Due to a combination of historical, ideological, and economic reasons, companies originating in East and Southeast Asian nations have proven far more adept than their Western counterparts at leveraging organization via consortiums to achieve competitive advantages. Metal additive manufacturing (AM) original equipment manufacturer (OEM) Xi’an Bright Laser Technologies (BLT) has just demonstrated the power of consortiums with the announcement of its work on the hinge for the foldable Find N6 from Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO.
According to BLT, the upgrade over the hinge that the company delivered last year for the Find N5 was the result of its collaboration with “the Tianqiong Partners industrial alliance,” which helped BLT develop what the company is calling “industry-first 3D Liquid Printing,” a solution to optimize minimization of the crease in foldable electronics. OPPO describes the process as high-resolution UV printing that uses 20+ cycles of finishing with “custom photopolymer droplets” to nearly eliminate height variance in the 3D printed titanium hinge, yielding what OPPO is referring to as the ‘Zero-Feel Crease’.
BLT and OPPO have four partners in the Tianqiong Partners consortium, including Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Samsung Display, which market intelligence site UBIResearchNet notes were responsible for advanced materials/structural engineering research and flexible display technology, respectively. The consortium is rounded out by electronics manufacturer Amphenol Phoenix, which provided design and manufacturing of the hinge, and LEAD Intelligent, which provided automation equipment.
BLT’s and Tianqiong Partners’ participation in the hinge design and manufacturing for the OPPO Find N6 was announced in the middle of March, around two weeks before rumors came out that Apple is planning to use 3D printing for the foldable iPhone that the tech giant may release by the end of 2026. Apple is reportedly a BLT customer, using titanium parts printed on BLT machines for the Apple Watch.
In a press release about BLT’s work with the Tianqiong Partners on the 3D Liquid Printing process for the OPPO Find N6 hinge, Vincent Yang, GM at BLT, said, “The supporting surface flatness of the OPPO Find N6 wing plate has improved by 50% compared to last year. Achieving this level of precision once seemed extremely difficult — even unattainable — but through continuous iteration and rigorous testing, our team was able to meet and even exceed expectations.”
Liu Chang, OPPO’s President of Hardware Engineering, said, “Achieving a crease-free and durable foldable display depends not only on advanced technologies such as the next generation Tianqiong hinge and Tianqiong memory glass, but also on the collective efforts of the engineers within the Tianqiong Partners ecosystem. The Find N6 represents a significant step forward in foldable display technology, as well as a meaningful improvement in user experience.”
OPPO’s announcement of an improvement upon its first generation 3D printed hinge long before Apple has even released its first foldable phone illustrates just how far ahead of the West China is in capturing the future of consumer electronics. The gap shouldn’t come as a surprise. In the decades prior to AM’s emergence as a routine part of industrial workflow, nations across East and Southeast Asia built up their globally-leading electronics manufacturing capabilities by mastering a balance between competition and collaboration through cultivation of consortium-based ecosystems, as detailed in the book Tiger Technology.
At the same time as this highlights the distance between the manufacturing landscape in the West and in Asia, it also illustrates that this distance isn’t the product of some intangible, magical quality that’s only achievable in one region. Western nations, including the US, have done the same thing many times in the past, and there are plenty of examples of emerging technology companies—including many companies in the AM industry—currently leveraging the consortium model.
The main problem with translating those initial steps into accumulated momentum is simply that the manufacturing sector in the US domestic economy lacks the vibrancy that exists in China, South Korea, Taiwan, and even a comparably mature industrial power like Japan. The US still needs a macro-level whole-of-society push that centers the health of the manufacturing sector as a primary cultural objective, in order for the ground to be fertile enough for consortium-driven progress to truly take root.
There are certainly enough signals out there that increasing the number of manufacturing workers in the US isn’t just a selfish motive for the manufacturing sector, but would serve a real social need for younger generations that will otherwise find difficulty entering a turbulently shifting employment environment. The hard part is figuring out how to come up with a winning message backed by genuine paths to solid careers, but Americans have demonstrated the ability to solve much more difficult social problems in the past.
Images courtesy of OPPO