Apple’s 3D Printed Hinge Cover & the Inauguration of the Ternus Era

Marc Andreessen notwithstanding, it turns out that hardware is, in fact, eating the world. Perhaps after being starved for so long, the hardware side of tech innovation is now overcompensating, but at any rate the pendulum has swung back to hardware with a vengeance.

To coronate this new reign, Apple has transitioned to a new CEO, John Ternus, a man with decades of experience in Apple’s hardware division, and was most recently the senior VP of hardware engineering. This happened just in time for Ternus to lead the big Apple event for the first time, the centerpiece of which was the announcement of the Duo, the company’s first foldable, and arguably its most important product launch since it released the first iPad in 2010.

The hinge for the Duo includes a cover produced with additive manufacturing (AM), an outcome that was first signaled earlier this year. I mentioned that rumor in a post I wrote back in April about the 3D printing process developed by BLT and a group of collaborators, for the Find N6 made by Chinese smartphone brand OPPO. From the limited details we have on the subject, Apple’s process to arrive at a creaseless fold sounds much like what BLT did for OPPO, with the Duo hinge cover benefiting from an AI-driven 3D printing process that deposits micro-layers of a “special photopolymer” onto the hinge, which is itself made from recycled titanium.

So, kudos to an American company for catching up to the Chinese, although there’s every possibility that it’s not only “like” the BLT process but is indeed that very same process, as BLT is (or at least has been) part of the Apple supply chain. It seems to me more likely that Apple has reverse engineered its own version of the same process, as there is a looming eeriness surrounding US-China relations that suggests some Rubicons could be crossed in the near future. Moreover, even if there’s still only a very small chance of some previously unthinkable shift in international trade relations coming to pass, Apple is too important to the global economy for there not to be a very ironed out contingency plan in place.

This is along the lines of how I’ve read Apple’s modest but welcome investments in its US manufacturing capacity, including in this piece from a month ago when I noted that we should be on the lookout for exactly the sort of announcement that Apple made in confirming the use of 3D printing on the Duo hinge. And as I mentioned in a story from last year, in reference to an announcement at the time about Apple’s 3D printing process for the iPhone Air, and the earlier rumors that the company had confirmed about 3D printing for Apple Watch: “So, the pattern is: Apple holds an event related to assimilating small and medium enterprises (SMEs) into its manufacturing processes, followed by a few weeks later, stories about the company’s use of metal AM hitting the news.”

My point was that Apple was making a statement to American SMEs (and before that, Korean SMEs), concerning its endorsement of metal 3D printing. I still think that’s the case, but whereas I previously considered that to be more or less a hedge, all year I’ve been increasingly leaning towards the opinion that Apple is serious about supply chain diversification. The selection of Ternus as Cook’s replacement was enough to move the needle for me. However, there’s also been news accumulating for months that makes the current state of the semiconductor supply chain appear more and more tenuous, as I’ve described in my frequent writing on the 3D printing opportunity in chip packaging.

Custom packaging for the new A20 chip is probably the most important announcement that Apple actually made at its recent event, and while Ternus isn’t a chip expert, he is an expert on how chip design fits into the overall package entailed in designing a product. Additionally, he seems to be leaning a lot on Johny Srouji, who is Apple’s leading chip specialist, and was named to the newly created position of Chief Hardware Officer at the same time that Ternus was named CEO.

There’s every reason to be skeptical that Apple might really be serious about building much-needed redundancy and resilience into its hardware business. In Trump’s first term, Foxconn got billions of dollars in taxpayer money to build manufacturing capacity in Wisconsin that was never built, and a push to make iPhones in America was essentially the rationale behind that famous boondoggle. Many things, though, have changed since 2017, despite (because of?) there being the same fever dream animating the seat of American power. Apple built the last twenty years of global supply chains around its dependence on Chinese output, and it would require a response from quite the opposing force to change that ship’s direction. Yet all the sorts of elements are there that one would think are needed in order for Apple to realign its sourcing strategy.

Images courtesy of Apple