufacturing Design for Apple Watch and Imaginative and prescient. “Utilizing much less materials to make our merchandise has at all times been the intention. Beforehand, we hadn’t been in a position to make beauty components at scale with 3D printing. So we began to experiment with 3D-printing metallic to make beauty components.”
For Apple, performance, magnificence, and sturdiness are desk stakes. Add on scalability, together with rigorous reliability testing, efficiency, and even breakthroughs in supplies science, all whereas guaranteeing Apple doesn’t lose any floor in its 2030 decarbonization objectives.
Trying down from above, rows of blocks protrude from the bottom like white Lego skyscrapers, whirring day and night time. These are the 3D printers arduous at work constructing the titanium instances for Apple Watch Extremely 3 and Collection 11.
Every machine contains a galvanometer that homes six lasers, all working concurrently to construct layer after layer — over 900 instances — to finish a single case. However even earlier than the printers can begin, the uncooked titanium must be atomized into powder, a course of that entails fine-tuning its oxygen content material to lower the qualities of titanium that change into explosive when uncovered to warmth.
“This was cutting-edge supplies science,” says Bergeron.
“The powder needed to be 50 microns in diameter, which is like very advantageous sand,” Manjunathaiah explains. “If you hit it with a laser, it behaves in a different way if it has oxygen versus not. So we had to determine preserve the oxygen content material low.”
“Dialing in that thickness so that every layer is strictly 60 microns means very finely squeegeeing this powder,” Bergeron provides. “Now we have to go as quick as we probably can to make this scalable, whereas going as gradual as we probably can to be exact. This allowed us to be environment friendly, whereas nonetheless hitting the objectives of the design.”
As soon as the printers are accomplished working, an operator vacuums extra powder off the construct plate in a course of known as tough depowdering. As a result of the builds are printed to the near-final form for all the interlocks wanted on the enclosure, powder can nonetheless sit within the nooks and crannies of the instances. An ultrasonic shaker ensures this remaining powder is eliminated in the course of the advantageous depowdering part.
Throughout the singulation course of, a skinny electrified wire saws between every case, whereas a liquid coolant is sprayed concurrently to maintain the warmth from the slicing course of low. An automatic optical inspection system then measures every case, checking that its dimensions and cosmetics are correct. That is the ultimate high quality verify to make sure the enclosures are prepared for last processing.
“The mechanical engineers must be essentially the most expert puzzle solvers in all the world,” Bergeron says. “They take the circuitboard, the show, the battery — all the issues that go contained in the case throughout last meeting — and make them match. We take a look at alongside the way in which to ensure the watch is purposeful; then add software program and run it for a time frame to verify that every one the performance meets our necessities.”
One other key design enhancement 3D-printing unlocked: printing textures in places that had been traditionally inaccessible within the forging course of. For Apple Watch, this meant with the ability to enhance the waterproofing course of for the antenna housing in mobile fashions. Throughout the case, mobile fashions have a cut up stuffed with plastic to allow antenna performance, and 3D-printing a selected texture on the internal floor of the metallic enabled Apple to attain higher bonding between plastic and metallic.
Placing the puzzle items collectively was a multiyear journey that began with a sequence of demos and proofs of idea to fine-tune the recipe, from the particular alloy composition, to the printing course of itself. After testing it out on a a lot smaller scale in earlier product generations, the crew was assured in its potential to resolve for the distinctive challenges of working with titanium.
“We at all times attempt to take these incremental steps to permit us to take the following step,” says Bergeron. “This has now opened up the chance for much more design flexibility than what we had earlier than. Now that we’ve achieved this breakthrough at scale, in a very sustainable manner, and on the beauty and structural stage that we’d like, the probabilities are countless.”
That design flexibility unlocked one other profit that goes past Apple Watch: the USB-C port on the brand new iPhone Air. By creating a completely new port with a titanium enclosure that’s 3D-printed with the identical recycled titanium powder, Apple was in a position to make its extremely skinny but sturdy design a actuality.
That is the magic that may occur when the legal guidelines of physics, materials innovation, unparalleled design, and an unwavering dedication to the surroundings all line up.
“We’re terribly dedicated to techniques change,” says Chandler. “We’re by no means doing one thing simply to do it as soon as — we’re doing it so it turns into the way in which the entire system then works. Our North Star has at all times been to design merchandise which are higher for folks and planet. After we come collectively to innovate with out compromise throughout design, manufacturing, and our environmental objectives, the advantages are exponentially higher than we might ever think about.”
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